We were going to be gods

We were going to be gods.

We thought as we laid under the scorching heat of summer, wheezing in exhaustion as we reveled in the blur of green and sunshine that was our vision. Our minds melted away as the soft breeze carried blankets of loose leaves and hapless butterflies over our bruised and broken bodies. The liquid-cool grass, drenched with the remnants of morning dew and sweat, cushioned our swelling arms and legs, burying itself into the naked crooks of our knees. And our dreams, feather-soft and lopsided, resounded through our skulls as the sunlight was slowly pinched from our eyes.

We were going to be gods.

We thought as the whirl of fluttering blades surrounded us in the dark of the lush forest, moss slippery-wet with blood. Our movements were quick and flexible and labored as we danced in the spaces between death, not quite gracefully, but still full of desperation and fear and adrenaline. The imposing trees loomed over us ominously as we sought shelter behind their knotted branches and waxen foliage, slick with the stain of human sacrifice. And a few darts shot past us like scissored insects, cutting close enough to the eye so that we could see our life dripping past us and into the curve of our mouths.

We were going to be gods.

We thought as we rested, sprawled against one another under the moonlight over coarse sheets and sullied bandages. Our dreams wandered through the twilight labyrinths of our obsessive aspirations, which flickered and sparked over the fuel of our beating hearts. The silken wishes of our youth washed over us in the form of spinning swords with handles made of woven leather, billowing cloaks that were dark and stained with carnage, glowering masks with jewelry eyes that shone like murder in the night, and congealing blood with our invisible footprints made in the pure white snow. And our hands would lace together here, in the lullaby of our hopes, palms pressing together against the sounds of muffled moans in the darkness.

We were going to be gods.

We thought as our lips pressed together hungrily all sticky-sweet and eager behind the thin rice-paper walls of the inn. Our fingers fumbled madly against hems and buttons and zippers and waistbands, dragging themselves through beltloops and sleeveholes until they grazed the milky-soft edges of collarbones and nipples and bellybuttons. Hips, heated and desperate, bucked and ground together, causing a chorus of rumbling groans over the blank canvas of the sky. And our words would ring like hymns through the blinding-hot pleasures of our sex, ricocheting off the soft walls of our hearts.

And we were going to be gods.

I had thought until that brisk autumn day beside the furious pounding of the waterfall and the buzz of your fisted desires flying over my skin. Your words had fallen like daggers over my mind, pounding mercilessly against the delicate drum of our trust, tearing, ripping, bursting. The swirling red of your eyes had caught me and plucked the hopes from my chest like wings off a butterfly. You had disarmed me then, with the vortex of your rasping ambitions and the void of my image in the blank of your mind.

And then I realized.

I wake up in the glaring white of the hospital under the vigilant watch of wilting daffodils, sterilized needles, and suffocating gauze.

That we weren’t gods.

We were just hopelessly tangled puppets.

Sa.

With our joints clanking noisily together with every turn.

Su.

And our hearts dangling hopelessly from our open chests.

Ke.