Bloom (If I Don't Know Who I Am, How Do I Know I'm Not a God?)

by Sarah

  “I’m blooming,” I whisper to the chick, dipping back with a giggle as fluffy wings ruffle up. She stirs a little, but tiny eyes remain closed, so I lean in once more and tell the truth that’s been coaxing me open since darkness first locked himself to me in the mirror.

  “I’m blooming for him and it feels so, so good.”

  The flourish of grey feathers becoming baby-bright pink happens so fast I tumble back again, and the freshly blushed flamingo takes off to join the others in the water.

  I’m still giggling when the wind tickles the slick path of a tear down my cheek. I didn’t feel it fall, but I feel it now.

  I feel just like it.

  Little, glistening, and helpless.

  Looking over, I spot mine no matter how much it scares me standing closer than before, wide-eyed and furrow-browed. His sharp jaw is slack. His parted lips look impossibly soft, and I wonder if he saw the small drop slip down my cheek. If he heard what I said. If he knows that no matter where I go or what I do, I’m his too.

  Goosebumps sneak up the back of my neck, and I flit to the next napping nestling.

  I tell this one I can’t stop thinking about brand new’s mouth, and the next one how my arms and legs want to open so much, it’s making my knees and elbows ache. I tell the one after that tear-tracks aren’t the half of it, and the one after that my cheeks aren’t the only place I’m little and glistening and helpless feeling.

  I tell them that I’m tender everywhere for him.

  That I’m scared because we're not the same, and I know what he’s capable of, but it’s torment to not be touching.

  That I don’t know what to do with such unfair fate, but it’s too late.

  That I’m blooming from so deep now, every beat of my pulse throbs with it.

  Like my heart is opening for him too.

  Bass notes of light laughter turn my head, and I find tall, dark, and totally breathtaking drawing near.

  “Okay.” He smiles so earnestly it crinkles the broken, ink-black heart tattooed at the corner of his eye. “You’re definitely doing that.”

  My already ardent pulse quickens at his voice. Low-toned and tethering, it makes my wings beat so fast I can’t stay down. I reach for him as I float up from the sand, and the predator that makes me flutter takes my hands in his like he was waiting to.

  Survival instincts quaver as I lilt into arms I can’t fly from unless he lets me. Arms he doesn’t ever have to loosen if he doesn’t want to. Arms my heart will stop inside of, if I let his instincts kick in.

  Arms that feel more like home than anywhere I’ve ever been.

  “Want to try?” I ask, lifting bashful lashes and latching onto matte black eyes. They make me want to bow as he lifts one of his brows, but I smile instead, and he wraps his fingers around mine. “Chromafae color pretty much everything. I'm supposed to come here every week and turn the flamingos pink, but as you can see ...”

  Searching my eyes, he finds my heartbeat in my wrist and draws a slow circle around it with his thumb.

  “I’m not like you,” he admits quietly.

  Between my wings, my pulse pangs with knowing, and the lost boy I’m beholden to flattens my hand over his chest like, Remember?

  Feel.

  How soundless.

  How static.

  But even as panic laps at my heart, it beats harder for his touch. I’m swimming in his black velvet stare and I’m higher than the stars on his cream-delicate, powder-pure scent.

  My intuition can quail all it wants.

  I want him more.

  With a skyful of butterflies in my rib cage and one of my hands in his, I lift my other from his chest and dip the tip of my index finger into my mouth. He watches me closely, opaque eyes growing forebodingly darker when I purse my lips and shyly suck. Flicker-quick and root-deep, my pulse purrs as he gathers me closer, and I hope against head-over-heels hope that this works.

  Withdrawing my fingertip, I slide it slowly along his bottom lip, then the top as he parts for me. They’re even softer than they look, but this close to little white razors, I shake like the last leaf on a copper beech at the very end of fall.

  Never taking his eyes from mine, innocent and ominous cradles my other hand between us as I trace his lower lip once more. Lingering under cupid’s most dangerous bow, I tremble from my chin to sand-locked toes, until the arm I’m anchored in lifts me up.

  Gentle and intimate, we press together like lovers as my dress slides down against his tee shirt. My feet leave the beach, and I let my finger slip curiously past lips that were made to be touched. I’m cautious of fatal fangs, but his breath is so much warmer than I expected. It’s instantly dizzying, how warm his mouth is, and somewhere between desire and alarm, I feel the tip of his tongue, flirting with my fingertip. A giggle bubbles from my throat as I touch it. My eyes all but close, and my wings beat wildly.

