She decided she didn’t want to be a human being. Lying in bed, playing with words, she recounted the world’s sores to him, salting them with her imagination.  She laid on his heart the black sin of being human.  “I shall not be a human being anymore.”

 He listened.  He and she were two nights old with their bodies, but months with his desire. The first night, she had breathed heavily, did not speak, ask questions, say feelings or murmur thanks. The first night. 

 The second night, she rummaged through her philosophy books and decided not be human; as if being human were something willed, like wearing jeans one day and a dress the next. She searched in books like she searched in people, propelled by a thousand year old craving that constantly sucked on her blood. She read The Story of O while leaning against the bookstore wall. Desire woke in her. Her memory floated to flesh colliding, giving and receiving, and leaving the bounds of flesh to soar into another world.

 What was she after in all those books and past lovers? The pleasure? The flesh? The mysteries? The occult books reached it, the philosophy books described it, the psychology books unraveled it slowly and boringly. She grabbed, wanted, lusted for energy: the life force of the mind, the flesh and the universe. Excess until she could reach beyond the past, excess in all was the hunger that cracked her lips and dried her stomach.

 A child? A lover? A husband?

 Never a child! It would demand too much, hurt her with its football injuries, blind eyes, deformed heart, peer groups and recklessness which would never heal. And the doctor bills! No, never a child!

 A lover? That had been tried and tried and still left her insane hungry thirsty. A husband? Yes, yes, but something more was needed.

 She walked down the street. What was needed to fill her hunger and stop her from devouring everything and still be unsatisfied? The universe! That was it! She wanted the universe and nothing less, nothing more. She wanted to wake each morning to the universe and feel stars and galaxies caress her thighs, touch her insides and unravel their billion year histories into her heart with each thrust. And later, over breakfast, they would exchange stories about people and lands, planets and secrets, wars and lovers, children and parents: all belonging to both. Yes, that was her goal:  The universe as her lover and nothing less.
         _______________________ 

 She walked home, the party over, the lust still strong in her words, her good-bye and lingering mouth which didn’t kiss him. The young girl has said, “Why don’t you kiss her? Why don’t you kiss me?  There can’t be that much difference!” From their tequila high and her last day at work, they simultaneously said it was too dangerous.

 “Why? Why?”

 So he kissed the young girl.

 “You felt just like my father! Why not kiss her?”

 Because it wouldn’t feel that way. Months of desire, both being the same zodiac sign year for year, day for day, strong-willed and brazen though his bedmates were two and hers legion: They were too similar. Fireworks would rise in their bodies if they kissed. They both knew and voyeured in each other’s presence; him taking and not giving because his wife in heart was not there.

 She could have had another, but his flesh was tied to alcohol and could never penetrate hers. She left, lust in her good-byes, lust sleeping into her dreams to fill her with its power and wake her fresh in the morning, full of energy but still wanting the movement, the heavy breathing, the man to return and speak first.   

       _________________________

 She sat in his bedroom, another party nearly over. She felt shy after the elaborate plans of secrecy to hide her desire from him and the others. She came as a woman-virgin to his bed. She was full and old and new with him while confused and afraid. His distance hurt. She rested her head onto his chest so that he might know. Feel. Touch. He did not.

 She sat up quickly, spoke softly, saying other words while her voice talked on. In his silence, he offered his heart, carefully, as a young man does. She took it into her warm hands and hoped the season for moving would not miss this bloom. She left with his unspoken promise calming her. Walking home, filled with his promise, she thought she must be stupid to believe any more. After… After… 

 After all the others. The others who left before dawn, slinking into darkness. No, they could only be there at night, in blackness, and only for moments. Fear hurled them into animals and they raped and ravished her, leaving their scent dripping between her legs. She oozed their wasted gray dreams and could not wash off their stain which trapped her into a wild cage. 

 ‘No, it must be true this time,’ she thought. ‘It must be true, it must.’

 Dawn was rising, the air heavy with rain, with red death that shrouded her eyes and buried her heart. The mugginess caught at her flesh and heated her skin until the tiger within stirred in her loins: hungry. Fear work in her. Battles won long ago raged again. The wounds in her hide pussed out and dragged her vital blood onto the concrete.

 Rain splattered on the sidewalk, the grass, the leaves of trees, the windows, their lips as she returned to his room, “No, this cannot be, it cannot be.”

 His arms were a tenderness as if the universe were coaxing her to see the glories of the world. She wrapped herself in war and heard the bombs dropping on the children she would never see die because she owned none of their flesh. She fought with her fetal war guns as his kiss touched her mouth and the second became ancient war, plagues and poverty of the universe. He kissed her long as she felt herself waken and die. He did not cease his battles at her history. With every tear that slipped from her mind he touched her deeper and slower. He forgave her plots to destroy the children and rid the world of all human beings. He drove further and further into her lands with his hands and strong heart until she was trapped.

 She was a wounded tiger in a jungle. She threw her fangs into his neck. He yelled in anger. She hit his unguarded heart with her stories, no longer stories, but his own pain relived, magnified, torturing him now.

 He retaliated. He attacked and possessed her mind. He churned his death into her. He married her morbid thoughts to his and terrified her with his dungeons. She had thought her history worse than Dante’s. She had been proud to think her torment was the world’s but she grasped in awe as he gave her a million times worse than her heart had given him.

 She recovered and snickered, “I could live with yours.”

 He laughed at her defensive pride still working “I can live with yours, but let’s live with this….”

 The wave floated into her flesh and lifted her a thousand feet high above the storms, to the home of lightening where silence is death and a child’s hiding place. She passed into the heart of his heart where words could never go. Her awe grew to meet the heights of his golden vision. He enticed her into life. He took her into its secret lands pass all the worlds she knew and twined himself around her as they felt their hearts stopping the universe.

 He did not cease there, but passed her onto her own good who dwelled in her flesh. He touched the soft veil and gave to himself, as well as to her, a goddess as glorious and abundant as his god. This newly awakened woman surrounded her splendor with softness which seeped into their skin and blended them into each other more completely than any chemist could imagine.

 Tenderness more complete, turning wild, wild, churning the world into chaos.

 Tenderness more complete, turning wild, wild, churning their worlds into chaos.

 “Shiva,” he called to her as she tried to escape her destiny. The name sunk slowly into her fearful flesh and wild eyes, sunk slowly until her secrets were flung open. The fires exploded, the universe erupted, the chills spread, the convulsions quickened and the heat began to end its own beginning.

 “My love,” he whispered as he hands and kisses covered her face, seeking to erase her tears and touch her joy.

 She cursed him in her bliss. She cursed and loved him because he made it all true all over and all she could do was hope the universe would be there each morning.