by Monim Wains

Skin pulled tight with springs and coils tense and stiff. Cold attic on a dry winter day, lit only by moon-blue beams that cut a chill in your chest. Each breath ebbing out in gasps.

Anguish for a single sunlit ribbon to swim through it all, awashing you in warmth. To lay you back to float in a river of foam-fizzing waves of fur, caressing wool wrapped close. Arms to soak up misery, to cushion the pelting hail of the day.

A whispering box to hear every secret and keep it safe. To take it from you, lightening the weight on your heart. An ear into which you could pour your soul, that would exorcise the depths of sorrow and guilt from your cœur.

A shoulder-pillow to sleep upon, knowing that it will take the weight. Knowing that no matter what you said, or did, this warmth and comfort will be here to blanket you. In this moment that could last forever, you needn’t remember to stand. Just lean and let it lighten you, let you float with borrowed wings in the arms that hold you up.

This embrace, this closeness, this campfire of glowing warmth, sinking through your skin like candlelight that draws away the night in a soft yellow flicker. And you can breathe.