By Any Other Name

by Badgersprite

Author's Notes: Uh, I'd like to thank Crystal Chappell's lips for inspiring me to write this? oO I'm just playing. Okay, so somewhere along the line, I got carried away with the poetic devices and wandered into my ‘pretentious wanker' mode. I couldn't help it. It all started with this one line, this central idea, and then the extended metaphor just took off, like it was self-propagating or something. Seriously though, as a writer, I just needed to escape realism for a while and create some beauty. This word limit is about as minimalistic as I get, but I had to cap it off or else I'd just go nuts.

Her lips are like roses. Succulent crimson decadence. Glamorous and silken. Sinfully supple and soft. Intoxicating, yet treacherous. Betwixt burgundy bewitchments, they've ensnared you in this enchantment. Wars have been fought over less.

The thought flashes so suddenly across your wandering mind as you watch her speak, like a shadow of a lunar eclipse, that you almost miss it. When it registers, the shock snaps you from your daze, and you shake your head, no longer deaf to your employer's words. But you don't let your unusual daydream bother you. You're right, after all. And your gaze returns to those puckered petals; the roses laced with amaranth absinthe.

You witness the fragile flowers wilting with winter. Colours fade, weakening, paling. Every night, you pray for sunlight, nurturing her through frailty, longing to bask in her beauty once more. You hate to admit it to yourself, but this vision of her vulnerability makes you long for the days of her once unvanquishable vanity. In those moments, where her fingers quiver against your hand, and the roses struggle to stand tall in an unconvincing smile, you would die to bring back the woman who used to hurl vicious barbs at you with callous conceit and conviction.

But the world doesn't work that way. Tentatively, you tend to her, until she sees a second spring. Renewal. Regeneration. The resurrection of the rose. Her strength returns, and she blossoms, spreading to the rising sun; flourishing anew.

When she dashes across the divide, and her fingers curl around your cheeks as she crashes against you, her plump petals part, and you taste the secret she's kept hidden behind those tempting lips. The thorn; her tongue.

The rose ensnares you, and your world comes tumbling down, shaken from its foundations. It intertwines with your entity, if only for an instant. Beneath your feet, the floor falls into fragments, and you are lost amid the effervescence.

Roses cannot consume, though. Can they? That is what her lips do. They possess you. They become your obsession.

Not roses then, but vines. Her lips are like grapevines that have grown around you while you remained unaware of their ministry, caught off guard when suddenly you found yourself already wound, and entangled in the web. One drink, and you were drunk – addicted to their inebriating nectar. And you're drowning. You cannot escape. You can barely breathe.

The perpetual proximity of her precious lips is like a noose around your neck. You long to ask why, but you fear you already know the reason for your incessant asphyxiation. In dreams you cannot lie, and every night, you taste the fruit of the vines again. When you wake to emptiness, you choke on the smoke of the vanishing whisper. Never meant to be.

But, then, that pessimistic perspective proves false. Her lips part again, and, in impassioned desperation, “I'm in love with you!” escapes them. You feel the planet beneath you spinning, spiralling into disillusion.

As you wander aimlessly through the snow, just taking a walk in your big, white dress, the shackles and vines sever, and slip from your wrists. You realise the bonds that once bound you were never hers to begin with. It was an illusion. A paranoid delusion borne of doubt and dismay. She neither possesses nor imprisons you. She frees you.

Defining what your best friend's lips mean to you from then on is an obscure challenge to face as you endeavour to navigate the uncharted waters of a new life. A new life together . It's funny, though. It should be clear to you, because you still remember their mastery against your own, and how, when your mind went temporarily mute, they made you tremble and melt beneath her, as she swallowed you whole. No. Not funny. Sad.

All you know for sure is that they drive you crazy. Her lips dominate your dreams. Your every desire. You know you can have them, if you're patient. If you do this right. They're the promised land; the land of milk and honey. Sworn to you. And yet, at once, they're forbidden fruit. They could cost you Eden. Passion has cast you out of paradise before.

