Keep Art Alive :: Vermillion” :: Art by Loui Jover

“You’re the only story that I never told.
You’re my dirty little secret,
wanna’ keep you so.”

The red light stays on longer than her temperature can bear,
heat rising up her thighs,
across her chest like a lightening crash,
trailing up the length of her until it lights her face on fire.
She is bathed in blush,
warm and glowing like ember.
She feels like she did as a child,
sitting too close to the fire pit,
cool ocean air behind her,
a juxtaposition of hot and breezy  cool.
Her shaking hands tried to reach further into the flames,
to toast the white puff of sugar just right,
until it would melt in her open mouth.
But now these shakes are for something else,
for someone else,
though sometimes he tastes just like sugar on her tongue,
sweet and sticky,
addictive,
delicious.
Some days she wants to pretend they are unreal,
he and she and what comes between,
a fantastical dream created from her writer’s mind.
She wants to keep them fiction,
the stuff of midnight fairy tales,
a little dirty,
a little desirous,
and a whole lot of make believe.
But she knows he is here,
flesh and blood,
cells and bone,
wide eyes and soft hair,
and a voice that sang to her long before they ever met.
Maybe for now though she needs him to be just her story,
her best kept secret,
her undisclosed truth.
Maybe for now you need that from me, too.
But tomorrow,
and the days that follow,
well who knows, she says.
Who can ever really know?

This is Love :: P.J. Harvey