  I’d be soaring if he wasn’t holding me.

  Not to get away.

  There’s so much sweetness and heat and slick softness. I can't help it. The overwhelm almost tickles. Everywhere.

  When I start to draw back, he comes forward. Seeking more, he grins as my giggles deepen into hums, and I brace both hands on his shoulders, steadying us both.

  “Try now,” I urge under an exhale, tipping my hips carefully away. They started rocking without permission somewhere in our closeness, and forcing them not to now takes conscious effort.

  I swallow as I nod toward a sleepy chick. “Tell it a secret. Something you’re too shy to tell anyone.”

  Still holding me up, mine whether he knows it or not is still grinning as he glances at the nest. He licks his lips, and I press my own together, wondering what would happen if I kissed him right now. If he’d chase my mouth the way he chased my touch. If his body would follow mine if he could feel how hard I’m fighting rocking against him.

  “Come on, brand new.” I nudge my nose to his cheek, and my own burn as I whisper, “Make it blush.”

  Cadent need hardly ebbs as he steps aside and heads toward the nearest nest. Flutters I can’t help keep me hovering a few inches above sand as he crouches down, and I hold my breath as he cups graffiti-veiled, black-tipped hands carefully over the small bird.

  I’m the wide-eyed one now, tingle-spined and beaming around a gasp as death’s newest dealer leans in, and the colorless little flaminglet ruffles instantly into vibrant pink flight.

  Pink like his crown.

  Pink like I was born for.

  Pink like perfect with its edges dipped in onyx, the freshly fledged flamingo joins the growing flamboyance, and I turn toward its sire with his shoulders back and head high. Curiosity plays in his amazed laugh, and I wonder what he told the bird as he pushes his windswept hair back. Holding it out of eyes that give me goosebumps and heartache, he reveals the black script etched along his hairline without meaning to, and I can finally read it-

  die young

  save yourself

  Chills creep under my skin, nipping muscle and bone with cold dread before melting where I’m warmest. Where yearning edges on soreness. Where I’m unconditionally and eternally promised.

  To him.

  As frightened as I am, I can feel my fear, making me even more lush.

  More enamored.

  More his.

  More unease follows, swallowed by more heat as I join the source of both in the rookery. We whisper near and far from each other, making colorless birds blush with our secrets, and for every flamingo that flourishes away, two little white flowers bloom.

  Around his hi-top sneakers.

  Around my forever bare feet.

  All around us until there’s a bed of sacramental orchids where the chicks used to be, and mine for better or worse picks one as he rises. It turns the softest shade of baby pink in his ink-wrapped hands while eclipsed peach moons set at his back, painting him immaculate. Bringing the small blossom to his nose, he breathes gently in from its just opened heart before lifting his eyes, and I k
now as sure as the waves never stop kissing the sand -

  I’ll never look away again.

  Standing ankle-deep in the ceremonial caress of tiny white flowers, my black-clad beloved gives the one he picked a playful twirl, and the most sacred of them all - the ancient miracle buried between my hips, the one that makes me his - blooms so fully it nudges my legs apart from within.

  I step helplessly forward, and my lips part too, to be open for him, to stay open as long as he wants. My skin radiates heat as constellations of nerves I never thought I’d feel flicker wide awake all over me, and my whole frame shakes as my wings flutter harder than ever. They match the pace of my heedless, captivated heart, and my eyes fill with tears from the overwhelm of it all.

  When he holds the little orchid out to me in playful offering, my mate with or without a soul doesn’t know what he’s doing.

  What’s happening.

  But I do.

  And I can’t go anywhere but straight to him.

  NINE

  Hovering barefoot just above the bed of petals and still shorter than me, all I want rests her hands on my chest, gazing up as a tear shimmers down her cheek.

  Not because she’s sad.

  Not even close.

  I don’t know where we are. On what planet or in whose dream. I don’t know if we’re alive or in-between somewhere, or even real, but I feel how Fawn is looking at me in every part of myself. It’s the same way she looked at me in the mirror, the first time we saw each other, but the love her galaxy-bright eyes are steeped in has swelled so deep, she can’t help the overflow.

  She’s bathed in love.

  High on it.

  Blushing with it from temples to pretty pink tits, needy and peeking through the translucent lace that’s hardly hidden anything from me all night.

  Tucking the flower I just picked behind one of her pointed little ears, I lower what’s most familiar to me now back to the beach by her waist. She giggles as she touches down, and stands on tip-toes, doe-wide eyes tugging mine to her like an anchor. I slide the teardrop from her chin while another slips down her other cheek like a tiny diamond, melting fast and catching on the corner of her smile before I take it under my thumb too.

