Oh, hello…
Oh, hello, Immortal One.
I see you behind those glistening eyes.
I saw you briefly, in the way she looked at me for acceptance,
for justification,
for a security I fear I can’t assume.
I saw you too, when her boy came home from school.
She tossed aside her imprisoning bills,
those lifeless declarations, demanding relevance,
in a world they hold none,
and her face melted off the bone,
as existence locked into place once more.
She embraced her own.
And there you were, Sweet Bellowing Essence.
I saw you, as we walked hand and hand down the way
near the hedges.
She worried about her mother,
about life’s cruelest cycles.
Then...
That pause.
Her nostrils absorbed something raw.
Something wonderfully primal.
Fresh cut blades of grass, their aroma rising towards the warmth,
A verdant summer hymn.
The distant sprinkler kept time and pace.
And there you were once more.
Oh, hello, Immortal One, dear Sacred Ember.
My coffee was roasted dark.
Black.
With hints of spruce tips.
Hers was a cacophony of vanilla ridiculousness—
creamed foam, maple, and spice,
sugared beyond all reason.
She caught my smirk.
The slant in her eyes dared me to challenge it.
I held my tongue
and sipped the most boring cup crafted unto man.
That java nook by the sea,
our table, as off-balanced as our pasts.
She’d been cursed with radiance, beauty,
a veneer of angelic shine,
layered gracefully for all to behold,
to marvel.
…And some men simply cannot simply behold,
nor marvel.
They cannot let mere beauty be for mere beauty’s sake.
No.
They must consume.
They must collect.
And she had been collected.
He had laid claim to her once,
a false ownership born of hunger and insatiability,
as if the lovely could be enslaved,
and leave him whole,
as if she owed him her light.
The flagrant insanity…
Still…
Still some believe it a possibility, a birth right.
An absurdity still lingered,
A shadow where no shadow belongs.
How desperately wrong we have it all.
Yet even beauty, once collected,
endures beyond desperate grasps.
A liquid sorrow glazed her eyes.
A soft, rising tide,
pooling against the fragile dam of her gentle lashes,
pressing hard.
begging for release.
Oh, dear heart, you’ve done nothing wrong!
Pull back the levees and let’s flood the world
until the rivers rise
and the earth remembers its waters!
We’ll navigate her currents together.
…And Oh! Hello Immortal One, dear Timeless Spark.
She thought I bored a hole into her,
But I was beholding you in awe.
Oh, your soulfire beauty.
How lovely your tears.
May I drink of them forever…
May they cleanse my wounds too…
May I…
May they…
May my remembrance be on my own,
my own craving eyes.
How oft have my own hungers
attempted to consume your beauty,
your own.
How oft have I stepped over you in the streets,
oh, Perennial Core.
How oft have I traded my fleeting safety,
to keep you behind the wall.
How oft have I ignored your cries,
your yearnings and sacred needs,
while turning back to the fake,
the temporal,
those cold papers of debt,
their weight an illusion,
demanding relevance
in a world where they hold none.
How oft have I given space to a shadow,
where no shadow belongs.
What hell I’ve crafted with filthy hands…
Oh, Immortal One, dear Divine Flicker
Let her celestial tears wash them clean.
Let me trade my clenched fists
for open, outstretched arms.
Let me simply walk with her home, and she with me,
smelling grasses along the way.
Let my face melt off the bone as well.
She at last sipped her coffee.
Foam playfully covered her nose.
We burst into merriment
and there you were once more,
Undoubtedly,
Unending,
Unrelenting,
Unyielding Cornerstone.
Oh, hello, Immortal One.
Oh, hello…
Please.
Hear me now.
Forever.
Eternally.
I ask of you.
Please.
Oh, hello…
Oh, hello…
