The Hike that Breeds Desire—Alba Sarria

content warning: dubious consent

This one opens in Green.
His feet are hooved, clovered in
dark curling
Fur.
There is a fragrance in the air you do not know,
or do not want to remember.
It stings the hair in your nose,
fires the nerves under your feet.

His hands are clawed, rusted with blood
gritty with mud.
One brushes your sunburnt sweating shoulder,
One curls around your neck.

You do not remember how you got to be so 
Bare.
The breeze that rustles endless 
green—bushes, weeds, trees—
blows through your bushes, your weeds.

The rocky path that you were hiking—
Yes, that’s right,
You were hiking—
unfurls into a lush
Cloven bed.
The leaves are lined thinly in Violet, 
in dreary dreamy Blue,
slippery as the silver flash
of fish downstream.

His breath is hot, turning
Summer’s stagnant air sweltering.
Summer?
Was it summer when you
left?
Where is your phone?
Where is your guide, your brother?

But the air is too hot to think
too hot to breathe,
and the fragrance is like something out of a 
Dream.
It is familiar. 
You have been here before.
You have been laid here and sown.

And his claws are like that of every
fainted faded 
Lover.

I have known you since your first
Birth, 
through your every spring
your every summer.
Since you swam out of every mother’s waters.
I have known you from infancies
And every hour after.

The air is so hot 
and the hour is so late—
When did it get to be so late?—
The night is starless
Moonless
Lightless
and his breath keeps saying:

I have known you since your first
Birth, 
through your every spring
your every summer
Since you swam out of every mother’s waters.
I have known you from infancies
And every hour after.

 And your phone—
Where is your phone?
Why does this night have no hour?
There are no crickets.
There are no croaking frogs 
singing their loves songs.
There are no paths
no forsaken hiker’s paths.

I have known you since your first
Birth, 

And the fragrance is so familiar.

Through your every spring,

And his touch is like every fated
Fainted
Faded 
Lover.

Your every summer,

And his hand has slipped to your
Hip
And his third hand
His fifth hand
His sixth,
Your eyes
Your lips
That sliver of a dip
High between your thighs.

He is so familiar
It is all 
              so
                    familiar.

I have known you, too
you hear yourself say.
In every garden sprig,
every hazy half-sleep blink.
Down the shadows of the hall.
Since my infancies,
my so many infancies
I found you once, too,
in the fall.

Not me,
He replies
guiding you down into downy cloven
dreams.
Of me, of you.

In the Fall they find
You 
dazed and confused
Beholding
a cloven-hooved child.

photo by Matheus Bertelli (via pexels)