Every Last Kiss

What was it about relationships that made you feel so vulnerable? Oh, right. A relationship. In any relationship, you put yourself out there. You exposed all of your sensitive nerve endings and your heart and you just had to hope that you trusted the right person.

Time, it seemed, was not our enemy after all. It was just air and space and hours. Anything worth having was able to withstand it.

After a thousand years pass, it builds its own funeral pyre, lining it with cinnamon, myrrh and cassia. Climbing to a rest on the very top, it examines the world all throughout the night with the ability to see true good and evil. When the sun rises the next morning, with great sorrow for all that it sees, it sings a haunting song. As it sings, the heat of the sun ignites the expensive spices and the Phoenix dies in the flames. But the Phoenix is not remarkable for its feathers or flames. It is most revered for its ability to climb from its own funeral pyre, from the very ashes of its old charred body, as a brand new life ready to live again once more. Life after life, it goes through this cycle. It absorbs human sorrow, only to rise from death to do it all again. It never wearies, it never tires. It never questions its fate. Some say that the Phoenix is real, that it exists somewhere out there in the mountains of Arabia, elusive and mysterious. Others say that the Phoenix is only a wish made by desperate humans to believe in the continuance of life. But I know a secret. We are the Phoenix.

God I loved that man. Love flooded every cell in my body and I felt physically ill at the thought of never seeing him again.

And as we lingered in our intimate embrace, I knew that if I could freeze time right this second, I would.

He grinned lightly at me and I smiled back. Lord I loved this man. His smile was as bright as the sun.

His utter helplessness at the sight of my tears leaked through his confident voice. It was almost funny that such a great warrior as Hasani was reduced to panic at the sight of a stupid tear or two.

I nodded dejectedly. She was right. There wasn't a thing that we could do. But perhaps burn a few bunches of incense to Sekhmet. I would utter some frantic prayers to God too even though Christianity hadn't even been thought of yet. It wouldn't hurt to cover all of my bases.