- Post By: Jason Santo
- Date:
- Category: Uncategorized
The ecstasies of faith surrounded Kim. She wandered into the lives of others like a page torn from a harlequin romance novel caught on a summer breeze. It was instant attraction, the way her red lips left behind a stain on wineglasses and coffee cups was a mark of territory that held the loose-hearted in thrall. They tripped over her because she was promise for the broken to be mended. Her smile was a balm, her close-eyed laughter an invitation to brighter days awaking with companionship and warmth where there had, for so long, been phantoms stealing their bed covers. She didn’t know why they fell for her as they did, why her low voice and lithe frame so often seduced the hopeless into renewed faith, but after a while it didn’t matter. Kim was a transient, her kisses and hushed sighs during release nothing to her but small spikes in a flatline lovelife while to them a resuscitated rhythm. And she came to understand and relish that role even as she sometimes wondered why she couldn’t feel what they felt, couldn’t believe in them as they did in her. In her they saw a wife, a lover, a life-long friend, a mirror of their best selves sitting before them in dimly lit bars and bright cafes. And in her own way she loved each one, their pale eyes slowly filling with color as she listened, their defenses crumbling, arms uncrossed and shoulders squared with her own whenever she leaned in attentively. They may have needed her, but she needed each of them too. Because it had been a long life in short years for Kim, the loss and hurt of adolescence now flickering cinders alighted from the blazes she stoked in others; tiny embers lost among the stars, among the histories of sunhearts that just wanted to beat again. She let there be light. She made them shine. (at Lust’s Angel)