I. Heart.

The road gives us two kinds of burns, a hot one and a cold one. Toes become brittle from frostbite; toes become limp from hotness. We have realized the road we are on is a two-faced one.

What if there are other faces?

I have worn Mouth over Feet. Lips have found a way to trap wind in their boneless mass through the power in Tongue, so we float.

I know how I got here, but how to get out is a little bit vague, follow the road. The seed echoed.

Must I? should I? Things are better this way.

Hands jerk me forward and Spinal cord strains in defiance against slouching flesh. We are going to get Heart. We are going to get Heart.

We used to roam the city and lift up its skirts for things people didn’t see. It delighted us like a special dinner: soulful, hot and drowning in umami for our palette only, slurping with full blown greed. It was our ungodly hour where we revere god and call him names meant for lovers in lusty loudness and silence.

I don’t know if I miss it, I don’t know if it would break me, blast all these now ungrateful parts onto the hostile road. So, I shut the door never to open it. The locks held in place with endless length of dead nerves.

They tell me I am shriveling.

Where?

Here. They pointed to a room.

There are snatches of poignant lullabies pulsing all over the room, a sign of its former occupant, Empathy. Ever since the departure, the room had shrunken, withered and cracking.

So?

Silky, thick as sin cloth of blame waiting to be draped. I won’t be its pedestal.

They were barely here when I was, they weren’t there when we floated in the mother, forming in liquid, they didn’t know Heart like I did. We left none untouched. We took and gave, we moaned on the ecstasy of rhythms, our teeth lived opening and closing under stretched glistening lips. The same lips gritting through this hot road cracked, scaly and determined.

We felt Heart, much to their glee, much to my dread. Tongue rolled faster and Lips took larger steps. We are in front of Heart.

We will not speak of the past today, we will not open the memory rooms to air and dry the molds, they will stay tightly locked, unable to taint, unable to die.

Now, we stand and see the scars; pale and fresh, and think how eerily beautiful the one who floats before us is still.