Aureus Somnium

I saw it first as a reflection in your eyes. A quaint little fence, the white paint still fresh. We could smell it from where we were beside the empty street, and I don't think we'd ever smelled anything as good as that in our life. It was the smell of fresh beginnings, and as I watched sunlight sparkle on it in your sea-green eyes, I felt myself begin to relax. Tension that had accompanied me consistently since you first slipped the golden ring on my finger eased. Circulation that felt as though the band had been closing around it began to flow again, and my flesh tingled. Behind the fence was a new life, a two-story life made of brick with two windows like eyes and that mouth waiting to take us in.

Your lips curved into a smile and I saw your eyes gazing at my curiously, but I was unable to look away from your lips. They were parted just slightly, and though there was a distance between us I could feel your warm, sweet breath and I wanted to taste you again. Instead, I turned back, your fingers lightly prodding my back to encourage me to move onward.

The mouth got closer to me and then swallow me, though you were behind me so I went deeper. Here was air I had not breathed before so I inhaled deeply of it. It smelled new, too, as I crossed over floor that shone in the light of a swinging chandelier, to sit down on the couch that had beat us here. It's material felt soft against my skin and I stretched out, savoring the sensation of it. For a second, your fingers were tracing patterns on my skin, trailing fireworks and tingling sensations up and down my spine. For a second, I was pliable in your fingers, slipping over so you could lower your warmth beside me.

"It's ours," you whispered into me. I laughed in response, knotting my fingers in your hair to meet your embrace.

Behind you up against the wall I caught a glimpse of the boxes that had been piled here, balanced as precariously as a tower of cards. I feel like that now, like one wrong move and I will be collapsing again, collapsing into you. I cannot stop myself from sinking lower and lower, until I cannot distinguish your heartbeat from mine. We are one, fingers intertwined, lips dancing together.

You pull me in now, until I am sure I am in your veins, speeding as though this is the Autobahn. I see you, every fiber that makes you who you are, and I reach out to touch it, savoring unknown sensations. Breathing is hard, but I do not mind. I am Alice following the rabbit into the hole, leaving the world I knew behind for a new one.

And so we go on. Day after day, until the trees begin to bleed, and a crisp breeze sighs through a cracked door. You have kept here in a statuesque embrace, and we become one time after time until I cease to remember who I am. I am Alice, I know I am Alice. I whisper my name until my throat is numb, but time after time I lose myself again as you breathe me into the core of you.

In no time, Alice will be gone. Goodbye Alice. I felt myself slip out of that cracked door, into the golden ring in the endless blue sky, until Alice is nothing but a golden dream. This ring will cut off her circulation, until all that's left is you, sitting by yourself on the soft, floral couch, the ghost of me sitting beside you. So for one last second, I close my eyes and reach out to Alice, and I grab her for a second, kissing Alice with the same fondness you kiss me with.

I saw it first as a reflection in your eyes. Alice has left me, and Wonderland has slipped into my subconcious, where long-forgotten memories reside, never to be reborn but to always linger in some black crevice as an empty silhouette. Goodbye Alice, the dream is over...