Amber Hipple  is a young writer and Texas native who has been writing as long as she can remember. Her writing has been published in ezines and in several minor publications. More of her work will soon be included in Events Quarterly and Ancient Paths. 

Correspond  with Amber Hipple.

I Promise I Won't Break You
by Amber E. Hipple

She left me today and I don't know why. I don't know anything. So tell me, God, why did she leave me?
I went through hell to be with her. I braved jeers and taunts so I could feel her next to me. I defied our parents to kiss her. Everything we were ever taught screamed out against our doing this.

I couldn't stop. I did it for us. I reached through the white fire of tradition and saved her. So, why does she leave me now? I don't know, nor do I think I care to know. I only know that I cannot pull my mind from her. Memories of her flit through my psyche, teasing, tormenting me. I dream of moments in the garden underneath the mimosa. I can still hear her voice rising to the stars as the beautiful muscles in her thighs flex, "Oh,
Leyda, I promise I won't break you."

I remember the feel of her lips on my starved skin and the smell of her ebon hair. I remember her soft, lilting laugh. So beautiful. I can still taste her on my lips and smell her in my clothes. Her voice lingers like
cobwebs in the corners of our home as I weep the tears that should rightfully be blood. Why did she leave? I would have given her the world on a silver platter. Why did she leave?

Suddenly I stand on wobbly legs; I press against the wall for support. I travel down the hallway, tears blinding me so that I walk by memory alone. I enter the bedroom and a tumult of emotions and sensations
assaults my roiling mind. Her perfume hits me like a brick, causing me to wrap my arms around my breasts and to blink back the tears that sting at my eyes. I turn my head in the direction of her voice. No, it is not her voice. She's gone and it is only the wind. My shoulders shake with suppressed emotion as I stumble past the bed to lean against the dresser.

I raise my head weakly, only to be confronted by my image in the mirror. What looks back is not me. Dark blue, red-rimmed eyes, peer at me from behind twisted and sodden strands of blonde. Tear stained skin hangs pale and loose from my cheeks. This is not me. Once I had been alive. Vibrant and alive. Today I am this. She has reduced me to this. In my fury I smash my fists into the mirror with all the strength that I can muster. Small slivers of glass fly out and graze my face. Larger pieces cascade to the floor with a satisfying noise. I cry out and press a hand to the searing pain that slices through my cheek. Once again sobbing, I slide down the length of the dresser until I am resting on my heels.

Is it the horror of my face that has driven her away? Could she not stand to look at my anymore? Is this it? My tears increase as I conjured her face. With a thin cry of yearning I open my fists and grasp at
the floor. My eyes open wide as I realize that it isn't just the floor I am holding in my hand. I raise my fist to my eyes to see a shard of shattered mirror. I laugh crazily, realizing my release is in my hands. I can escape from her face, run from her voice, that voice. I still remember the words she spoke. "Oh, Leyda, I promise I won't break you." I had taken those words to heart even if they were spoken through the haze of lust.
Those words echo,  "Oh, Leyda, I promise I won't break you." But she had. She had broken my mind, body, and soul into a thousand pieces like the piece of the mirror I hold in my hand.

So I lift my release into my line of vision. I watch the light play and dance upon the jagged edge, scattering colors across the walls like diamonds. With staggering breaths, I hold my wrist up. So easy. My skin looks so
smooth and thin. Just slash and have it all done with, I tell myself. Escape from the haunting memories. I raise up the shard, prepared to sweep downward and take my petty reward, revenge. I hear a voice. Her voice, and it is real: smooth as silk and soft as the carpet beneath my feet, real. "Leyda, don't do that." I drop the glass like it's a hot coal; my body begins to tremble violently. I wrap my arms around my legs to hide my shaking.

"Why do you care, Petra? You didn't care then, why now?" I turn my face so her profile is blocked from my vision. "Go away," I say. She doesn't. Instead I hear the swish of her skirts as she comes further into the bedroom. Her perfume permeates my nostrils and causes my chest to constrict. She kneels beside me and touches my shoulder gently. "Oh, Leyda. You've made a mess of the house." 

I shift and look at her angrily, "Is that all you can say, Petra? You throw away love and life; then you return only to berate me over the condition of the house? Do you think the house matters to me now? Go away." 

She stays. This time she sighs and when she speaks again her voice is filled with tears, "I'm sorry. Can you ever forgive me?" I turn away again as her voice rushes through my body like a shock; wetness floods between my legs almost as soon as the tears rush to the surface again. "I'm asking to come back," she says," I was a fool. I thought, I thought it was for the best. I didn't understand. Please."

I turn to her and look at her with something akin to disbelief. Her words reverberate within my soul. "Oh, Leyda, I promise I won't break you," she says. 

For a moment I am tempted to say no, but I can deny her nothing. I fall into her arms and she into mine. We cling to one another for dear life, it seems. For hours we make love in the disarray that was our bedroom. For the first time or the thousandth, I do not know. Both her lips are as tender as I remembered. Her hands are just as soft. Her breath is just as sweet. "Oh, rose, my rose. Oh, delicate rose," I think. Feeling, breathing, tasting, holding. She is everything for which I had longed. Oh, I have won her again surely though her touches are hesitant; her hands on my breasts are feathers. But I am voracious. I drink her nectar and suck the sweat from her body as if she were a delicacy, an oyster. I need her. I need the reassurance that we share love and that she won't leave. I have to touch those delicate muscles inside her and feel the breath rushing from her mouth. I take the breath from her as surely as a cat from an old wives' tale takes the breath of life from a baby.

Forbidden, forbidden. This is the forbidden fruit of our youth. This is why she left me. I know, I know now. This is why she left. She could not live with this fruit. I can and I show her I can. I am strong as we make love. I wonder if I am too strong, if she will flee from the intensity, but she does not. She stays, and she writhes under my hands. I take no pleasure this time; instead I give. She is mine and I will show it. She begs and breathes for me to touch that inner sanctum. I make her beg again before I descend. Oh, the warmth, the sweetness I lap. I lap, swirling my tongue around the pearl of her desire and probe her secret depths with my finger. She shivers and I laugh within, and I rejoice within, "Mine!"
 

She lies under me, but my mind keeps intruding, bumping away the thoughts of her pink folds, bringing me to thoughts of the shattered mirror. Bringing thoughts of her skirts swishing as she leaves me again. I push them out and push my finger farther; push my tongue harder. Her hands seek my hair. I smell her musk. Her thighs bunch. I feel it coming closer: her release, my triumph. I feel it pervading my every pore, washing over me slick and sweet. 

Again, her words come. Once more she speaks them to me. "Oh, Leyda, I promise I won't break you." I still do not trust, but I feel I have conquered. Hoarse and fast, she cries, "Oh, Leyda, I promise I won't break you." Her thighs encircle my head. Her back arches and her breath is ragged as she cries again, "I won't break you!"

This time I know she won't, I know she can't.

Copyright © 2000 Amber Hipple. All rights reserved.
 
 

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