I do not know what it is about being choked that I find so exciting.
As the carbon dioxide expands and seems to fill your chest cavity beyond the bounds of flesh, your very vitality shimmering and quivering under the pressure as you slide closer and closer to oblivion, you have to wonder why such a brutal act would put such a smile on your face.
Should you stop smiling?
And in the few moments that the person, whose hands are at your throat, has to decide when to let go, to break that intimate embrace...
the darkness takes hold.
Waves of nothingness face each other at a stand-off.
(Stop-motion animation)
Each blink brings the frames one fraction of an second closer to that epiphanous brink of madness.
That moment when the waves meet...
Closing around the face in front of you
Drowning them in darkness.

And then you realize
You are drowning too.
(A spluttered breath)

Blink away the darkness
Speck by speck
Surfacing into the light.
(a fluttered lid)

Swim back to reality.

And there's that face;
Looking down at you with such loving concern...
Asking themselves millions of worried questions...
(Did I wait too long?)

So you smile.
And exhale.

Then,
as if, for the very first time
You draw a breath of the sweet sticky air between you.
Salt of sweat on your tongue
Muscles slack;
Relaxed - if only for an instant.

it seems to go on forever
(is anyone else digging this air?)

But,
as everything else in the natural order,
it leaves your body again for some other purpose
and its all you can do not to cry
as they lay down beside you
and touch you every so gently with those very same hands.

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