Ebony Dunes

The day you finally kissed me was the day I drowned in the desert.

I didn’t know that that was what you were.

Golden dunes with patterned edges.

A searing heat that somehow never faltered.

I didn’t know the thirst that you would create in me, nor how easily I could drown in soul aged sand.

In earth.

I didn’t even know that I was becoming consumed by you.

Until I was sun coloured dust being sifted into every edge and corner of your mind.

Until you became part of mine.

We were walking to my car under moonlit midnight.

It was summer.

My skin prickled with electricity as your arm brushed mine and my breath caught in my throat.

I didn’t want you to know.

How I felt about you.

Because I was scared.

We had been close for what felt like centuries. You knew me inside and out and I had never found the courage to tell you how I felt.

Because losing you was a torment I couldn’t comprehend.

But we had been drinking.

We had found the table farthest from the rest of our colleagues, and spent the evening revelling in each others company with such mirth, that the pangs in my chest were almost too much to bear every time you laughed.

“Did you have a nice night tonight?” You asked.

Your voice was deep - a smooth enunciation of words that shook my spiralling thoughts.

I turned my head and smiled at you, “I actually did.”

“You sound surprised.”

Your smile was lazy and a sarcastic arch of your eyebrow had my thoughts uncollectible again.

“A-Ah no, not surprised,” I stuttered but paused to think, “Well. Maybe I was surprised. I don’t usually enjoy myself much at our work events.”

You chuckled and it eased my nerves.

“Must have been the company.”

It was my turn to arch my brow and I nudged you with my shoulder, “Of course it was the company. I like spending time with you.”

I had noticed that even amongst my confusion, which was often, I was able to be open and honest with you.

Without the constant nags of anxiety telling me to pull myself back.

To hide.

I never wanted to hide with you.

I watched your mischievous expression fade under the dimming lights of the carpark.

It was a surreal moment as you stopped walking and turned to me.

It felt slow and I thought I was being pulled in every direction of the cosmos and suddenly slammed back into you as your eyes softened and you said, “I really enjoy spending time with you too.”

And that was it.

I was composed.

And then I wasn’t.

I was suspended before you with all my emotions flickering across my face as you sucked me in with your stare like I was water and you were the earth.

We were silent.

Just two people in the middle of a dimly lit carpark.

Caught in the whispers of the summer wind.

My mind was alight.

Because you did this sometimes.

You said things that struck my chest.

And it was indescribable.

The closest I had ever come to putting words to it was that you were constantly setting my skin on fire.

But not the excruciatingly painful kind.

But a fire that could never be extinguished, and even as it wained it still made itself known - a peculiar ache across my flesh from dusk until dawn. You were immense and powerful and searing and if I ever gave a single piece of myself to you, you’d absorb me until I was yours and you were mine.

We were so alike that it terrified me.

So I couldn’t find words to say back to you.

As you stared.

And I stared.

I did manage to smile. And you tilted your head with a cheeky grin, but relentless gaze, and finally nudged me back into the direction of my car.

We resumed chatting and you acted as though you hadn’t just watched me falter over what you’d said.

I really don’t know how we ended up there.

An hour later, sitting in my car, still talking.

The carpark was empty now.

It was just us, a cracked window, and soft music playing in the background.

And maybe it was me.

Maybe I was the one that asked you to stay.

Maybe you said we should listen to something.

But I couldn’t remember.

And I didn’t care to.

I was on a high from the very devilish smile you were giving me.

Maybe it was the alcohol, but I had told you how handsome you had looked tonight.

And you said, “Really?”

The low octave that trickled from your lips disarmed me.

I’d never heard one question laced with so much before.

I was devoured by the quirk of your lips, and felt your eyes run over me like melting chocolate.

“Of course you’re handsome. Have you seen you?”

I was so perplexed.

How could you not know?

You were the type of man that stole the air from a woman’s lungs.

Who stripped them bare with just a smile.

Who made them feel seen.

You made me feel seen.

The car was quiet then.

Apart from the soft lull of music, I could only focus on our breaths.

They were cacophonous and drowned out everything else.

And then you said it.

The rhythmic beat of my blood was suddenly gone.

I was frozen.

The air in my lungs refused to leave.

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

I blinked.

I blushed.

I smiled.

But I didn’t speak.

I couldn’t.

I lent my head against the seat. It was like you just stole all of the life from my body with that one sentence.

I had never felt so at a loss before.

Because there was so much I wanted to say to you.

And so much I was afraid to.

Because we were teetering.

You had taken me to the ledge and I couldn’t tell if you were asking me to jump with you.

But then your hand reached up and you cupped my cheek and you brushed your thumb across my skin - taking all the doubts from my mind like you were a painter using their brush to erase.

I was trapped in the ebony strands of your stare as it flicked from my eyes to my lips as your thumb lightly grazed my lower lip.

My chest tightened.

I drew in a quick breath as your hand trailed my jaw and then curled behind the nape of my neck to pull me toward you.

It felt like stardust.

The moment.

As you leaned in and I fell for eternity into the heat of your body.

Stardust.

I was stardust.

You were stardust.

We were nothing and everything.

Entangled in the expanse of the universe, I could feel the way we melded together like a burning night sky.

Then your lips touched mine.

The soft brush of your stubble sent tingles across my cheeks and I shuddered into your embrace.

It was bewildering.

To finally have a need sated.

To finally taste the taste I had been craving.

The starvation that my bones had only ever known - the thirst that crippled me.

Finally I had been whisked away in hues of setting suns.

In the warmth of the earth that settled in your eyes.

Finally my lips had been claimed by the one thing that could only ever know me in the quiet.

The only person to ever know me in the whispers of their gaze as night turned to day and day turned to night.

Engulfed in the desert’s parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind.