Love Among the Ruins

Love Among the Ruins



I gazed down upon the twisted ruins of the once great metropolis. I saw the remnants of humanity wandering dazed through the wreckage. The yellow dust hovering in the air was so thick I almost choked. The tall buildings stood cracked and fallen in the pale sunlight.

I swooped down in my ultralight aircraft and descended, floating like a leaf downward into the city. As I settled down onto the broken asphalt I saw a young woman digging in a trash heap, pulling out moldy bread and cans of food. I called out to her offering to share my meager rations with her. She screamed in response.

I felt sorrow, and crouched down next to her holding her scab covered hand and looking into her frightened eyes. I handed her an energy pill from my pocket and she held it in the palm of her hand looking at it.

I told her “It’s alright. Take it.” I crushed some crystallized water in the plastic pouch and immediately it filled with water. After sticking a straw in it, I handed it to her. She swallowed the energy pill and followed it with a sip of water. She smiled at me hesitantly and I knew I had built some level of trust with her.

I felt an affinity with this ragged young woman. I led her down the street whose skeleton ruins smoldered quietly. Smoky funeral wreaths settled like winter snow across desolate streets. Awash in sacred silence she and I held hands walking together.

Calcified relics shined in noon sunburn. Effigies of humanity haunted the daylight. Ravens perched on steel husks. Petroleum fed insects lay in repose. A salamander sunned on pearly marble steps. A centipede crawled cautiously over laminated tiles.

I gazed into her kaleidoscope eyes. They reflected the haunted fear of abysmal nights spent in desolate alleys. I was determined to find her a place to rest tonight.

Her tattered dress hung from her shoulders with torn holes exposing sores on her tender skin. Her hair was disheveled and her voice was a whisper of desolation. We rested on the granite steps of the capitol building now fallen like the government which convened there in ages past. I leafed through

a book which lay there.

Then I took out a tube of ointment from my travel satchel. I spread the healing cream on her sores starting with her face and working down to her arms and legs. The tears in her dress laid bare her lingerie. I worked the cream in along the lace edges of her bra and panties. I reached between her inner thighs to apply the ointment on her infections. On the verge of tears she pleaded, “Please.”

I pulled the thin strip of fabric aside. I looked down upon her nether world. Her feminine rose was pink and healthy. I said “I see no sign of infection.”

However, she begged with the refrain, “Please sir. I hurt very bad in my soul. I need love. Soothe my wounded flower.” I was hesitant to touch her petals. Her tears persuaded me. She said “Talk to me.”

I said, “In the beginning there was yearning. Lust brought forth life. Worlds burst from the Goddess’ loins.” My words subsided leaving the language of touch. I placed my hand in the nucleus of her chest feeling her heart pulse with each of her sacred breaths. As I drew closer to her face, the mist of her life’s breath blew against my cheek. She timidly reached out in wonder placing her palm at the hub of my life’s blood. A smile illuminated her face. Her dark eyes glowed with hunger as I gazed into the limitless ocean of her soul. I saw my face reflected in the mirror of her iris.

My hand flowed down to her solar plexus feeling her diaphragm expand and contract.

I dipped my fingers in the healing lotion. I finger traced a line with rain drop tenderness sweeping with feather soft artistry under the crevasse of her moons. There I paused oh so tantalizingly on her pea aperture.

Her thighs clenched as she writhed against my hand. She pressed my hand into her pink rorschach like a leaf pressed in her book of life. The heat was palpable with her fevered skin dappled with body dew.

She glanced up with bird movement. Again, I anointed her folds with healing cream. She closed her eyes breathing deeply. I clasped the core of her chakra galaxy, her fragile rosehip berry. Her chest heaved as I roamed her female sacristy. I kneaded her crux into plump fullness.

She clasped my hand against her pink dawn with her hips pumping like a zealot on fire with God. Her tears became veins of passion and sorrow trickling down her golden face. Her source of divinity glowed like Orion’s nebula. A deep resonance of pleasure howled from the chambers of her body.

She said, “I felt your spirit move through me like a warm river through my hips falling like gentle ocean waves into my pelvis. Spiral patterns, the seeds of flowers and stars, germinated in my ovaries.” Our lips touched in unison of one being within the Goddess. Her orchid glistened like a dewy morning flower. Once more her face took on a rosy luster as fresh as April.

“It has been so long since I was touched by a man” she exclaimed. “You don’t know what this means to me” she said. Her gratefulness absolved me of guilt. I didn’t fancy being a lecher.

She sat there quivering like a sparrow. Then a tentative smile formed on her face only to submerge into a frown once more. I embraced her with a bear hug. “You’ll be ok” I told her. “I’ll take care of you” I said. I had no idea of how to save myself much less her.

I helped her up and we proceeded down the road to nowhere. A brown paper bag cart wheeled on the asphalt. A Bible was laid open to the ravages of nature. Gospel scraps whirled in vortex. Golden words swirled playfully with wisdom strewn like confetti on oil stained sidewalks.

She followed me like a guru in this city lost in dreams. I put my arm around her waist to comfort her cankered body. What more could I do to ease her passage down these graveyards of humanity?

She stopped to look up at the façade of a once intact library building. She led me into the repository of books moldering under the roof of sky. She leaned down and picked up a decaying copy of the Bible. She said “I used to believe in things. When everyone disappeared I lost all faith. I guess you could say I’m an atheist now.”

I said “The past is dead. Religion is meaningless. Like Nietzsche said we must become our own God now.”

She began weeping. “I want God to fix things. I want the world back the way it was.”

I embraced her holding her with a deep grief. I mourned for my wasted life and my family whom I’d lost in the chaos of calamity. I loved this woman as if she was the wife I’d lost so long ago. I never thought I’d feel for another person so deeply again.

We walked on, two pilgrims, searching for a way home. We arrived at the asylum where her eyes sparkled with tears of gratitude. I introduced her to the house mistress. With much regret I left her there having been smitten by her.

Burnt umber hue eddies in autumn leaf textures painted the sky. Tainted mist rose in conch shell swirls. Stained glass colors blossomed in the evening sky. Sorrowful clouds gathered on the western horizon. I slept in the ruins of a church on the altar once reserved for sacred ceremony. The next morning I took to the air in my butterfly aero plane seeking the remnants of humanity among the ruins of earth.