Love was a soft death

Much like drowning, something life-giving wrapping around you and choking breath from your lungs.

---

She was radiant

Her dreams were gentle and comforting, conforming easily to trained hands. Her skin was milk-fresh, shining and smooth, lit with star-song and incense.

I built for her once, to begin. But I knew my limits. Her smile captivated me. Her eyes were onyx, cunning, lively.

I would not return, I swore.

---

I do not dream. But if I did, it would be of her.

---

I do not love. But if I did, I would love her only.

---

I am weak. I hid away in a masked crowd. It was a ball, I presume, glittering and warm. Some hidden depth laid in the floor, product of my influence or hers I did not know- will never know.

She found me. I could not keep away.

We danced.

She was sure-footed and sly, exchanging comments with passerby's, flirty and shy alike. Her boldness made my chest ache. I wanted for her more than ever.

She spoke to me, as well. Oh, her sweet words and ringing laughter were as Moses' doves, my shaking hands the olive branch.

A chaste kiss at the end of the night. On my cheek, with a grin. _I enjoyed it_, she whispered. _À bientôt_.

I am ill without her.

---

We do meet again. In a city, on a stage. Music swells around us as our gazes touch.

Her voice is like peach juice, hot and thick on a summer's day. It runs down your chin and fills your nose with sweet perfume. It fills you yet you are hungry for more.

She plays a maiden and I, her captor. She falls into my arms with too much grace. Too much trust. She must feel my heart beat almost through my barely-there body, yet she clings to me as though I am worth something. As though I am not pitiful, scrambling in darkness without her light.

If she was the sun, I want her to burn me. If she was a beast, I would desire nothing more then for her to kill me. I would let her take me alive and finish me off, just so I could spend my last moments in her embrace.

---

I know that there is a life outside dreams.

I have never gone. We are forbidden, at the cost of our immortality, to visit. Lest we get attached.

It is too late.

But for her sake, I see her only when she sleeps.

Tonight, she is a queen. I serve her. There is nothing more pleasurable to me then to foot her every need. She is ruthless, a chess piece with no king to protect, a sword with no sheath.

She keeps me by her side always. I suspect she may remember me, and my stomach pools with dread and delight. Her hands brush my neck, seeing if I will flinch, but I keep steady.

It is all I need to see her again. This is what I tell myself as I plait her hair (thick and velvet, heavy in my scarred hands, smooth) before she returns to the waking world. I will not destroy us out of selfishness.

(I will. I am a fool.)

---

This will be the last time. I was no traitor to myself.

I meet her outside a bar. Her beret is askew. A cigarette is between two fingers, smoke falling from rosy lips. She gestures wordlessly for me to step foreward. I cannot help but comply.

She grabs my tie. Our kiss is passion and pure and pain. I have never felt so helpless. She is fury and madness and beauty.

Nothing I could create would be worthy to hold her within it. I am not worthy to breath her air, to touch her hair, to bring my mouth to hers. She is the breaking dawn, the bleeding wound, the ringing in my ears.

Her nails dig into my shoulder. She drags me into the bar, ordering strong whisky I won't be able to stomach.

We do not speak much, but she does kiss me again. Desperately, I reciprocate.

I was dead from the begining.

---

Our eyes meet in the coffeeshop. Stimuli is new, sound is new, the real solid world spinning around me like a dizzying light display.

But her eyes lock me in place. The recognition is grounding. Her gasp sends me stepping toward her.

Every breath is a struggle, increasingly similar to inhailing water.

Drown me, I ask. Gladly, she responds.