Queen of Light and Darkness
A honking buzzer startles me to wakefulness, in the pitchdark of a moonless morning, and I wander, sleep-starved, and feed a pitchdark dog. Half feral and more a wolf. A screaming fanged omen I cradle at night and fight in the day, who scratches through closed doors because everything should be open and everything should be free. He’s right of course, and it could be any morning, but it isn’t. It’s this morning.
I amble with him from his clanking breakfast dish, catch sight of myself in the fogged glass of a sliding door with a broken handle that sticks as it slides on its track no matter how thick I spray on the silicon. I’ve fixed it twice now, but it fights me every time. I’ve grown stronger, from that door and other things, and I see myself shirtless in that glass, and I look it. Hard, scarred skin spattered with tattoos like paint on a Jackson Pollock canvas.
The door can fight me, all it wants, but my arms are thicker than they used to be and I slide it now with ease. Doors should be open. The devildog is right.
Outside it’s too early for the faint pale blue of first light, dawn’s golden rose a distant faraway bloom, but the stars are winking. Winking like sparks of witchcraft from a wand. Like the ember of those fireworks that sizzle after the big crack-boom. Like the glint of sweet mischief and tender care in her eyes.
Her eyes like smokey switchblades. I see them in the stars. I see the stars in them. And the moon is ours, but this morning it’s in hibernation. A few more days, it’ll wax again, and she’ll come to me. The hellhound will dig holes through the doors I put him behind, because they should be open, but it’s my turn to be free. With my moon girl, switchblade eyes.
We’ll shake the earth again. Like the sea-god’s trident. That bed we rock and creak will break soon. We’ve already broken the couch. The kitchen counter was sturdier. The bathroom sink was sturdier. The floor was sturdier. The walls were sturdier. But in the bed I can stroke your hair with your head on my chest, all sweat and exhaustion and deepest satisfaction, the pair of us, lusty gods at last met our mate after years of mortals. And in the bed, as I run my hands over you and squeeze your smooth shoulders, I can tell you fairy stories and whisper poetry in your ear as I nibble it.
Our passion is thunder everywhere, but the bed is best for the after.
I light a cigarette. I lament how much less bourbon there is than a few hours ago. It’s too early, this routine. And I’m tired of everything but you.
So I’ll wait for this moon to pull her blankets back down from her face and peek me a silver smile.
And we’ll bay and howl like the hounds of Hades.
So what is it about today, if it's so same very same as every other day? It's not the hangover. It's not the carnival strongman inside my head trying his level best to push his way out of my temple, or pop my eye from its socket. It isn't the violent buzz of the dying tube lights in the rotting building in which I work.
Today I tell her who she is. And she asks me who I am. Asks as if she doesn't have a better handle on the contents of my soul than any other being on this drifting space-rock.
Mia Regina della luce e dell'oscurita... says I, so I do, but I don't stop.
...gli occhi come fumo...
...unghie come pugnali...
...mia vita...
...mia macchina di miele...
...mi' amore.
Who the fuck are you? says she, a question she'd asked before in varying format, but she always knew, I believe, the answer.
The other half of your soul, darling.
My wit, being what it is, even in spite of my head breaking apart, gets the better of me. It's true, in my opinion, that if there were such thing as pair-bonded souls cast adrift in vain pursuit of reunification, that she is mine. But that shouldn't have been the answer.
I'm the boy who saw all of you, and spent his life becoming the man to match you. I saw the best parts of you as seeds, and saplings, and little buds now blossomed. What a garden you have made of yourself. That should've been the reply.
So later I find a way to say the second half of it at, least.
And she writes me poetry in French.
Mais tes yeux...
J'en reve chaque nuit
Tres bleu
Comme le mer
And all the doors are open. And I have never been this free.
And tomorrow, if the fates will it, we'll spend the night dying little deaths in each other's arms.