Breath

I see the evidence of you release into the stillness of the night. A soft billow of white escapes your lips and meets the ice of the ether. This product of you mingles with the darkness, dances mystically for a moment, and slowly dissolves.

I watch it repeat, as you sit staring up at the sky, your face illuminated by the camp fire that I watched you build with quiet fascination.

You are searching for something up there, in the heavens. The need for there to be something else pulses inside you. I see it unwillingly surrender to the open air through the trail your breath leaves through the black.

You have spent years modifying your protective layers. They are virtually impenetrable. Except for that one piece of repetitive evidence of what lies inside.

If I could I would become the atmosphere surrounding you. I would dilute my being and swirl around you. I would wait until that white had dissolved. I would look for that one chance for intake. I would cascade into you with the rush of oxygen you claim from the air. You would need me then. You would let me in.

I would filter through the depths of you. I would explore those caverns of pain. I would enrich your every fibre. I would collect the fragments of your diamond coated soul and piece them back together.

I would exit you and bring with me the open sores of your past. I would throw them to the flames. Then I would return to my body, and sit next to you by the fire. I would look your way and see the revelation of you.

You would never know that I had been in there. You would never know the steps I took to piece you back together – you would never allow me to do it willingly. But something in you feels different now. There is an indefinable shift in the waters coursing through you.

I don’t know if I’ll stay. I don’t know if you’ll stay. We have only tonight. We have only the silence of our broken selves between us, and the vague hope born of the ethereal night. It is dark. It is true. There are no falsities here in this space. It is real.

I feel it in my bones. I see it when you breathe. Our respective demons slink out and dance around the fire. There is no judgement here.

Every part of you looks beautiful in the shadows. You are so perfectly imperfect.

We are just two diamond-coated souls, sitting by a make-shift fire, observing what this cruel and exhilarating life has done to us.

This post was inspired by the daily word prompt ‘BREATH‘ at The Daily Post.

Image sourced from flickrhivemind.net