Wounded

The toil was never ending. 

Cursed by the necessity of life, I watched him split the forest, each tree an enemy to his peace. Sweat drenched his forehead, pouring down his neck with his fears, dripping to his feet like tears. 

But when night fell, the wood he had split turned to fire, lighting the world between us, warding off the chill of darkness. In the mix of darkness and light, in the chill of night and the heat of fire, he was still enough to dream, to desire.

In that desire, I belonged to him. 

The fire behind his eyes threatened to consume me, burning sin in its purest form, drawing my fluttering heart to his flame. 

He stroked the rough flesh of his lips with long fingers, complimented by the calluses on his knuckles; wounds on his hands that he had gained by becoming a man.

And so I sunk into his side, taking his hand to lift it. I kissed the skin that had been ripped open, closing the wounds of his flesh with my lips.

It was my honor to heal him. It was my peace to soothe the coarse parts of his soul with my breath; to satisfy his aching masculine with my gentle feminine, to watch him swallow the past so I could fill him with the present.

The tightened veins in his throat, the breath in his chest slow, I felt his pulse in his wrist erratic. So I brought his hand to the skin of my cheek – skin stained from days of prayerful tears I shed asking God to give my Adam the strength I couldn’t provide.

In my lips and tears, in my skin and prayers, was the love of a woman’s heart untamed – a wild obsession for her man’s mended soul, to be his healer, to be his rooted strength when the world sought to rip him open. 

After sealing his wounds with my lips, he touched every inch of my skin with battered hands. In those few moments, I shared his toil, our skin connected by wounds and fire, by dreams and desire.

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