"Do you love me?" I asked in a voice that slipped from my lips like fractured glass from a shattered frame.
"I love you," was the reply. Honeyed tones mixed with a rough gravelly tone that set my nerves a-fire and sent a quick chill down my spine. Gooseflesh raised on my arms and across my shoulders as that tone touched some deeply needy place inside me and stroked it until it purred.
"Tell me why you love me," I demanded. My voice quavered as I spoke, subtle changes in tone and inflection betraying my inner turmoil. A writhing, curling, bristling animal of a thing that deep inside me told me I was unloved and unlovable. It needed to be quieted.
"I love you because you love me," came the simple reply, "I love you because you fulfil me, you fulfil my reason to be, it is because of you I exist. Without you I am nothing."
I took a drink as I considered this. Honey colored liquid like fire on my lips, a fire that flowed quiescent into my belly before exploding like a nova to shake my soul and quiver my flesh. A shudder of pleasure flowed involuntarily across my face. I gasped quietly to myself.
"I love you too," I whispered, my voice barely audible over the sound of the passing traffic below and the air-conditioning units at my back, their warm exhalations ruffled my trench-coat as I huddled away from the gently falling snow.
"I love you too," I continued, "but you are not always kind to me. I know that you love others, you share yourself like a common trollop. Giving yourself freely to others as freely as you give yourself to me. And they take you, I have watched them, I have heard their whispered devotions to you, and you revel in it."
Tears started from my eyes and trickled their slow path down my uneven cheeks to drip from my chin where they began to freeze. I started to shake, the sobs started low in my bowels and rose through my body inexorably, chilling me where once I had been warm.
"Hush now lover, hush now," the smooth voice whispered in my ear, a warm breath on my neck as the air-conditioning unit kicked into a higher gear, rattling and rumbling almost enough to drown out those insidious, tenacious, delicious words.
"Hush now, take a sip against the chill and know that I love you and only you. It's always you, just you and me."
Unbidden my hand raised the bottle to my mouth and I took a deep swig, liquid fire swirled through me and the warmth exploded upwards, taking me in a passionate embrace. The agave worm crept past my lips and slithered down my throat, and then she was gone.
"Now lover, now I am within you, and always yours. We are together at last, see how I love you?"
I gasped, the tears frozen on my face, and allowed myself to stagger one halting step forward away from the air-conditioning unit. My clumsy feet tripped on the low-slung cables and pipes that ridged the roof's edge. The night whirled around me, the snow streamed past me as it fell strangely upwards, and the darkness inverted itself above me. The impact drove the wind from my lungs in one screaming exhalation, but I felt no pain. Something warm slithered down my face, my left eye closed and my legs numb and unfeeling. The darkness and cold crept over me like a soft blanket and as the snowflakes fell un-melting on my face I took pleasure in one thing. Cradled there on my chest, my love lay whole and unbroken. She softly tinkled - glass against concrete - as I relaxed into the inky blackness.