Shorn of reason, dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts.
I taste like metal. Shiny, hard-edged, cutting and devious. A knife. Destiny on the edge of my horizon, spelled considerably like an english muffin in a hospital room window.
Blood drips down from my nose. Uncalled for, unwanted, leaking like the sieve of memories of worlds forgotten in the sands of time.
A taste, a sigh, a snapshot memory of her smile catalyzes my face into convulsions of smiles and revilement, destined for pain and darkness.
I died that night.
I died every night for a week.
Her taste on my lips, hidden furiously in the folds of a blanket while she slept, oblivious. Watching, wondering if this would be the last time I saw her vulnerable and naked.
It was.
I wonder where she is now. Whether she flies in the sky or rots in the ground like the first worm, eaten by the early bird.
Drowning. Suffocating. Obliterating the memory, burying it until nothing remains but a faded picture of the beauty of her face, and the shadow of pain.
I wasn't afraid until then. I saw fear. And it was the fear of myself as the monster, the killer, the murderer, driving while I rode in the backseat and watched as the horror evolved in slow-motion. Watched as my hands reached up and touched her slim neck in a loving embrace, tighter and tighter as she danced and spun and kicked and was still.
Watched as she slumped to the ground, a small trickle of blood trailing from her nose and onto her lips, turning them bright red.
I kissed her. Tasted metal like a shiny new penny rolling on my tongue. Love and blood, betrayal and death all rolled into a single moment, a single taste, a single tear.
The second worm survives.