Orbits – Inspiration Monday

“You can hear the stars speaking to each other,” she whispers.
“Huh?” I ask.
We lie on a bed of pebbles beside a gossipy river.
As she turns her head in the moon’s half light, tresses of wild hair fall across her cheeks and spill over her nose and mouth; a carefree blanket, an unmade bed.
“Shhhhhhhhhhh…” she indents her soft lips with a finger.
Though I cannot see the colour in her eyes anymore because of the dark, they exude a compelling force as fresh and invigorating as the air I inhale. The laws of the universe are temporarily suspended. She is gravity and my spirit falls sideways toward her, moving beyond my flesh and bone like a hungry ghost. I want to eat her. I want to become her. I want her to become me.
She turns to look at the heavens again and the spell is lost. I keep looking at her naked body, just out of my reach. My imagination colours what is not visible to me. I have become aroused. For a moment I am embarrassed and want to turn onto my stomach, to hide. But I abandon my shame, and embrace the exhilaration of taboo rushing through the blood in my veins.
“What do the stars say to each other?” I ask quietly.
“That they can never be lovers,” she replies.
“Why not?”
“Because if they got too close to each other, the attraction between them would be so great they would collide furiously – so furiously they would be destroyed.”
“Are they afraid of death?”
“No, they are not. But they fear the effect of their destruction on the planets and stars around them. They could take an entire galaxy with them.”
Her chest stutters. There is a teardrop’s drying trail on her face that glints in the moonlight. A cool breeze from the river caresses my skin and I turn to lie on my stomach.

–Bekindwrewrite’s Inspiration Monday – please take look–