walk of angels [ben]
You pick the eyes from their stems and pop them into your mouths like they are round candies. The eyelashes catch and tangle themselves in your teeth. The skin tears easily as you grind your teeth together. Each eye pops with just the right amount of pressure from your tongues. You kiss each other sometimes, exchanging the sour taste of sight.
Ben’s mouth grows more bitter with each eye and he stops at every lake to dip his wings in the thick, burning fluids that singe his feathers and leave his skin pink, raw. The blood stains his wings, blackening them, and weighs them down until it dries. He can't fly today, not in the garden.
The human garden is made of the various parts of its wingless victims and the others flit between branches (elongated and twisted digits) and pluck leaves of skin to chew until only the sallow, tasteless ones remain. The eyes aren't favored by many, leaving them open to you and Kylo. In your eagerness, neither of you pluck the eyelashes or pull the skin away from the eyes before you place them between your teeth. Hair sprouts from the ground and tickles your toes.
Ben continues to stain his wings until they're as stiff as the ivory shells of bones that wash up on the shores. His wings are sticky beneath your touch, the feathers peeling apart from each other whenever he moves. His wings are new and haven't fully fused yet. Though the process is agonizing, he doesn't cry out; it's forbidden. He clenches his jaw whenever you pour tears over his exposed flesh, stinging the red, brutalized skin from which the wings burst.
There isn't any point in walking through the garden. There isn't any joy or solemnity, only the wariness of knowing the grim plague that awaits you at its edge: the horrid land of tulips and sweet things.