His hands were quivering. Saltine droplets forming across the bridge of his forehead, trailing down his pudgy nose, as he contemplates the pristine page before him. A blank canvass waiting to be breathed into life, by his letters forming words, strung into sentences, weaved into paragraphs, and composed into a thought, a feeling, a longing.

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I dream of books. Of stack upon stack of printed page, whose stories and anecdotes await my perusal. Their narratives enmeshed in the frailty of paper – vellum, parchment, fine print, glossy, matte, cold-laminated, trade paperback, and so forth; each percolating amongst pristine shelves that line an off-white room. Clean but not spotless, warm, cozy, intimating walls that seem to caress the binding of these books, each kissed by the powdery texture of this protective surface. Wooden shelves whose grain and weave hint of their own stories untold, unknown,  unread, unrejoiced, unfelt, unexulted carry these books like the cradling arms of a mother, delicate yet steadfast.

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His smile was quickly-given. It was beaming, dentally-proud, overflowing like glinting shards begging for flesh. The knives were sharpened and ever-ready, to present, to perform for his captive audience. It was, after all, a Pan-American one. It may seem duchenne, but it is half-meant and wholly fallacious. Like a pat without pressure, or an embrace without pull. He knew this, and kept this knowledge akin to a trade secret.

His composure was perfection, his words precise, an ensnaring spiel practiced to every nuance, flection and manner. This was the only way he knew, to parade and haggle by the sweetness of his promises, through the cunning of his misdirections. He was singular in may respects, poised and elegant, with a slight awkwardness approximated for good measure.

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Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.
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David Cronenberg

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In answer to this post.

In the anarchy of ardor affairs, the choice of professing one’s intentions and emotions to another is always a decision replete with second-guessing and reservations. Self preservation prescribes a certain balance between tact and control that often laying out one’s cards objectively dismisses. Once you fail to keep your emotions at bay, and allow the other party a glimpse of a future you seek with him or her, the ball leaves your court. Vulnerability becomes the brand etched on one’s chest, where underneath a heart trembles in anticipation and anxiety.

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Listen to yourself. This escalating level of self-deprecation is all too disconcerting. To rally against fate with her supposed transgressions is a grave misunderstanding of what she truly has conspired to afford you. Do not presume that just because solitude has been your longstanding companion that there were no attempts on her part to bring you positive syzygies. Lest you assume that the emotionality your portray is meant to mask a deeper, grander scheme, then I must abide by this charade you play.

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In response to end of days.

Continued from apocalypsis I.

So I sat beside him.

Having no impulsion to assert my presence, I made do with just the act of being near him, with him. When mere millimeters of space defined our gap, it felt like he was in a place so distant, and removed from this, from here, from now. I wanted to be in that place, in his mind. To reside in the expanse of his ideas that seemed to consume his eyes. But here I was, a stuttering fool, without even the decency to ask for the permission of sitting beside him.

His mug lay empty nearby. A necessary detail that remained unnoticed. Well, nothing to lose. So I took the mug. In any case, I’m getting my own cup anyway. And seeing how he’s so engrossed in his book, it would be sacrilegious to ask or even point it out. With our mugs in tow, I went down to find the line at the counter deserted. Looks like sizygy does happen in real life. I hurried back upstairs to that outdoor balcony to find him holding my book at the page where I left it, and him continually reading his own tome. Like a choreographed dance, I reached out my hand to retrieve my book from him, while offering the freshly filled mug with the other. He looked up, reached out for his caffeine, and smiled.

Such a sweet, sweet smile.

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In response to end of days.

It was a Saturday.

And like most Saturdays, I found my weary feet dragging my tired soul into that respite of intellect and entertainment that affords me to suspend my cumbersome realities, the bookstore. In its hallowed halls and scarred stacks I seek the sanctum sanctorum of my imagination. In the tomes of geniuses past and present I achieve the impossible. The unbelievable. The unfathomable. There, where the world ceases its hurried revolutions, and time is but a memory of little efficacy, I bury my thoughts, purge my emotions, and divulge my mind.

Once again, the fiction section found me lost in volumes of worlds achievable, and dreams plausible. Unlike most Saturdays though, I found myself in the company of another whose preoccupation with the absurd and fantastic threatens to rival my own. The memory of that afternoon eludes me now, shifty and effervescent in the annals of my narrative. All I could muster to reclaim are the innocuous details that swayed my attention. His brisk confident walk, the gait that betrays his stature, and the precarious method he held his cigarette.

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A single yes, is equivalent to a thousand no's.

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Bianca Oliganza
on Boys' Night Out, Magic 89.9

Image from here.

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Maybe you want it too, the same way I did. Maybe I had but only a chance to say it, and my own anxiety failed me. I could’ve claimed it, professed it. But I didn’t.

I’m weak. Much weaker than you could imagine. Much more human than what my words would illustrate. Now regrets blanket me, the sole warmth that spell a tale that never got played. Maybe tomorrow would be different. Maybe I won’t be the same person, or you won’t be there to remind me of my own shortcomings.

But for all its worth, I really did want to.

In a room with no walls, where light is felt but not seen, a child slumbers peaceful. Lying in fetal and strewn across crumpled heaps, he dreams lucid and exquisite visions. Blanketed by a quilt of dripping parchments, and scored vellum, of gaudy canvasses and soiled newsprints, he is kept balmy. There, here, in this space of nothingness he can exist oblivious to the enmities of the world, devoid of the encumbrances of being and of becoming.

Hidden in a labyrinth of exotic sikats as intricate as Marrakech, in forgotten dunes as distant as Petra, across mountains of pallid barrenness, this room lies. From its window of twigs and emaciated leaves, an ocean heaves immense and amorphous. An infinite lullaby of waves and foam shower his deep eyes. Moist from the winds that playfully tussle his locks, the child awakens and begins to hum a faint melody imperceptible but there.

An aria begging to be heard. An incomplete tune seeking impervious ears.

The melody, vague and foreign, is unintelligible. Fragments of lines and thoughts, cryptic and dense. Their sounds a crescendo of fibrous tapestries luxuriant and unfinished. He persists, perseveres, with the guttural imploring of a fallen angel, a castrati. A dead language unspoken, unheard, unlamented.

Lachrymose and stirring, this fecund melody is swept by the winds. Sublimating into the ether of his eternal sunrise. Glaring and resonant across the expanse of this nothingness. His voice becoming the scape, the sand, the sea, the serenity.

Yet he remains in this place, somewhere, nowhere, his Neverwhere.

Image from here.

Vesper vision, voraciously vexed,
Lithe and lewd, it’s lighted low.
Proudly precocious, paraded the priest
Garish gestures of Gomorrah go.

Casting callous caresses crass
Across the arid arrhythmia of April,
In intimate ills and illicit impasse,
Erasing emotions, explicit and evil.

But beneath the barren boisterous banter
Of offered oils and olden orifices,
Skinning sensuality superficially, suture
The tragic treatise of torture and trespasses.

Humble host of horrid haze
Yearning for youth and yesterday’s yeses,
Dying dyslexic in a despondent daze,
Morose and mangled in man’s messes.

Find this fabled fetus fettered.
Free this feeling, forever. Forgiving.

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Aegri Somnia - Lat. A sick man's dreams. From Horace, Ars Poetica, 7. Loosely, "troubled dreams".

Image from here.

I felt the length of hair brushing against my arm, as I delicately lowered his neck unto the awaiting cushion. Our eyes were transfixed, glued to the abyss of the gaze. I was mesmerized by the beauty that lay before me, and the possible rapture that might follow. The eyes were black, as deep as the evening sea, but the gaze was captivating and enthralling. Effortless. Each moment an eternity as I try to fathom the images concocted in the head of this suitor, this accidental partner, this serendipitous sage that melded my half-broken spirit, sweeping me with his nuanced comprehension and his disarming manner of disagreement. The methodology of this meeting was unplanned, and impulsive. Yet here we were, in silken sheets, sharing his bed.