  “Do you promise yourself to me?” She asks, soft breath and softer mischief, playing like she doesn’t know by now I’ll play back. Like she couldn’t hear everything I told the flamingos. Like she can’t feel it all, right now.

  How I can’t stop thinking about touching her lips like she touched mine.

  How much I love that she can’t quite close her mouth or her arms or any part of herself to me.

  How hard she has me.

  How good it feels.

  How persistent and permanent -

  “Yeah,” comes out of me so naturally, so easily, I can’t help but smirk. Her already fervent flutters quicken at my answer, and my hands prey up her sides until I’m pressing one over her chest and one between her wings, cradling the shooting star of her pulse in my palms.

  Dropping my voice to a whisper and my forehead to hers, I fill sparkling-dark eyes with what they keep seeking.

  My own.

  “Do you promise yourself to me?”

  Nodding before I even finished asking, meek and magical grips fistfuls of my tee-shirt and my knees go weak. Wavy copper falls around her cheeks as she keeps nodding. Gripping tighter. Biting a bottom lip I’m aching to feel between my teeth as I bring my hands to her face. Her shoulders. Her arms and wrists - everywhere because she loves when I touch her anywhere, and there’s nowhere I can’t feel her.

  “Yes,” she chimes, smiling high as the single syllable courses through me like power, like purpose, like soul while she releases my shirt and pats my hands.

  It’s torment to loosen my grip, but she holds my eyes as she dips down.

  Down.

  My sense of time and place wavers as nacre-pink and promised to me goes slow, giving me a rush as she sets a hand on my belt. She picks a flower near my heel with her other, while her fingertips skim my buckle, stoking impulses already so prone to her.

  Everything from my head to the ground rolls like the ocean as she stands back up.

  Fresh tear tracks glisten on her cheeks, but even as I usher them under my thumbs, two more slip down, and her slick little universes swirl with adoration.

  “I am my beloved’s,” she play-vows, tucking the flower she picked behind my right ear as a wave of heat washes over me. Bare and lissome legs climb my own as she grips my shoulders and pulls herself up my frame, bringing us face to face while feather-light fingers feel their way behind my other ear. Gathering and twisting a lock of my hair, she keeps night skies for eyes entirely open as she continues -

  “And my beloved is mine.”

  Another surge of heat engulfs me, thicker this time, knocking my center of gravity and swaying my balance. A chill runs up my neck, but I’m hot all over, lightheaded and treading a tide I can’t pin down, leaning in, urging her to hold on-

  “Hold onto me.”

  I don’t know what’s happening, but burning up and baby soft clutches the collar of my shirt, pulling us closer. Wrapping shaking legs high and tight around my sides, she crosses her ankles at the base of my spine, digging in with bare little heels, and all I know is whatever’s happening, Fawn is baby beyond all of it.

  I reach behind her left ear out of strange instinct, and a wave of heat floods her too. She rises in my arms as her hips start to rock again, and a vivid blush pervades her already gleaming pink skin. My smile can’t be tamed as I duck closer, softly swearing her words back to her.

  “I am my beloved’s -”

  Licking my lips, I taste how lush just breathing has become - how intoxicating - as I part a lock of auburn from over her shoulder.

  I don’t know how to braid, but my fingers do, and I bind her fast, all the way to the end.

  Just like she did to me.

  “And my beloved is mine.”

  Saying the words makes my knees weak, and Fawn sighs the smallest sound as her bright eyes fill up and fall closed. More iridescent tears slide down, and I don’t think twice this time.

  I don’t think at all.

  I steal her cries with heedful lips, onto the tip of my tongue, and pray for more.

  Her breath catches on a gasp as she tips timidly forward, nudging her forehead against mine until I open my eyes. The cosmic halos she has for irises glint with the light of two moons while nebulas older than time unravel where her pupils should be. I know by her eyes alone, she’s infinitely older than me, but this close, she looks like a teenager. All tremble and cheek. Coy cadence and flirty heartbeats. This close, the current of her whole-body pulse makes my whole body throb, and our noses brush with every tilt of her hips. Parted pink lips keep barely a whisper from my own, and this close - the tender scent of her is overwhelming.

  Milk and flowers and fruit.

  I feel drunk suddenly.

  Not just on small, sweet breaths, but her skin, her warmth, everything.

  Pressing her as near as possible, I dip toward Fawn’s mouth and sip the barest hint of heaven from her bottom lip before nearby rustling startles us both.