I've picked up the pieces of my shattered peace. I found them lying, as all my things, scattered about the rooms in this old place. Some of them were covered in dust and I thought, briefly, that if I coveted them so much I would not let them become lost as they did. I found a few in cupboards, set beside glass jars where my lovers remain frozen. Others I swept from beneath the couches and carpets, as if I had hurried to tidy up this room or that in preperation for company, without bothering to do a thorough job. So unlike me, I'd like to think. Realistically, I'm sure it's entirely characteristic.
I gathered the pieces, the shards, and arranged them on the table. Some were large, some small. Some were sharp, their edges honed like tiny, jagged teeth or the serrated edge of some improbable sword. Others were round, smooth, practically mirrors the way they captured the light and reflected it back at me in my own image.
I'm not sure why, of all the things I've left here, I went in search of peace. The long months at sea, and the awakening thing that lives in the shadowed parts of me should not look for peace. Perhaps I found it just by coincidence. Perhaps not. I'm not looking to reclaim it. I will not put the pieces back together like some metaphoric jigsaw puzzle. I will not, either, discard them entirely. There is an empty jar nearby. I suppose...no.
In the midst of pondering, I am reminded that not all old things are fit to be remembered fondly, or at all. Simply because something was, it may not necessarily be worth keeping around, cluttering up this already cluttered place. Neither, I find, are new things always to be feared. Tonight, I am exhilirated.
I am borne up on the hands of countless, faceless masses, crowded together, evidently, for no reason other than to lift me above their heads. A kiss, I thought, perhaps a kiss. The thought was fleeting, like light leaving a star for the vast expanse of nothing. It fluttered away. Or flitted. Or fled. I can not recall. The train of thought picks up speed now, the engines make a throbbing sound like a heartbeat. Palpitation. If it beat so quickly I would surely die. Impossible.
I am torn between th absolute certainty of my own immortality, and the very real suspicion that, if your lips were to seal themselves to mine, until all I could imagine was the taste of your tongue, I would die a thousand times. Indeed, your fingers twining between mine, despite the long-standing imagery of unity it evokes, would surely see me sundered from this flesh and hurtled out, like so much starlight, into the Void.
I am so like a child. Enamoured for all the world with little things. Subtle hints of my own divination. Silly things. Simple things.
I long for a kiss, and so perhaps that thought did not flee like the others. I have yearned for many things, both innocent and perverse. Beneficent and maleficent. This, I think, may be all of that and more. Whole nations have burned for less. Men have stood and struck down great evil for less.
Tonight, for the first time in weeks or months or eons, I am content not to take and conquer and destroy. I am satisfied without leaving the marks of my passing in your flesh, or leaving scars on your bones. I am, oddly, peaceful.
Stricken from my reverie, I can't help but wonder when I managed to put those pieces back together.
Humbly Yours,
-S.R.
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