The Sunday Scaries
Volume 1, Number 33
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

I Will Kiss You with the Kisses of My Mouth

I saw you upon a morning, John, and I served you with my own hands. You sat at a table in the corner, in a ray of sunlight, and I watched it shine on your black hair, and the next morning you were back, and the sun on your hair was back again, and I knew. I followed you when you left, though the others criticized me for it. I saw you walk under the trees and beside the fountain, and your long legs strode quick. I nearly ran after you, John. I saw you enter the building where you work, and in the lobby I searched for your name on the devices, but didn’t find it there. I know your last name also, but it isn’t as simple or as lovely as your first, which needs no extension or addition, no family name required when you and I are the only family we need.
          Your shirt is blue, your eyes are blue, your skin is white as lily. Your hair is black. Your lips when I kiss them will flush red. Your eyes will look upon me as I love.
          I sit in the evenings and envision you. In the morning if you appear, I adore you with my eyes. On the days when you are absent I despair, and I move within a broken temple, among fallen gray columns and across dark earth soaked with rain and treacherous with snakes. The morning, when it comes, is frightening and brittle, and I can hardly bear to look upon you then, so enriched are you with presence and the threat of loss.
          You speak only rarely. You sit unmoving like a stone. When you stand to go it is like the outflowing of the tide. I could kneel on the shore and wail all night for your return. I could swim in you, and drown. You will arrive here, and I will see you. When you go, I will follow you again, John, wherever you travel, I will follow you all our days.
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