Her vein-work pops from its supple brisket-flesh, betraying the tight gilt of a body’s need to exist alone. The emerge is bleatingly soft, far from overt, and knots glimpses along the length of her arm. Lace atop blood. Frayed ends sewn, unbeknownst, to a mordant fibre. Your desire is nascent, here, in the sweet grapevine scent of your joining. Her hand-print on his skin, prickled-pink, to remember this wound after each moonturn. Bark-bare indulge. A tear duct salted with rice seed. To root and enflame. Corruption from within, carving that in from a without. This is your cavity, look upon the whiteout eclipse: a dewdrop star embossed, somehow, before the mortal moon. How could you shirk her, now that you’ve seen her? And how could she retreat with a nail-brushed peel, open and out before its bloom is due. Raw and damp. Like a chewed wad of cheek spat into wet grass.
Before she could slip away fully, he palms the back of her hand until it returns to the bandage and the surrounding skin. Saddled by his gentle groom. ‘ You feel that? ’ His muscles ripple. There is no hard-set line on his face. Grim for the fleece-dust of her red touch. ‘ That means it hurts. ’ Raised brows. Quaint diablerie, almost boyish, in this coalesce of you and her. Inflection borders on rasp, now, as her blush extends to his arm. ‘ That’s also why the coyote hung from me for so long. Don’t tell me it knows blood better than you do. You sure you’re the right doctor for me? ’ A wrinklet of a smile. His calloused fingers catch on her knuckles. And then: his gaze catching, like rain droplets, along her bone. Rabbit-cheeked. ‘ Were you this quick to deflect before? Waiting for someone to see you ( … ) and too blushed to admit it. ’