She rolled onto her back on the unmade bed, flicked the ashes from her clove onto the mattress beside her. The air in the room was stale, devoid of the electrical charge that usually hinted that life was somewhere nearby.

She laughed softly to hearself, wondering if she could be considered alive. Did this emaciated body count as living? She was starving; starving for food, for love, for a touch that carried with it something other than the scent of conquest. She was tired, now. They had all come, and they had wooed her, and they had won her; they had defeated her, and they had left her. And she hated them.

She took another drag off of her cigarette. She remembered a time when her face had radiated light, where drawings and poems and songs all had one extraordinary recipient, one blissed, secret muse. And then the disease had come. It had begun to eat away his body, his soul, his love. It had taken more of his attention than she could, and she became fiercely jealous. When it finally claimed him for its own, she was numb with envy, bitter with betrayal.

And so she lay, a full revolution later, on her back in some dusty room with dead air, thinking on the time she’d opened her heart and reveling in her decision to seal it off forever.

A breeze fluttered through the open window, bringing goosebumps to her pale skin. She noted a strangeness to the wind, a lack of temperature, but a feeling of texture, of the finest furs and silks and wools, together in one seductive blanket.

Her head fell to her shoulder, and her eyes were drawn to the skies outside, curiously bright among the midnight stars, the irridescent moon.

As she stared, suddenly calmed, reassured, she was filled with presence.

“Who are you?” Softly, to the darkness behind her.

“Maybe you’ll let me be somebody,” came the reply.

She turned slowly, to see a young man, thin, tall, dark. His eyes were haunted, cautious, yet hopeful. In the creases of his forehead, she saw the memories of a decade, singed, bled, discarded.

She unfolded her arm, the cigarette falling to the floor beside the bed. His steps were short, and he lay down beside her, sheltered by the crook of her arm.

The shadows they had both grown accustomed to began to retreat, shriveling in on themselves in fearful awe.

copyright MMM