Your cool breath skimming the underside of my thighs is the closest I’ll come to making love. This does not sadden me. I have tasted the richness of your salt and have arched my back. I have felt your grit in my teeth and have wrestled it free with my tongue. You have entered my every crevice, yet I’ve only lain with the smallest fragment of you. You, endless you. I offer myself now, a sacrifice of drained blood and pale willingness. Let me honor you by becoming the naked foam that unfurls over the part of you that is firm. Firm, though still relenting to prints of blushing shells and spread toes and seaweed. If weeds are what your green hairs are called, then weeds cannot be anything other than supple divinities. I would happily swathe my limbs in those slick tendrils, if only my bones could hold the weight. They are air now.
Do you remember the first time I lay with you? A bloom of sixteen with shorter hair and brighter eyes. I did not think then that you would come to mean so much, but I knew I would return, over and over, a human tide to lap your shores. (Don’t laugh, I know it sounds silly. Or do, so I hear the rush of sudden amusement, the same as ecstasy.)
I am aware that you have a multitude of other lovers leaving their mark on your soft spots. This does not sadden me either, nor does it invite jealousy to caw in my breast. It is selfless of you to pleasure the world in the same way you pleasure me. It only makes me love you more. And I am consumed.
Eternally Yours,
The Ghost of a Girl You Once Knew
Ashley Brie Myers is a Boston-based writer most interested in the luminous and muddy emotions faced by humans (and magical creatures). She received a BA in Fiction Writing from Connecticut College. You can find her debut short story in the winter 2023 issue of BreakBread Magazine.