Lifers

by K.C. Blume

Death is a dreamless, smothering warmth. It’s the most protected I’ve felt in years, and it’s all the love I’ve been searching for.

“Sexy” isn’t “beautiful” or “pretty”. Calling someone sexy is like telling them that you want to possess them, that you want to own their body and essence at least for one night while calling someone beautiful is an admiration. It’s a love poem spoken aloud and to the muse.

She looks so pretty like this, like it’s her most natural state. On her knees, breathing life into something that might eventually kill me.

The love bombing, the pet names, the subtle touches, and the eagerness to take care. I eat that shit the fuck up every. single. time.

“I’ll eat you alive, Riley,” I warn her in a last-ditch effort to save her from heartbreak.

“I think you’re going to be my favorite meal.”

I think that’s the difference between loving boys and girls. The kinship that connects us allows our inhibitions to disperse into the air with the smoke. I could never laugh with a man like I did last night with Blair.

I can still feel her tongue against mine, stroking the inside of my mouth. Every night since then, she has called to me in body and spirit. Not by mouth, but by soul. Hers calls to mine in the dark, and if she is the siren in the night, then I am the willing sailor diving into the sea, happily drowning myself so that she might find companionship amongst the algae.

I want to rip her open and carve my name onto her ribs just to live close to her heart forever.

The days are still cold, though. The warm ones are more like bursts of sunshine peeking through dark clouds, shining on my cheeks for just long enough to remind me that light exists. That’s what Riley is — light, despite her circumstances.

There’s something ethereal about loving a woman, something that I’ve never experienced with anyone else.

Me to love. Me to protect. Me to obsess over. All I’ve done is simply exist, and that was enough to make her choose me as her next victim.

I don’t fucking need antidepressants. I just need this girl between my legs at all hours of the day.

If she wants to die, I could help her. I could die with her. I could dance with her in the afterlife for all of eternity if only it meant I didn’t have to feel her loss.

For once, I allow myself to feel it all. The beautiful, terrible sensation that love is. It explodes like a supernova inside of me, a prism of light erupting in my vision before all things fade to black. If she is death, I am happy to take her hand and walk into the afterlife.

“I think I love you, you know,” I tell her, and I mean it.

Blair grabs the handle and looks at me one last time over her shoulder. “I think I loved you, too.”

A lifer, sentenced to remain between these white walls even after death.