love was a country we couldn't defend, thorn

[prayer]

She does not know how to be self-conscious. When he looks at her, all she knows how to do is flood with heat. Her mother has told her that she’s beautiful her whole life but she’s never thought to believe it. Not until now. Because he’s looking at her like she hung the moon and it makes her head swim. But her grin remains because she cannot help but smile beneath the discernible weight of his gaze. Because there is still laughter swelling and bursting in the long column of her throat, even when he stiffens beneath her touch in a way that should stop her heart. All she can think about, though, is the way that his skin leaves an imprint of warmth on her mouth that she can still feel even as she wedges space between them. He tells her his name without her having to ask and she quietly commits it to memory. Thorn. He is too soft for such a name, she thinks. When she’d touched him, there had been no sharp sting that told her that she should think better of it. She’d felt safe and warm. “Thorn,” she says and she smiles at the shape it takes in her mouth. Maybe she can make it mean something else. He smiles at her in a way that arrests the air in her chest and when she speaks next it is on the back of a sigh. “Prayer,” she whispers, dreamy. Until she blinks herself back to reality and finally flushes with embarrassment. She swallows thickly and tries again, louder now. “My name is Prayer,” she says and then smiles her own bashful smile as she turns away her gaze. p r a y e r