I like to think of you as ancient.

I like to think of you as being ancient.

For that brief second during which I was encased in the rock and weather-worn stability of your body, the world disappeared and what became truth was the concept of time. For that moment I was ageless, and you were more and stronger than anything I have ever seen or heard of before.

No.

I like to think of you as being ancient. For me, you have no name, no age, no limitations. You are a monument, an idol, a celebration of the human body and its glories. You were constructed from flesh countless years ago, and the pace of your mechanisms will never slow to that halt we all fear. You will never die as long as you are running, your muscles and sinews pushing and pulling the way they were built to.

No.

I built you. I created the way you move and I forged you from the fire burning in my lungs.


No.

This is the only thing I want from you: your empty mind and your perfect body.

That is a lie! I want your heaving and crushing and words. I want to spill out of you like waves onto a beach or into a cave. I want your hands. I want your hands and your eyes, and I want them to push me and pull me. I want everything from you. I want the way you pulled me into you, I want the way you told me to stop and then start and then stop again. I want your hands. I want your hands and you eyes and your voice, and I want them not because they feel good, though they do, and you know they do, but because they belong with me. Did you know that I have been carrying you around in my ribcage for years? I made you a home there, and you have been crouched, stuck and waiting, in the shelter I built for you out of bone, blood and muscle. I have been feeding you, waiting for your arrival on the scene. I built you out of my own sinew and tendon and I kept you quiet, but since then I have grown a set of lungs. And they are begging to be put to use, and now I am using them to call out your name the way you never once called out mine. I am using those lungs to draw breath, and to scream, and I will never stop screaming at you. So emerge! Emerge from the dark of the depths of my body. Emerge from the beat of my heart and the drowning gushing of my capillaries. Come out of there, finally, and, for once!, carry me somewhere the way I have been carrying you all these years.