Aorta

Some people are born.

Some are created.

 

Never may you meet one whose very existence was sculpted by the forces of nature itself

 

If you find yourself in their presence,

even for a moment,

your fingertips will flush and unfurl like a butterfly in a soft breeze

and in your hands their face will be held like a peony in precious bloom

 

They are pure,

rare in a swarming sea of fillers who are born, grow, and die in swarms.

To meet one is to question:

how it was to breathe without their sweet scent seeping from your congested tear ducts

how it was to sleep without their arms wrapped around your dreams

how it was to wake up and see the light part around them in a halo of streams

 

To be touched by their cleansing eyes,

be held by their flowing voices,

To be enveloped in a fluttering laughter that chases a river through a course unknown to anyone but them and,

for a brief moment,

yourself.

 

They’ll leave.

They always do.

They live in a pace different than ours

move at the tick of a clock

far off from our own

 

It’s in your interest to avoid meeting one,

you’ll be left more an empty shell than you were before you met them.

You’ll be left chasing a feeling you can’t remember

and a face that disappears once you focus on it.

            

I lied:

said I would be okay even if I knew I wasn’t the only one

He whom the sky constructed seeped into my days

shining with a light that belonged only to him

A light nonexistent on my skin

 

I’d wake up, mid-night, and look over to a softness, but never

morning glazed greyscale eyes

 

Anywhere he touched was bathed gold

It escaped through his palm

and covered his world

 

I too was covered in it

for a time…

A wonder.

 

It left a perfumed trace I could not lose:

I’d rub it into my skin

my hands I’d drag over handprints on my neck

up towards my face

lining the bridge of my nose

it’d pool in my eyes and I’d cry it out

my pillow was golden too

 

He’d stroll on harvested, sunrisen clouds

touched by a color created just for him

I’d wade alongside him

and slowly my feet

would drag

lower and lower

I would sink in as he

moved on nonchalantly

and around him was

an essence so thick

I’d drown

 

It spewed from my nose

escaped from the depth of my gut

crawled out from under my skin

rolling on my arms and birthing from my pores

I could hear nothing but the roaring gold

pouring from my ears and

walk on nothing that wasn’t covered in

a glimmering film of past days

but while I lay in it

            

I wanted to hold a bubble in my hand

and see reflected all which the eye cannot sea

But I can’t

For gilded eyes were all I had.

 

He returned every morning,

captivated by a shadowed forest,

and left me laying

Alone

with only a shipwreck

and Eyris on my nape

to accompany me

 

Should you find yourself

So lucky

to avoid their company

sit beneath a high arch

in a hidden alley somewhere

and

forget