Plum Wine

Plum Wine

It slips from the tip of his tongue
to the soft flesh of my neck. Warm
plum wine marking otherwise flawless
skin. It spreads and takes an irregular form
but never settles as it should. It’s different.
I feel its need to move, to exist.

I cannot allow this, not just yet.
 My lust for the feelings it creates
have been freshly restored but as the wine
creeps so does my guilt. The memory
of how it was once received by another endures.
I shudder and think of only hiding the fervor.

Tendrils of my wheat-grass hair
cover the mark of indulgence from prying eyes.
As I leave, walking with a slow, steady gait
the wind teases it, lifting my hair
exposing the mark for just a moment.
All it really wanted: to be seen.

I feel that passion, it’s undying need.
“Expose me” it whispers, although I am unsure.
My hand moves to cover the imperfection
and it jumps, shifting away from being covered.
“If you do not, then I will,” it snarls,
the harsh sound resonating throughout me.

It moves steadily down my being
into the crevices between my ribcage.
Settling, the sweetness of the spirits
concaves into my bones, dyeing them
the same color as my neck. Ivory bones
jut out and transform slowly to amethyst.

They shimmer in the unseasonal sunlight.
As I walk by, others notice their beauty
or their pain. “Look how they pierce her skin.”
I run my hands over the splinters and feel
not pain, but the softness of change. Shifting
into something I had forgotten was there.

It permeates once more. My ribs, which poked
so precariously through my skin, recede back
into their natural position. Down it goes
over my pulsating diaphragm, through my stomach
and settles gently on my hips, like fingers running
across an abdomen in lover’s embrace.

There it stays, forcing inaudible sighs
through my opened mouth. The tickle
is almost unbearable, moving beneath my skin.
“Please,” I beg. Out of fear or desire,
I am not sure which. My eyes shut and I fall
slowly, into something no other could understand.

It stays, for just a moment more, before trickling down
my legs, over the humps of my knee-caps
into the tips of my toes, tinting them.
There, the revelry will reside until the day
I decide to let it go. A day that will not soon come.
Mocking, “Do not get your hopes up.”