Empty Rooms

Some time ago a friend of mine wrote a short vignette and sent it my way. This is my response to it. I haven't seen her in a while, but thought I would post the vignette I wrote in response to her. It's been too long since we traded words.

Empty Rooms

I come with the night, and sow doubt in your dreams, seeds pregnant with need and desire. Buried beneath the frost bitten grave that stands in memorial of our tryst, I summon cold winds to drape your unclothed feet so they can do not but trot the numbness that engulfs me.

You are the eyes that bare witness to my folly, doomed to hold within your vision alone that which can never be graced by the hands of man or fate—the honeyed fig that holds within it the Friar’s last gift to stars that remain crossed even as they fall from Grace. The taste of temptation lingers in the vibrations of my voice even as it rings in your ear, echoing the sound born as I crash upon the shores of truth. The fine grains there to slick to retain my essence, I fall victim time and time again to the whims of Artemis as she flees the footsteps of her brother, falling into a steady rhythm poised to swallow you in my wake.

Your eyes stand closed in anticipation of half wished release, poised between hope and fear, held taunt till muscles knot and skin quivers. From the depths of the sea I call you, igniting the wicker at your core and spreading heat that makes flesh melt like the wax of a thousand candles. No longer a steady pulse of unrealized want, now the steady sizzle of hot oils licking the surface of cold steel.
I step from your shadow swabbed in crimson and spice, yet your eyes see nothing but a ghost reflected in the polished surface of the oak.

Shade I have become in the days since the stars left their home and settled in the earth wrapped in cellophane. I stood to catch them but instead was caught and bound to this state of stasis perpetuated by cold indifference. Bile settles on my tongue as I turn to you and cry but find my voice stolen, my tongue turned to stone and settled on my shoulder to torment me for my crimes. My tears in turn rusting the twisted barrier that marks the boundaries of my prison. I once slick smile following my mind out of reality into madness.

The night has become my home. The rains are my only companion in this dark dwelling between your door and your light switch. Dark laughter cascades amongst the broken remains of our once treasured heirlooms, stars that have all but lost their light. Sickly light surrounded by dark and uncertain waters that I now call home. I come to you begging for light and the keys to my prison, for all I am able to offer is soggy match and keys corroded by the passage of time. I whisper to you in the dark, but you are afraid to traverse what was once familiar territory, but has now become a death trap of broken glass, broken furniture, and the scent of stale smoke which has become the essence of my being.

With the coming dawn I settle back into the deep, slipping back beneath the waves and into the steady rhythm that marks my battle with the shore that cannot contain my essence. I bow my head in silent prayer, hoping my seeds take root like vines in the stonewalls of your heart and spread through the delicate byways of your blood, giving life to succulent roses, that will cushion your feet from the broken glass left behind from my hasty retreat, and wipe the blood from your still lips.

I loved you.