Tahereh Mafi

“Up,” he says, gasping for air. “Lift your arms up.”

I do.

He tugs up my shirt. Pulls it over my head. Tosses it to the floor.

“Lie back,” he says to me, still breathing hard, guiding me onto the table as his hands slide down my spine, under my backside. He unbuttons my jeans. Unzips them. Says, “Lift your hips for me, love,” and hooks his fingers around the waist of my pants and my underwear at the same time. Tugs them down.

I gasp.

I’m lying on his table in nothing but my bra.

Then that’s gone, too.

His hands are moving up my legs and the insides of my thighs and his lips are making their way down my chest, and he’s undoing what little is left of my composure and every bit of my sanity and I’m aching, everywhere, tasting colors and sounds I didn’t even know existed. My head is pressed back against the table and my hands are gripping his shoulders and he’s hot, everywhere, gentle and somehow so urgent, and I’m trying not to scream and he’s already moving down my body, he’s already chosen where to kiss me. How to kiss me.

And he’s not going to stop.

To the world, she is formidable.

To me?

She is the world.

Truth is a jealous, vicious mistress that never ever sleeps, is what I don’t tell him.

Happiness does not happen. Happiness must be uncovered, separated from the skin of pain. It must be claimed. Kept close.

Protected.

because when I said I wanted to touch the moon
you took my hand, held me close,
and taught me how to fly

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

I’ve been locked up for 264 days.

I’ve been locked up for 264 days.

I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation.

6,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being.

Dark blue eyes dark brown hair sharp jawline strong lean frame. Gorgeous Dangerous. Terrifying. Horrible.

Close my eyes to the sound of a soft pitter-patter rushing through the wind. Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.

I always wonder about raindrops.

I wonder about how they’re always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. It’s like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn’t seem to care where the contents fall, doesn’t seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors.

I am a raindrop.

My parents emptied their pockets of me and left me to evaporate on a concrete slab.