After the Fall

Originally Posted: 11/3/08

I filled you with blood and put light to your eyes. I placed flowers in your hair and steel in your spine. I stood you upright and taught you to walk before you crawl. I turned your world upon my callous fingertips and planted seeds for you to grow. I hung the sun and moon and sat the stars up in the sky. I breathed life to the north wind. I gave you all, but could not make you love me.

You are electrifying, magnetic, unrepentant. I feel pulled in all directions, the sinews separating with an aching groan. The bones, bleached white and lined with cracks, splinter and tear, leaving ragged shards behind, protruding from holes in rent flesh. I am ransacked and at peace. I am drawn to you, falling like bits of Universe spat from Mother's throat toward a grim fate in the earth. I feel pushed away and held at arm's length, something to be studied rather than embraced. Something waiting, lurking, haunting your periphery. I am a dark thing, the source of light. I am a paradox waiting to happen.

Give in to me, and be my all. Take transgression with romance and litter the cosmos with sweet kisses. Take me and turn me out into the Black. The chasm, yawning far into the distance, opens up beneath my feet. Watch me plummet downward, watch me break upon the stones. Or smash your way into my heart and call that hole your home. I am not conflicted, I am not ashamed. I no longer hate myself for the things I cannot change. No more vague emotions, no more suppression and denial. If wrath will come, then wrath will come. There will be water if God wills it. If love will flouder, fail and die, then let it pass. Let it lie. But if that warmth will spread and grow, then rise and breathe and kiss, anew.

Shelter all your sins with me, and I will keep your secrets. My skin is armor all its own, and I intende to keep them. I wax poetic, I digress, but romance is what gods do best. We're petty, fickle creatures. Still, I can feel the pulse of you around me, charging all my cells with heat. Arousing me with words and laughter, dulled too long by too much drink. I have been re-made. I have been molded, scorched, consumed in forges made with worlds. Apocalypses, too, have their optimists. With every death, something new.

Kiss me. Write your name in my tongue and claim this newly risen child for yourself.

A willow wonders where you've gone. The forest asks me questions about you. The stars, in all their wisdom, cannot see your face. Where have you been hiding? This game has grown long and, though I chase you, I've long since lost sight of your laughing eyes, your hair flying out behind you as you run, and the scent of you evades me. I feel more like the hunter now, stalking prey. Perhaps that is for the best.

Beleive in me. Hand in hand, through Eden, let's make our solitary way.

Drunk on starshine,
-S.R.