artyartie

Just a little writing exercise - my fingers feel neglected, even if it's because I've been reading like mad lately. And dreams are such a fertile topic for short little ficlets..

************
I wonder if it is the pillow and matress beneath my sleeping body my brain translates into a feather-soft surface stretching to the horizon, pale blue beneath a rioutous sunrise or sunset. The darkness is past us or it is looming there, wine-dark, below the washes of pink and purple. But it should be dull brown and tenuous sprigs of green beneath these floral hues - a desert ever forgotten and remembered.

Your touch, however, threads the thin line between memory and imagination, and the vestiges of my lucid mind wonder if you ever held me quite this way. You're gentle, softer than the plush seating that nearly envelops us with comfort, but there is a determined steeliness in your fingers as they explore my upper arms. Fiercely curious, exploring this new territory that may or may not be virgin soil. It's so simple, and so harmless, especially compared to an earlier, much more explicit dream, but there is still danger, lurking beneath the apricot-colored sky.

We merely hold each other for perhaps hours, though it can truly only be minutes. There is no speech, no sound, a surreal stillness to match our surroundings. Your fingers migrate north - clavicle, a long, tracing line up the neck, the hard line of my jaw, and I ease into you with a sensuous, feline grace, closing unconscious eyes to your searching yet sad face. It might not be real but dear Gods it is enough, cradled in illusion, embraced by the mind's deception, and as I feel lips pressed against mine, kissed by a phantom of desire.

A kiss is an oasis in a desert of loneliness and solitude but this is only a mirage - I am guzzling gallons of sweet, cold water even if I don' t realize I'm really choking on burning sand. You are a figment of my imagination but it is your lips I eagerly claim, your body alive and thrumming beneath my explorer hands. We are lost in each other, or at least I'm lost in you, but you finally pull away, leaving me breathless and a little disappointed.

"I'm sorry," you say, breaking the silence, and the warm light above us fades. It was sunset, after all. Darkness waiting to claim us instead of day. I cannot bear the sadness in your eyes and so perhaps that is why I press my hand against your face and draw close to you again.

"Don't be sorry," I say with newfound strength. "Because if you're sorry than I have to be sorry for this." You startle beneath the urgent touch of my lips but you still remain. And you remain, and we drown and burn in this endless embrace, before the harsh blare of the alarm cuts through the air, and you disappear, so many sand grains, in my grasp.

A reaching hand swats the offending alarm, and I lie awake, pale sunrise glinting into my window, lips burning, the feel of hot sand gritty on my tongue.