Aphelion Issue 301, Volume 28
December 2024 / January 2025
 
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Gilded By Forbidden Love

by Theresa C. Gaynord


The smell of blood chills air, a smudge on the horizon,
she’s but his first destination, pushing against resistance,
pulsating with tiny rivulets that flow as eyelids flutter,
like ghostly leaves fallen into sacrifice.

Faith tests the creator; fear tightens around her, the breath
of him among a voice so formal, “I love you now, I love
you immortal, ” interjects with wheezes and moans, the silence
of a motionless room.

To cast a spell, a fire, the crackle and hiss; you cannot steal
anything; you cannot give anything away. Her plasma stains
hair, touches cheek, it may all be a dream; the way he molds
her sadness, his fingers but a relief,

a vision attending to distress. She once rested her body
in the banks of a cold stream, played reckless games with love,
where careless whispers danced frantically through vapors
of heaving earth;

this Eve, responsible alone for her present condition. The laws
of nature are set up to fulfill desires, and she desired him though
the smell of pine, in a land where creatures graze and honey bees
converge deepening the moment.

He became her wealth, her sex, her luxury, and she drew it all in,
adamant in wrapping herself up in his cocoon against the warnings
of the gods and goddesses. But her morals plucked away at her soul,
flooding her with illness as evil laughed at her weak debacle.

The schism within her grew into a battlefield, tearing apart flesh
with an internal pain that had her begging for death, yet stitch by stitch
he prepared her for insight, appealing to her shifting nature; a
love that remained calm with contentment and confidence.

She nods, begs for his touch once again, gestures for his taste, his lips
swerving, zig zagging across her face, the tease that swallows sweeping
motions as shoulders rise up, bare breasts falling conspiratorially; he
the guardian of all her magnificence.

Tomorrow, he will deliberately forget her name, ignoring her calls, until
she turns her back to him as he did to her. These vulnerable moments
come to tear her apart, affecting the regulation of conflict and aggression.
Pieces of her will gradually fall away from his protective layer,

until he is silent and unresponsive, until she is silent and unresponsive…
the trailing strands, thin, fragile, shall finally snap to awaken his soul,
depositing fragments in the palms of his hands; she, the remainder
of what’s left of him, still, to die yet again, in his arms.


© 2021 Theresa C. Gaynord

Theresa likes to write about matters of self-inflection and personal experiences. She likes to write about matters of an out-of body, out-of-mind state, as well as subjects of an idyllic, pagan nature and the occult. Theresa writes horror, as well as concrete gritty and realistic dramas. Theresa is said to be witch and a poet. (within the horror writing community).

Find more by Theresa C. Gaynord in the Author Index.

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