Justify the light I carry. This lamp is heavy and it drags me down, it blinds me and burns me. I can see the blood in my hands, like glass, like papercuts slicing me open to the doctors gaze, my skin a million lines of wet red. Birds call but I don’t hear them. I only see the silent opening of thier beaks, the trilling of thier soft pink tongues vibrating from the air they push from their brave feathered chests. I blink and their lungs burst. Bones breaking open to splatter flesh on the vivid green grass.
Instead of aimless wandering, I fall into reverie. I spend long hours not moving, my eyes barely tracking the white fluffy confections that litter the sky of this country. Sometimes days go past, with my mind too far away to notice. I remember you, mostly, your graceful smile. The sweet atmosphere of careless affection you would carry with you, like love was a perfume you wore as a flower carries pollen. You were so beautiful. As I saw you from across the hall, I wanted to touch you. A pointless urge at the time, I came later to understand. You and your curse. I love it. The irony is delicious. Didn’t stop me wanting, of dreaming of you that night. I woke up with a hand between my legs and a single drop of sweat rolling down the inside of my thigh.
Over dinner I saw you again, a few tables over. Not so many that I couldn’t see you from where I was sitting, but not close enough to easily watch you without being caught. I covertly studied how you held your silverware, how your dark green coat clashed with the yellow cotton tablecloth. The secret red lining at your cuffs gave me desires I couldn’t focus. I wanted to snuggle underneath your jacket, my head on your shoulder, your strong hands holding my wrists in my lap. I wanted to be trapped. I thought of predators and prey, wolves and ridinghoods. A girls fancy of flight and capture, my thought for the day was my finger tracing your face from your hairline, down the middle of your brow, down your nose to your lips. Those kissable lips. I didn’t know your name. I skip over my next thought, the visceral sensation of having a full mouth. After all this time, it’s still depressing. I live in paradise, shackled to your possession. What a pathetic pun. I should concentrate on my song, my last chance of freedom.
“Say these words and you will be free,” you said, “Say I love you”. You tore my tongue out before I had a chance to speak. You cut me and cried.
Sadistic bastard, I don’t understand why you gave me this lamp.