Cool Touch

Pain. Something I am well acquainted with. A thing known to me.. familiar. Time marked by levels. Mostly dull .. shoved back to the recesses of my conscious. At times awake and sharp .. clawing at my attention for immediate relief. I think I would be afraid to have no pain. Afraid that I would not know myself .. that it would be so strange that I must be certain something is terribly wrong.

Tonight the pain is real and fresh and sharp. My usual nearly feverish body temperature is turned up a notch or two. Restless heated trails through my brain like scarlet ribbons .. and I follow them as if they might lead me to some soothing moment where the air is not laden and thick. It seems forever since a deep clear breath filled my lungs .. but I am too tired to try to recapture it.

Tonight my arm seems an annoying beast chained to my body and I would wish it well away if I slipped any further into this than I am. But I am lucid enough to know it is simply the process .. the natural course of the wound itself and it will pass.

It always does.

Not so much for those we left behind. Their flesh left for the birds and beasts of the plains. To rot away to time until their garish grins are left to mock the Sky and welcome strangers to the Plains.

I wish I could remember .. the desert time. It is marked by a changes in me. One .. an ability to sleep easier beside another. To not care. I can not think it is because I am so trusting now .. so wrapped in warmth and good will that I no longer believe my internal warnings. No .. more like something much darker .. much more intense to shove me out on the other side of it all. Passed the fear where there is an apathy for it. Much like hunger .. starved to the point of finding food no longer tempting. It is an interesting concept to me .. but not so interesting that it kept me awake.

Her touch .. is cool to my skin. Even the core of her is many degrees below my own without the touch of fever in my veins. There was a certain pleasure that I can not deny .. in that touch. What is it now that lets me bear it and feel the pleasure of it? I am wary of such good things that come to my feet for I find no reason to believe that I have changed so much. Nothing to tie it to and say .. here ... this is why. You can believe because this is how it came to be.

There is more here in the shadows. One more can not be too many .. can it? One more seemingly innocent harmless guest. I can almost see its milk white fangs in the darkness.

But until it deems me worthy to show itself I shall allow the cool touch to sooth away the edges of my fervid dreams and accompany me as I pass through the land of in-between.