TheVirtuesofFortitude

The interrogation of a teenager ends with siphoning sighs.

What do you mean twelve years of sitting in rows filling in bubbles on scantrons doesn't prepare you for adulthood?

She felt the past in hustling streets and wished the streets weren’t strengthened with leveed promises. Salt and spices and burnt plastic touched the air, cobbling her breathing, halting her feet. Memory ever-demanding broken rhythm, ever-demanding (pursuing) broken time

She danced her way through New Orleans again and bared her shoulders to the cloudless sky. The sun was blessed when kissing, but cursed so loudly when skin reddened and reflected southern sunset. She felt the past in hustling streets and wished the water never came. A vacancy was felt and feet stopped their dancing but they could not be still for long, of course, before the jazz ribboned around her ankles and wrists, demanding rhythm, demanding time. - @gabriellamaries

A stranger pulled her fingers through my hair and drew the sun-dust out. It’s been a darker shade ever since but now I can feel the earth in it, though it doesn’t touch the ground, even when I kneel.

Burgeoning figures bring tears to my eyes only to dance blithely down and leap, pooling in the dip of my collarbone. A reflection of your tongue against my desert-graced skin, falling and searching. Pointed toes and straight lines, a whirl of red and breath.

“Massive internal infection.” Has quite the poetic ring, doesn’t it? “Your insides are rotting” doesn’t quite cut it. “You’re dying,” is simply too blunt. But an infection, well, those are curable, and hoping is half the fight.

This is my chain mail, woven from grass and grey-blue sky. This is my helmet, formed with forbearance and faith. And this,  this is my breastplate, hardened  by the hailstorm  that is you. 

Nothing is blacker than the beast that is the In-Between. The waiting for something, anything, to come up or fall through. The waiting for him to wake up or simply fess up he's been asleep all along. In the belly of the In-Between, many spend most of their lives. In the belly of the In-Between, many become petrified. Nothing is blacker than the beast that is the In-Between.

Loving you is stepping into a river of sunlit wind. My fingers stretch, and with my chin upturned, I become you and you become me in a sunflower-sucrose gale.