24.

My hands, my fists, caught in yours.
You are my horizon, my sun rises in your eyes,
I am not afraid of the long night in your arms.
As a bird fighting the confines of its cage
my heart had bruised. You have set me free.
I fly to your lure; you hold my jesses
and hood my eyes. In this quiet darkness
I am yours.
How do I find myself kneeling at your feet,
My head in your lap, your hands tangled in my hair?

23.

I lose myself in the ocean of you; my sea, you engulf me. I float in your embrace, flotsam caught in the pull of your tides. Your breath roars in my ears and fills my head with wild sound; my mouth is flooded with brine, salt coats my tongue and burns my throat. You press against me and into me and around me. I crash against your shore, bones cracking, heart shuddering. My body opens like a wound to your kiss; I am torn apart in the swell. My skin carries the weight of your touch, water-slick under my clothes. I hear the seashell echo of you, it plays at the edges of my mind. Your waves break over me and I rise and fall, they slap against my face and my thighs and I laugh as the spray makes bright rainbows around me. I am tangled in the ropes of your hair, caught in the cruel net of your hands. I plunge into your depths, blind, diving further in the terrifying blackness. I have no sight, no sense; only you all around me as I fall into the dark, breathless.

22.

The sun bleeds across the sky and stains the clouds rose and gold and red as the dark closes in. His fingers trace fire along her skin, pale planes and shadowed hollows in the dusk. She shifts restlessly under his touch, sinuous as an eel. Her hair spreads in an inky stain and he pushes it from her face where it clings to her damp brow.

Goosebumps spring up where his hand passes, barely brushing her. She can feel the gentle roughened whorls of his fingertips as he strokes her cheek, her breast, her thighs. She turns to him with parted lips, hot breath, eyes closed and blind in the night.

Her favourite colour is the time before dawn when she looks out as the night pales from indigo to royal blue and his arm is heavy across her waist.

21.

She can't open her eyes because tears leak out and mix with the saliva that has been smeared across her face and she doesn't want to cry. This is unexpected and shameful and exhilarating. She had choked on the tumour in her throat and blinked at the sudden heat behind her eyelids. Now she is grinning and her breath is heavy and quick with adrenaline and her eyes are starry and wet. She opens her eyes as far wide as they will go, eyelashes spiky and clumped with mascara, and the dampness spills out, washing her cheeks in a salt bath. Tipping her head back, she collects tears in the bowl of her eye sockets. Her lids burn from the sting of saline. Her mouth tastes of the sea and she is drowning and swimming and floating on the tide.

20.

The hedgerows are blooming, vibrant and bursting with spring greenery. Along the verges pale primroses cluster in ragged rugs and the wood sorrel blinks white flowers from its trails of heart-shaped leaves. Bright anemones scatter the rounded banks, starred with chickweed. Red campion blushes the roadside and violets are strewn in secret gaudiness, hidden among the proliferation of grasses. In the woods, straight Douglas firs shelter tumbling rushes of bluebells, springing from the whispering mulch of the forest floor. Mushrooms grow softly among the roots and scatter, rotting, across the path. The sun cuts through the leaves, turning the dust motes to diamonds and flakes of gold.

19.

Don't go into the woods, she was told, her mother anxious and whispering as she brushed her hair and fastened her pretty dresses. Don't go into the woods, murmured low, there are beasts who will devour you, crunch on your bones and lap up your blood, there will be nothing of you left for the ravens to feast on. Don't go into the woods, she said, you will be lost on the tricksy paths, the roots will trip you and the vines will bind you.

The woods, the woods, the threatening woods, the dark ranks of trees with beckoning limbs. The leaves that flutter and hiss at the window when the storm whips the clouds at the moon. Mother's quick breathing in the next room, the creak of the bed and the groan of the branches shifting restless. The moan of the wind and the haunting hoot of the owl; her head is full of echoes of words and the wood and half-remembered tales.

She treads lightly, sure-footed in the ragged light. The woods break over her like a wave and she drowns in the sudden hush. There are no tracks here and she skirts round the great black trunks, tracing their grooves with her fingertips. In a clearing she stops. Her skin is on fire and each sense screams as she swims unshackled through this night.

There is something here in the silence, lurking in the shadows. It has waited for her forever, shouting the pain of its heartbeats, chest heaving with torn breath. It falls on her with heavy hands, howling at the smoothness of her skin, the silk of her hair. She sinks into the embrace, the rasp of teeth at her neck, the scorching eyes. You would eat me up, she says. Her eyes are as still as forest pools. I have come, I am here, I am yours.

18.

This girl, they say, drives men to despair.

He says, I can't come too close or you will burn me up; I would halo you with ashes. He wants to hold her but the heat of her body repels him and he dances at the edges, a moth attracted by the false moon.

When she speaks the flames spew from her lips and floor him; he shields his eyes against the blinding brightness of her regard. His face is hot and his heart beats fast, forcing his sluggish blood through starved capillaries, reddening his cheeks and beading his forehead with sweat.

He says, I am scared of you, sorceress, witch, with your burning skin and your heart of ice.

She is radiant, bathed in her own light.

She says, my heart would shatter against your bones. You would cage me and stamp out my flames; you would diminish me for the sake of your pride.

She walks away with the sun in her hair.