Author S. K. Nicholas

We’ve been drinking since late afternoon, and now well into the early hours, we’re flat on our backs looking up at the ceiling. The fan goes round much the same as it has done for years, even before I knew her and where she resided. Yanking down my trousers, she slides her hand around my cock as I attempt to remove her bra. It’s a clumsy effort, though, and try as I might, my fingers keep making a mess of things. In the end, she takes it off herself, and as soon as her breasts are next to my mouth, I suckle like a baby as she takes me to the brink. There’s poetry in the way her tongue wraps around me, and how the sounds of owls and planes warp themselves in the shells of our inner ears. Crawling beneath the porch, we collect twigs and leaves and use them as pillows to rest our weary heads. Naked and nude and as natural as we need to be, we embrace like the skeletons we are and talk about love and death. She says something about a tangent vortex, but I pretend not to hear. Afraid of dying, I bite my lip and keep it all in, but how many times can I keep on making the same mistakes? How detached can I allow myself to become before the ropes that keep me moored snap completely? We’re manipulated by those we detest, and shackled to those we wish were no longer with us. Those we want more than anything- well, they just drift away like dead leaves in the breeze. Animals don’t fear death, so why do we? At what point did we cross the great divide? At what point did the view of distant stars become clouded with neurotic thoughts and the need to punish others for being innocent? Somebody hold me and say that things will be okay. Someone keep me in their heart so I may sleep forever.