But you know there is no sin in taking them. You've left that behind you, haven't you? You've gone beyond that. Right? You've touched them. The moment would seem so long ago if you didn't return to relive it every night. The tantalising temptation torments you, too potent to resist. Before you know it, you're begging her to give you your sin again.

In your kiss, you find clarity. When you claim her lips, it's an indulgent feast. It reminds you of the first, exquisite bite of a scrumptious summer strawberry, sinking your teeth into the flawless flesh, which bursts with flavour, breaking your famishing fast. Sweet fluids flow from her, a flood of luscious liquid sweeping through you. Raging rapids surge across your tongue, silencing sensory perception, except for taste.

You lose yourself in her strawberry swirl; in her flawlessly fabulous fields. You feel like you've fallen into a fantasy, drifting off into candy-coated daydreams. Finally, you can absorb those lips you've ceaselessly longed for in secret.

No end to your yearning, however. One restless dream for another. A fair trade.

Olivia has another set of lips, does she not? And, now, you're achingly aware of how you crave them. Your nails rake through your sweat-soaked hair at night, eyes squinting, squeezing them tightly shut as you try, in vain, to shake these visions. Though you're admittedly less-than-virginal, your susceptibility to her sexuality astounds you. Somehow, you had managed to convince yourself this was an almost innocent affair, with painted, pastel pictures of proverbial flowers.

Hardly. The lingering scent of her strawberry kiss has awakened a hunger within you. No; a thirst. An insatiable thirst to drink deep from her chalice. A gluttonous desire. Your imagination illustrates lust.

So you stop calling her. At work, you start muttering, ‘I can't talk right now,' and, ‘This is a bad time,' when you see her. Generic excuses, because, if you don't excuse yourself, you're not sure what might happen. You're afraid. You can't control your thoughts, and what little grip you still have on your actions is slipping.

You want to go back to her strawberry patch; to thrust through the thicket, and into her thatch.

All because of those roses. They lured you in so long ago, and you lost yourself in the garden of her soul. You broke your oath of self-denial to indulge in passionfruit rapture. You should repent. But you can't, because it felt right. And now you feel rotten inside. This isn't like you. This isn't the behaviour of the woman everyone else wants you to be. The immaculate housewife who bakes cookies and scrubs dishes does not plough the soil of another woman.

But you do. Or you would. And no amount of Palmolive can remove the dirt from under your fingernails. Out, damn spot.

Out of nowhere, she shows up on your doorstep. Drenched in midnight. Bathed in porchlight. Lips parted, panting for breath. Mascara masking red eyes.

Cold air rushes in from outside. She stands before you, like a malnourished bud deprived of sunlight. An imperceptible shiver as her intense stare manifests raw emotion. She's come for a confrontation. Desperate to know why you've done this; to know why you're running away – why you've abandoned her.

The question never leaves her lips. You answer in action. Colliding with her; capturing her in a carnivorous kiss – carnal and uncompromising. Echoes of an unspoken speech are stifled by instinctive, meaningless sounds. Disquieted silence. Stumbling backwards, blindly. You press her against a wall, your fingers curled in the lapels of her coat, drawing her into you. Every contour of her bountiful body melds with yours, and into the horizon of the fourth dimension as you drag the thick fabric down her shoulders, stating your intent with a clarity words could never encapsulate, making her feel what you don't have the self-confidence to say.

Emotions engulf your mind as the past few months flash before your eyes. From a rude awakening that shook you from contented hibernation into a winter dark with unknowing and doubt, to a seed sown in a snowy springtime confession that saved you from a horrendous mistake, to a tumultuous, stormy summer of thunder and indecision. Everything has led you here. Now, as autumn leaves swirl in the breeze that gently rattles the rafters, the season is right to reap the ripened harvest. And you're ready.

Tonight, you are no slave to social prejudice. You seek togetherness. To sate this starvation. The emptiness inside that bears the name ‘separation'.

Motion. Sweat saturates the bed sheets. Gasping. Planting seeds of promises and pleas. Ecstasy. You quench your thirst when you soak in her essence, feasting upon her peach. A deluge of jubilant juices dripping from your lips. A cocktail of her desire.

That night, a forest grew.