The Maligned Kiss

Puzzlement. I became bewildered in my senses. Somewhere in the distance I heard voices carried on the wind between the pauses in my impulsive pleadings. Anguished now in deference to obey, wracked with indecision and against my better judgement abandonment, of hope to bring a merciful end to my misery. Voices softened, wind calmed, tears began to freeze in my eyes.

I told you it would happen like this, she spat fury in my direction. Games, always games. My mind playing tricks with her voice. I'd messed up this time. One more cry in deliberate anger, arms high, my head back pleading to the sky to mend her, bring a reversal of fortune against this cruel backdrop, the ring of despair, brought upon me so suddenly.

She found reason to menace from the dead place. A chatter in my brain then silence. More chatter. I have him now, I'll keep him occupied with me. You didn't keep your promise. You didn't bring me back. Empty words in my head. No fear of deep water, or heights for her, yet new in her experience of walking these tricky mountains in semi-darkness - the sudden black out, her fall, euphoric, empowered by her intensity to linger upon me as she turned to stone, cracked by the hard earth.

Firm ground on golden flesh, soft and pale she was, sensual, alive with screaming golden hair, a beacon to light her way . 'Blonde' will continue to scream in my brain though the dark nights ahead. Beauty from this hostile place will remind me, will trouble me. For in my disturbed mind came a momentary flash in puzzlement that she can no longer be threat to mother nature. Stupid in thought, that's what I am. Stupid in anxious thought.

Freethinking, free will, floating in dreamy semi-coma. Losing it mentally now, beyond my limits to endure for I too am very very cold. Dare I mention my frozen limbs biting with frost and near to danger? Doing this her way may bring therapy and the push past remembering and my last breath to forget. But I cannot go for my pains will mend.

She entertained me still in puzzlement in her swoon. For beauty as she, cannot die! She entertained mother earth, she was feted, adored, revered!

Alas, cast out, destroyed, for a rival in beauty cannot linger too long in the same place. This is fictional chatter in rhyme with the cold upon my mouth. I really am losing it!

Everyday matters no longer interfere with her smooth running; she has gone to a better place. In disbelief I looked again as I turned myself to stare upon her body that lay still, shocked in frozen snow. Golden was her hair now matted in dirt and white freeze, her crumpled discarded body torn and limbs unreal, the colour blue, once so proud to wrap around her shape added to her beauty. Curled upon her side she was in sleep, now away in time, for nothing from her life was here, yet wide were her eyes, wide open were her eyes!

Still, quite still she lay. Oh! but a memory of another day.

Deep stirrings inspired by her wet T-shirt a distant memory from far away. Resurrected in this moment so cruel, a beach from where she'd run, skipped, danced and sung, trickle warm sand to play upon my flesh in surprise tease. Cruel was the brain to release to me this image, to side with my guilt and mock my decision. She will haunt my dreams, her beauty will liberate and drive me to despair, and her curvatous form will weave once more gloriously in the middle of that matrix of sexual fantasy I cannot NOW want.

Night on the wing, wind howled, and snow spun, drifted all around. In one stroke the wider world ceased to be. Down to her and around her, I began to be suddenly alone, one grim reminder, to see her as she lay so still, another, that death comes to other places, not here, not now, not with her! Into my pitiful arms I must embrace, for I must bring her round with a whisper.

Everything will be right again, my love, your'll see! I don't blame you. I messed up that's all. But her life was in my hands, the same hands holding her broken form, cold, still. Cold as my hands became. Useless hands, unworkable with gloves removed to take her in close embrace. The same cold that took her from me now mocked my liberty, sapping strength, to move me permanently closer to her with blackened fingers.

A kiss for her as before, Oh how cruel! A maligned kiss, for death had kissed her too! I rested upon her lifeless lips my useless kiss, frozen, no taste to lips, lips now ice cube hard. She lay 'poorly' in my arms and ... quite dead.

Snow fell again, resolute in determination to cover her. No anchor for me now, for she WAS my anchor. With her, hope, without her silence. With her- joy, without her- pain. Darkness in the aftermath of the storm. I was hungry, thirsty, frost bitten, remorseful and angry, futile anger, welled within me. Beneath lies the unknown abyss into which I must surely fall to find her again. Stop the weather, can't you see she is no more! Help me so I might bring her from sleep. To my cheek comes her lifeless hand, upwards in animated suspension! Frozen hand upon frozen cheek and drawing near to me her head to bring a touch again from my lips to her dead mouth.

A reminder and reassurance, a resurrection of her transcendental beauty. One last kiss on lips iced up and solid.

In flirting with her departed body, my imagination had become imbued with a cruel purpose. To give, as you would wish to receive, to find a way of persuading!

To create my lover again from scratch! Surely enough time to halt my wretched brain from circling over her, to build her again before the vultures came, to devour her flesh in memory, which way I am lost to know. The pain kicks in once more! Reality of this sudden and dreadful place. She cannot be dead, she surely cannot be!

All feeling inside of me now I must regard with mistrust, for I wish to die with her in this hostile and cruel place.

I spy upon a reason to absolve me. A worsening show of my poor condition!

Reckless in my haste to move to the edge and view further from the top of this wretched place, where my love has been singled out as virulent in danger! Destructive, dangerous enough to be taken from me, for the quickness of the taking spies a truth hidden to deceive. NOW I recognise the danger of passionate intimacy and that kiss in full view of the mountain from her to me!

Let me topple. Exchange her for me. I'll slide down to the abyss. Take ME not her. Yet my beauty is no contest, I have nothing to offer. The merciful end as my sadness invades wretched thoughts in the confusion of my witless mind. What to do? Just what to do.

For I imagined the reason for my loss and ridicule in my tone for such trauma that took me as prisoner. A disbeliever shall deride and scorn my affliction known kindly as 'being out of my mind' Yet I lived to tell the tale for here lies my reasoning to tell.

Out of the mist and the shadow came shapes, a search partly with quickening pace. Nothing for me to do. Finality. Wheels will turn. My love, no longer mine. The world will pick up the strands and call upon me to explain what I do not know but for my incredible reason.

Foolhardy in love – jealousy in her beauty as a single rival to nature's most colourful work. What else was it ever considered as? A lethal chemistry outlawed with mistrust, an alien language rampaging though the corridors of Mother Nature, loosening the fixtures, shaking at the foundations where my lover's beauty overshadowed God's work?

Unleashed in stormy inferno to take her from my sight and restore harmony to this despicable place. In confusion, in homage to her I lay the blame firmly elsewhere. With me! My sense of logic abandoned, I was to become a creature without a brain to guide me.

Remorse, despair, sadness upon me and later too, that night in the same place, the same room, the same me, a different night without her. Yet she came to me that night, all was right for I understood why, and with purpose. Changed, yet not so changed from my own ridicule. As required and surely taken as this was not an end but new beginning for us both.

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Martin Hawks (2003)

Copyright Martin Hawks © 2003 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED