Her touch. Her fuck. Her sweet, plump lips that provide enough sugar to keep me smiling for days.
“All we have is each other,” I say.
And she knows it. I can see it in her eyes, a reflective coating of emotion. She is looking for something here.
Someone.
She was looking for me. But I believe she was looking for something else as well. Something from her past. Something she’s hiding from me.
“Let’s not talk about it, okay? The thing I fear isn’t that dangerous,” she says. “Just another loud-mouthed asshole.”
I shut my mouth and allow her some peace. There are many things I haven’t shared with her. My family was torn apart. My planet, ravaged and destroyed.
I saw too many hardships to count, lived through hell and back until I was trapped and taken by forces much stronger than myself.
I know how
it feels to realize you’re just another rat in a cage. So maybe I should shut the fuck up and let her have some time to herself.
“More than anything,” she says, “I just want to feel safe again. With you.”
Without a destination, I let her lead the way. We walk through great beams, miles of rusted pipes, metal culverts that spill white, mechanical fluids near stationary floodlights. They are pointed toward a path we instinctually follow. More oil cylinders than I can count, moving mechanically, pumping at a rhythm akin to a heartbeat.
It’s like it’s alive.
Our curiosity and fear leads us through the mechanical pathway that soon turns into a complex construction, intersecting over our heads, and blocking out the natural world entirely.
Still, there are cracks and pockmarks, denuded pipes, and sections broken from the building's elegant trusses where light spills inside.
We keep walking, and suddenly, at the end of the damp tunnel, the water catches our ankles. When it begins to overflow, I know we've reached an opening.
There is a sandy beach that leads toward an ocean. I know because I used to live near here. I used to swim in these waters. It’s where my mother and father took me as a youngling...
Seeing this place hits me harder than I expected. For what feels like a lifetime, I have been searching for a way out, a path back to my planet.
Well, here I am. Maybe it’s not the actual place, but it sure fucking feels like it.
It won’t bring my family back. Nothing will. The cycle of life is cruel and full of confusion, and somehow, we are meant to grow from these experiences.
It feels harder than impossible.
All I want is to hold her close to me. To feel her like I felt her last night.
But with tenderness. And deliberate care.
I want to enjoy her.
When we reach the shoreline, she lowers to her knees, allowing the water to roll around her smooth calves and dainty ankles.
“Will you rest here with me?” she asks.
“Of course,” I say.
I lower with her. The shadows of faded cities hint at the ghostly silence of this place, and just beyond that, the wind has died down. I sigh, encouraging her to lay against me with my lips and nose buried in her hair.
“They took my family,” I say.
Pausing to gaze into my eyes, she lowers her mouth and hesitates to give a response.