Total Eclipse

She stares afar off, as if in a trance.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he says, curls a lock of hair behind her ear.

She tries, but doesn’t know. Thinks, but her mind is empty. She likes it when everything is blank. When the anger and the hatred of the world can’t touch her. When all she has is the blue in the sky, the green in the grass, as she imagines them. And him, lightly pecking the bone of her shoulders with his soft butter lips.

“I love you,” he whispers. She’s waited thirty years to hear those words, since the last time she’s looked at the sun. Though she can’t see his eyes, she pictures them as they were at fifteen, pools of aquamarine, dripping with affection.

She turns her head and finds his mouth. Sends her tongue searching as the silence descends, as the air cools.

“Look up,” she breathes, kissing the lids of his bare eyes. “Look up and see me.”