Creature Speak

Just like that, the change. Crimson to cobalt.

When he snaps under pressure from duties pulling the band of his life, it stings. Leaves a dark mark.

When he disconnects from fleshy ones around him because it is time to plug into the device, he’s a slave, milked, for a patch of pasture.

And he gets blinded by white spots from over-exposure.  The lights of examination. My dragon pulled out of his cave.

I cannot reach my lover there in the static filling his ears to cancel out excess sounds.

We, breathing, are white noise, except for our inevitable stirrings.  Like scratching in your walls when rodents have made a home there: loud enough so you can never sleep.

Frustration mounts and he roars. Bites sometimes. Doesn’t like reminders of being wild: the chains would be unbearable.

I cannot compete with the whips: the words and demands of those in charge.

I cannot even pull out the tension with my mouth in pleasure centers, or my hands on the knot-lands all over his shoulders.

I cannot contend with or carry the boulders he is enchanted to push up the mountain after every crash. Walk, not fly. Pick up the pieces he didn’t break.

It burns me, his anger at life. My belly gets hot and locked and I can’t eat: creatures in unnatural habitat.

His stress is poison to my skin without scales. He fights and I sink. What a prize for our efforts.

And all the beauty and magic we made on the previous days, when I  kept running past thresholds to free him from the great turning-in, (on himself in the chair towards his desk – the machine), crunching his spine and stealing the precious fuel of hope for a better life, because it was never supposed to be this way;

Sweating out my love into the things I made for him, so he could stand for just a little while in his passions again, reviving reds;

And maybe it would be enough to ride for a few extra days this time: a scarlet flame to grow, a call to arms, a draft to touch the sky with;

All the connection that came from my service, gone as soon as Monday comes.  And all the warmth from our hearth and heart fire is absorbed by the sun.

They’ve won. We are a little more human again.

Copyright © 2018, Sheyorah Aossi

Image: Nebuchadnezzar by William Blake