Falls

It had been a long time since he had been touched.

Dark lips, tracing hideous lines on his face, feeling the crumble of blood that weeps from his eye. Unseeing and wet, a wound that never heals- a reminder forever of the dangers that lurk in the shadows. Her touch is like knives, and he is twisted in two. To yank away and admonish her, to strike her down for breaking through the barrier that he had built up between him and the world.

And then there is a hummingbird feeling- thrumming in his breast as he relishes the touch. It feels like feathers against his flesh, black lips against black skin, and he wants to lean into it.

Like a lover caught up in an unexpected embrace, he remains still, afraid to frighten her, afraid to push her away, and afraid that she will come even closer.

They separate, and he can breathe again, his lungs no longer weighed down by the heft of her touch. So foreign and unfamiliar, so strange and yet enticing. He wonders if this is what the world is like outside of his anger and his hunger for revenge. There are nice things out here- pretty little butterfly kisses and looks that confuse him and make him want to question the world.

Yet there is still a white hot rage that bubbles in his breast, and it chills his face and twirls his gut.

Her words are like songs, making him think and listen to double meaning. Like words beneath words, but instead he turns his black face upwards, staring up into the sky and eyeing the gnarled cloud in the distance. “Hunger.” Not the kind of hunger that claws at your gut and sends you seeking food- the kind that makes you desire more.

More, more, and more again.

Even without looking at her, he can feel her eyes against his flesh, running over puckered scars and a forever bleeding eye. “What are you?” Like a little bird that beckons the cry of the crow, there is something different about her- twisted and gaunt on the outside, just as he is as scarred and damaged inside and out.