System Down

This is an incredible moment of panic. Opening up the freezer and not finding the stash of emergency chocolate. The really expensive kind, too. Fair trade, organic, chips of mint, maybe coconut, she can't remember. It was a spontaneous purchase for occasions just like this one. She knows better. Stay away from the computer. Flashing across her screen. His face. The date. The announcement. Probably as close as she'll ever come to skydiving without a parachute. She imagines that this is what it feels like. Her vision blurs, she feels her pulse pound through the veins in her neck like a torture porn movie, and waits for her heart to explode. Any second now. This is it. Old ghosts. Living in her psyche. Lining her fascia, sheathing her entire body. Tiny tubular webbing filled with fluid, stretching and undulating, tightening, seizing, creating adhesions. Blocks. Sticking patterns. She needs to break it down before it hardens into more scar tissue around her heart. Again. Months of kneading it out, digging in, working the trigger points to release, retrain, free herself up. This is what happens when blindsided by unexpected realities that tear into the layers upon  layers of healing. She'll need new skin grafting. That's it. Gnaw off a piece of tissue from some neglected, under utilized, abandoned portion of her body. The skin on the inside of her uper thigh. The flesh on the back of her iliac crest, that dip between the top of her bum and the portion that slides gently into the curve of her lower back. Where his hand fits perfectly. Take it. Rip it off. Layer it over the gaping hole blown apart by his picture, the sound of his voice, that impish grin and soft cooling breath. Strip bare the skin where his lips skimmed over then sunk into, devouring her like a ripe, sweet nectarine. Cut it away, peel it back, undress her skeleton, use it to rewire her sympathetic nervous system, like tentacles emanating from the center of her spine and wrapping around, entangling her organs, seizing up her heart. This is why it's so terribly important to find the chocolate. Stat. Her system needs saving.

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