Letting go of Andromeda.

I just came so hard I saw stars...

I wait as long as possible to touch myself. I'll go weeks, months even, letting the tension build. I'll wait until the last possible moment, until I'm vibrating with desire like a taut guitar string. I imagined I was in a sumptuous Bedouin tent, with glittering sharp diamond sands just outside almost within reach. I was crushing rare and expensive flowers with my body...and now I am here, in my loved but slightly shabby surroundings.

Brittle around the edges. Tender in soft spaces. And terribly empty. The emptiness inside me is vaster than anything I can fathom. It yawns open and out of me, a magnificent void. It's like an endless night, quiet and stealthy.

And it all started when I woke up tasting poppies. I tasted poppies and was reminded of him...I remember the taste and smell of his skin. Poppies, from the soap he used. II taste him when smoke and alcohol mix in my mouth. But it's not really him I taste, not this shade of a lost love from over a decade ago. It's loneliness.

I taste the rejections, the bitterness souring my breath. In my mind I was once the princess in a saccharine and perfect love story, but now I'm not a main character anymore. I'm the serving maid. The wise aunt. The potion mixing witch even, maybe. But definitely not the princess.