Ophiliac.
Flowers started falling out of your hair.
Everywhere we went, we’d claim the land as our own, trailing green on the seams, on the spaces between, being seen by keen fiends who demeaned you as you bloomed into gangrene.
Nylon vines trailed into the rural outside, serene.
Leaves oozed out, wrapping your skin. Day by day, we grew thin. Vomiting roses and thorns and pistil and stem, together garden growing upon rose upon rows upon femme.
Hair tangled in Sampaguita, trailing Santan, questions of if we were sisters and why we were holding hands.
Leaves started to cover you so fully you didn’t need clothes. Your skin got so green, you took root and began to molt. Green to brown to pink, skin under skin under skin. Hair braided into vines and bark wrapping around, hardening.
Dirt started to cover you so much that you couldn’t walk.
You didn’t need to eat.
You didn’t even talk.
You took to the ground, hugging, huddled with your arms. Feet planted to the ground by grass and yarn. Completely vegetative, the only thing beating being the steady rise and fall of the leaves as they kept breathing. Day by day I kept watering you, hoping you would last. Lying next to you, rereading our favorite stories as, slowly, bugs burrowed out of you and collected food and came back.
They sustained you with fat, the only thing that we lacked.
Within days, you blended into the scenery.
Within days, we barked up the wrong tree.
Within days, as I discovered, you covered yourself in skin. Sealed up nicely for a good night’s sleep within.
Leaves started to fall, branches started to break, in our garden’s bark wall, I saw a face. It reminded me of you, eyes closed and in peace. But it was prettier than either of us could ever hope to be.
I continued to water you, buried books by your side. Blank when the sun arrived, you must’ve drank their words up at night. Water, books, sleep, a cycle, sharpened to a pike.
Then finally, as I was reading just the other day, you burst through, the tree split, and you finally looked okay.
Your skin was green. An hour stretched over a minute. You opened your eyes, tears were bleeding through mine.
We talked using words that made time stand still. Hearing your voice again made me think that until, then, we had so much catching up to do. So much to return to. So much to do, too, as I prepared to bring you back home and clothed you.
I got to see your family again. We saw our friends and then, the same perfect day repeated itself for weeks, or months on end.
Perfect didn’t mean happy, perfect didn’t mean great. Perfect meant a perfect blend of emotions, motioning on a gait. Gay rhythms and iambs, poetry in motion. Motions unbroken, “I love you”s and halations.
Days in, something fell, cushioned by air.
Flowers started falling out of my fingertips right then and there.
I felt vines and roots and stems and leaves start to encase me whole.
Nectar drooled through my lips, pollen wrapping me from the cold.
Time went in reverse as our roles had changed, years given to me in advance with each passing day.
With each sun and moon, another joint begun to lock.
I couldn’t even eat.
I couldn’t even walk.
In days’ time, in the sunlight, your skin had a sheen that was more green than any of the plants could ever hope to be. Bark tried to encase me, but the trees here were dead. Each tiny creep they made cracked as I splintered and bled.
I bled out in white, loose strands of cotton. Threads tangled my hair as skin fell, decayed and rotten. I spoke through my eyes, words made all the more clear,
by the stillness that occurred when our thoughts were mirrored.
I took to the ground, huddled by your arms. Feet planted to the ground in glassy yarn. Completely vegetative, the only thing keeping me alive being the anxiety over the thought of you leaving. Day by day, you fed me, hoping I’d last. Lying next to you, retelling our favorite stories as, slowly, cotton shone like silk, coiling me front to back.
They sustained me with fat, the only thing that we lacked.
Within days, I was buried into the scenery.
Within days, we sapped up the trees.
Within days, as I discovered, I had covered myself in thread. A cocoon of cold comfort, pinpricks of wet.
I couldn’t move, I didn’t want to move. Thoughts of sleep soothed me as I felt the threads start to protrude
Deep into my skin, into my limbs, into my dim, fuzzy thoughts that drifted between being awake and being not.
I could feel you by me still, lying there until, your voice would signal your leave and you’d go. Into the darker sphere of charcoal snow.
You came by every night, buried books by my side. I felt the words creep into me as words marked my skin outright.
Sewn into the ground, my skin melted into earth.
I could feel my body pulled on and expand into the dirt.
Slowly feeling my feelings slowly become inert.
Until I woke up out of the ground in the same shape, with new brown skin. I woke up at night, you were sleeping inside. You greeted me with a smile warmer than the world outside.
Years after, years since, the cycle repeats. Blooming in the dirt to wake to a newer self to greet.
For others it might not be like this, might not happen at all. Maybe it’s strange to have recorded these recalls. Until for someone else, flowers would fall out of their hair. And they would have to feel being weathered, to bloom into identities only theirs.
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