Kiss the Girl

Tonight, she wants nothing less than a kiss from him.

She wants dry lips on hers,

rough fingers on her skin.

She recognizes his black silhouette

breaking the indigo still of the night.

With a flick of her tail,

she sends moonlit droplets into flight.

He startles.

She watches, silent (she is nothing in the heavy dark);

wonders if he can hear the incessant pounding of her heart.

Will he follow it? She waits patiently.

He floats along the slick rocks on the shore.

He is nearly upon her now.

She sees his face, illuminated

by celestial lanterns hung up in the sky-

he is a radiant man: a towering beacon of light.

She is unmoving- a solitary boulder in the rocking waves-

until the wind whispers her desires into her ear

and she heaves herself up from the shallow waters where she lays.

She is a pile of wet and scaly coiled at his feet, holding out a shaking hand.

She gets from him this: a single glance

before he tries to run back to land.

She cries out- a hunting wolf’s howl in the night.

Wraps her arms around him devastatingly tight.

He thrashes,

folded messily between her limbs,

she drags him into sea, mind thinking about nothing but him.

And his soft mouth.

They’re pummeling down to sandy depths

passing fish and rotting sailors that regret.

The bright shine of the moon fades away,

washed out of the sea by rough black waves.

She peers at him, cheeks alight,

smiling to see his body pressed against hers tight.

She thinks he’s finally calmed.

The songs of her sisters pirouette past her through the water

and she dives into the blue shadows; she’d be dead if they caught her-

he’d be killed if they saw him.

She can’t have him die!

A chill runs along her spine.

They’re back in her room.

She presses a finger to his parting lips: don’t speak.

(He doesn’t.)

But he keeps moving, buoying in the murky gloom

so she ties him down.

Snakes of rope squeeze at his neck, his ankles, his wrists,

his head is tilted back, mouth opening for a kiss.

He is so beautiful like this- radiant, even in the dark.

Red blossoms along the ivory of his skin about his tethers.

She rakes her hands through his billowing raven hair,

feels his body careening gently against hers,

finally presses her lips on his, soft and fair.

Fire shoots through her veins;

her beaming face is ablaze.

His eyes are opening: white crescents peek out from under purple eyelids.

She strokes his face and peppers him with kisses.

He’s tired.

She fingers the hem of his shirt,

bathes herself in his beauty for a moment more,

then slips out of her room-

quietly shuts the door.

Tomorrow night, she wants more than a kiss.

In the darkness, a last bubble of trapped air escapes from his lips.