Diamond Heart

Desire

I swim in torrid waters, deep and violent and overrun with desire. My head is on fire, on the inside. My skull and the water surrounding me make sure the fire is contained, left to burn all there is of me until I become no more than ash, blending into the sand on the ocean floor. I feel the cold seep into my skin as the fire rages on, slipping into my veins and invading my heart. I gasp, hoping that the water I inhale will douse the flame, but now I am only drowning. On fire, and drowning. Trying to swim, and sinking. Lower and lower into the icy depths, dragged down by unseen hands and a riptide stronger than any man. I swim in torrid waters. Deep. Violent. Overrun with desire.

Desire to breathe. Desire to think. Desire to escape, desire to live.

To breathe without these lungs coated in the ash of sorrow and tragedy.

To think without a brain muddied with swirling masses of clouds darker than night.

To escape this hollow prison, this cage of echoing screams and torturous cries.

To live in a world not made of hallowed ground that my cursed feet cannot walk on.

To stand on legs that do not shiver at the cold whisper of your name.

To have my heart pump something other radiation that mutates my body until I cannot recognize myself.

To exist in skin that is not covered with the fingerprints of a ghost. A man not dead physically, but in spirit. A man who runs the circus of my life even after he is long gone. The anniversary of his betrayals is coming up. Betrayal. Hunger. Revenge. Trust. Broken. The words float around me, large and demanding. They swirl around me until I am dizzy. I keep sinking. Frigid water continues to fill my lungs as the fire reaches the muscles in my legs. I stopped being able to move my arms a long time ago, but now my legs have ceased their attempts to kick to the surface. Looking helplessly up at the pinpricks of light dotting the water far above me, I feel my feet hit sand. A cloud of it erupts around me as more parts of me land on the bottom. My knees, my elbows, my chest, until I lay face down. I close my eyes, and accept my fate. The fire has burned out all but the last bits of my soul, but I know that too will soon go. That man, that awful, awful man...