Dear Doomsday,

We went to a foreign country to meet. I crossed cobblestone and wet gravel to come to this bar. Glass lanterns filtered the light dark green and you were seated so calmly, waiting.

I sat close to you on a chipped stool and disrupted the silence. Hellos slipped across our faces before you stood to enclose me in strong arms. The rules have changed; for there are none here and we are away from judging leers and expectations. Could you touch me again, please. My mind whispers other wishes as we begin conversation. We ask of common things, but there's only one thing I wanted to question…

I wonder if you'll answer my eyes when I look to you, knowing that if you do, I'll stumble through my next few lines recovering from your heavy, penetrating stare. Is this where we share our moment of truth? Suppressed adoration and infatuation could come clean, but it won't. Not just yet. It will come one day in a letter, a letter brought forth from clouds and rain and the mailman's hands. It is the easy way out. Press some paper or device between our words and gain courage that you lose when your face is within kissing distance of mine. But I fear this confession is a fictional dream.

We leave before we've even had a sip of juice and wander towards rolling grass and white weeds. Here it is, the only taste of intimacy I'll ever get (with you). You and I are the only beings within 20 miles of this land, and you choose now to be shy. You point at the sun closing its eyes when I recall standing in your apartment, seeing a glowing peach fall behind our city. The horizon looks a bit different tonight.

What were we to do? Standing like soldiers in the evening musk… Fearing the walk home because it will be an endless journey in opposing directions. Is it so difficult to invite me with you? I would come. Quietly, I would come into your life.


But you never asked. Beneath that goodnight kiss against my cheek, I know you were burning for me. Why did you let me step away? A defeated soul carried me to my stairs before my body coiled up in disappointment and graced the floor. I sunk, and you could have saved me.

rosemary

They found her just like that: hands weaved between wood stair banisters, head and back arched as the rest of her bones and skin fell languid with the quiet grace of a ballerina. Her hair– an unmoving mob of tangled string. And the flesh carried a chill to the touch.

They pressed their palms together, praying for air to once again feed her lungs.

You stood apart from the crowd and held a wilted disposition as you remembered
touching her chin and calling her darling.

Her deep violet lip paste has smeared across her cheek, and the delicate lace on her dress has been tattered and torn (to little frays of waste). A morose snow beyond the window mustered mild bone quivers as you looked once more at her angel face. Every breath in you slowed and decomposed. Angered fists flaunted the torment behind your teeth. And without a word pronounced,
dew unfurled from embittered eyes.

You drew near her to place a weathered hand upon her figure.

In her eternal sleep, dreams of unsung lungfuls reply.

Winter fell asleep.

The flower boy reached his petite fingers towards the sun. The southern shine danced on his petals as she breathed a timid spirit into his heart. Warmth was then sucked beneath the surface of this very earth, inspiring technicolor magic to sprout up in a fit of distemper.



Epilogue: Le fleur et le soleil existed for seventeen seconds. It was never; it was forever.