Corazon

Love is romanticized by fairytales and happy endings. We grow with a notion of love that sends us off into a never-ending journey for the perfect one. The one. We don't realize that the heart conflicts with the mind which then ignores itself for the sake of the fingers who crave to linger over your lovers body. We are slaves to our bodies, and, although they serve as units of the whole we find that often our parts battle a lifelong battle to be content within themselves. And so we are before two young lovers who’s bodies are about to embark on a journey of their own.

Their lips were stained sticky and sweet with flavors of starfruit picked from the sky and still they kissed. He'd tickle the nape of her neck with the warmth of his breath as he spoke in soft  secret languages with the tiny pores of her skin. 

"Forever and ever around the moon and back." 

With that, the little hairs behind her neck would rise and dance, thin brown strands moved their hips (where hips should be) and pulled at their roots trying desperately to tangle themselves with the coarse wires growing the beard on his face. He looked at her and locked his eyes onto hers, they froze, mesmerized at the twinkles of tiny souls from thousands of past lives dancing in harmony within the ballroom of her brown corneas.  

So Marte decided to give Luna his heart for eternity.

With a blade Marte sliced open his chest, pearls of red rolled in small streams downward, bubbling from the wound, he pried open his ribcage with the tip of his blade reaching his bare hand in and removed his heart. It beat wildly in his hand flopping, disoriented, like a fish out of the sea. It wailed the cry of a newborn suddenly taken from the safe and warm feeling of the womb. Marte pet his heart, swaying its tears as he took out a locket from a small box of trinkets he kept tucked away on the mantle and placed the heart within a locket. Luna cursed as she saw the bloody mess of his chest and the gap where his heart used to be. 

"I took it out to give to you. See?" His crimson stained hand shook as he exposed the radiant heart beating on a dainty chain. It had fused with the locket, bright bubbling red with fracture thin threads of gold sewn along the edges. As Marte placed it around her neck her heart took a liking to his, presented to her as it was, and Luna’s heart embraced his.

The two lived in bliss, making love every night as they laid to rest and morning when they woke. Some days, as the summer faded into the deep reds and browns of fall, the two would find themselves tangled in time, twisted within their lust for one another, and Marte would have to force his feet from the bed and persuade his legs to walk to the window so he could see if the dim of light was in fact sunrise or sunset. They would have survived off each other if they could, collected the sweat from their bodies for drink and ravishing on one another for nourishment, but such luxuries were kept for the gods. 

So Marte left to the desert to collect tunas and water trapped in the bellies of lush nopales. As he walked in the desert night he looked up at the sky where the stars twinkled dancing amongst each other in celebration of they're blessing the world that night. Marte’s mind wandered upward the entire hunt for the desert fruit, pulling his eyes towards the stars, white beauties. 

 "You know me as a curious fool and although my heart is content next to its mate my mind still wanders, wanting more - it's never known anything other than the little it currently possesses."

 The stars began to giggle in a sweet voice, luring Marte to stand on his toes, trying to reach closer to the night sky. 

"Oh sweet Marte, to know what we know is to see what we’ve seen and with that your knowledge is indeed without knowing.” They twinkled as if winking at him and Marte was not discouraged because of this. Marte’s mind made his mouth move on. 

“Show me what you have seen you glittered glories, use my body as the bottle, leave your message in me and send me off into the sea of your night sky.” 

Flattered at hearing this, the stars began to rub themselves against each other and collapse into a fine dust and showered it over his body. Marte’s pores devoured the fine dust. He took off his clothes and rolled in it naked, the crevices in his body inhaling the soft powder. His nose scooped it into its mouth and gobbled it up as his eyes glittered. 

So Marte made his way home stumbling and still somewhat numb the next morning, his head hung low, eyes watching the floor not worthy of the morning sun. He decided he would not tell his Luna of his weakness for those celestial sluts and swore to himself it would not happen again.

The following night proved challenging for Marte as the stars peeked in through the window and called to him. 

"Mhmm Marte, come out. Let us rub ourselves all over that beautiful human body of yours. It was good, wasn't it?" 

The man tried to ignore the soft voice coming from the darkened sky, trying to focus on the sound of his heart beating next to Luna’s as she lay naked nestled in his arms. His body began to move, entranced by the promise of another numbing night, cautiously, and rolled out of bed. It tiptoed it’s way out of their small home and joined the stars.

The stars provocatively lowered themselves towards him, traveling through the atmosphere, shedding themselves of surrounding clouds, leaving themselves exposed. When they appeared before him they had transformed into a cloud of smoke and entered every orifice in his body. Marte’s mind grew enamored by the dark beauty of the stars and froze in awe of them, unable to speak or move. Marte could not tell the passing of days or hours or minutes. He could not imagine the woman he left at home, fused onto his heart. He was only aware of them, translucent and luscious in ways not human.

Luna grew worried. She paced around the kitchen, not able to stay still enough to cut onions for stew or sweep dust off the wooden floors, for the heart Marte had given her, on its chain, had started to weaken its beat. She paced the entire day and that evening as she was finishing cooking dinner, Marte walked in with an apologetic look on his face and some sad excuse she didn't bother to remember because when he held her and looked into her eyes, his heart tugged at hers and urged her to forgive him. 

While the sun was falling to sleep and day transitioned into night, the stars began to whisper in his ear enticing Marte to come into the desert with them. Marte’s heart pulled at him to stay close to Luna but his mind was hung up on the coolness of their breath and told his feet to head to the desert. 

The stars were milky in the sky and began to drip down at the sight of him. Soon his body was covered in an iridescent liquid. He began to breath in and the twinkling liquid traveled inside of him, through his veins and straight to his heart. He went cold from the inside out, each organ slowly drifted towards seductive numbness. The stars pulled at him, closer to them wrapping their silver hands around his mind, coaxing him.

  So his mind rose up toward the sky, leaving its body behind.

Luna’s heart began to weep as her mate shriveled up before her, holding on to her it’s a last loving embrace. “Oh no!” Luna sighed a painful breath, as if giving birth to the world’s sense of loss and she fell to her knees, the sharp pain within her chest holding her firm against the floor. She looked to the sky at the twinkling stars, so bright as her heart let its grip loosen from his. They looked as if they were dancing in celebration and Luna cursed them for looking so lovely that night as she cried and wondered where her Marte had gone.

It's a fairytale! I love love love em! and i want to write as many as i can along with renditions of previous myths and such. it's all very interesting to me, but for the sake of who i am and how i see the world this one was particularly special in that the body parts exist on their own! i am still a few revisions away from this being even close to submitting for publishing and wonder would it work better as a graphic novel? i need to take art classes... -_-