The kiss came as a surprise. It was quick, treacherous. Like a thief hoodwinking the oblivious. I was surprised at the audacity. He didn’t falter, merely squinted his eyes. Those beautiful feline eyes that disappear whenever he smiles, replaced by the solitary dimple along his left chin. He was perfection, I was awkward and sloppy. He had godlike features, complete and defined; I was a mishmash of half-baked physicality. He cursed loudly as I bit his lower lip, blood was tasted. Saccharine.

I guided his head into my chest, offering my skin to feed his hunger. He dove in, tongue-darting, tasting my sweat in every flick. Devouring my nipples and sliding his suave tongue. Down, deeper, harder to where my loins begged for attention. He was gentle, almost fragile. I reached for his hand as he slithered below. His eyes never leaving mine. I reached his hand, and our fingers danced. He kept me locked between those palms, and would remain attached at hand until daylight spreads our defiance apparent.

He took me in, all of me. I could feel his mouth quivering under the weight and immensity of my oneness. With much effort, he was able to succeed. I was thrilled into delirious moans, he was adept. The scene was surreal, like inter-species breeding. Bestiality deluxe. And yet surprisingly familiar, as if our bodies were meant to entwine, that we were parts of a missing whole, a chapter torn from each others’ books, the solution to a conundrum discovered finally.

We kissed again, this time asserting my dominance over his athleticism. The objective being to pleasure him beyond his capacity to understand. I let my lips do the talking, tracing his landscape at the tip of my tastebuds, every fold and crease, from his elven ears to that crevasse leading to his loins. The devil’s horns, their called. I was voracious, seething with a passion that threatened to combust us both. Sheets were ruffled, clothes torn off quickly. A violent moment.

I spread his limbs apart, seeking that point where convergence is conclusive. I let him embrace my back with his limbs. Long slender and lanky, he was awkward as I was. Yet it didn’t matter. I was over him, as he was over my mind. I was on top of him, as he deftly controlled the desires of my flesh. Fiddling my latent desires into fruition, actuation. Into his domicile, and into him. He was beaming. His ginger nibbling at my arm frail, as I mounted his totality.

“Are you sure?”

A nod.

I entered, and he was willing. A slight struggle, but patience came with its prize. He took me in without hesitation. And guided me with his limbs. Trembling, I traversed that bridge that joined us whole. We started to moan, I kissed him to silence the betrayal of his voice. I had a hand at the headboard, supporting my gargantuan weight, while the other beside us both, holding his free hand. Devoid of the violence my physical intrusion portrayed.

It was, of all unimaginable places, at a bookstore that we met. He was reading Barrie, I was browsing Carroll. It seemed absurd that we find ourselves smiling at each other across the stacks. I left the area and settled across my favorite lounge two-seater sofa at the smoking veranda. He followed not much later, asking if he can sit beside me. I was too engrossed with the Cheshire’s grin to notice his approach. He sat down. Our sides almost touching, defeating the gap by the humble scarcity of space. My reading was unencumbered by his presence, it merely felt homey and comforting to have him beside me. Although I have to admit his scent was musky and earthy, and his glasses glinted as I lifted my own. But I figured, sharing a seat wouldn’t hurt. Soon pages were piling on the other side of our tomes, and I realized my mug was empty, yet my caffeine craves were insatiable. I sighed. He excused himself, I gave a half nod, and went on reading.

Moments later, he came back, with two fresh mugs and his book in tow, and laid the other mug beside me. I smiled. He smiled. His eyes disappeared, replaced by his dimple. It was beautiful. He was beautiful.

For weeks we would see each other in that same bookstore, nodding and acknowledging each others’ presence, but neither ever having the courage to strike a conversation. I was growing weak waiting, he was being impossible and impatient. Mugs were shared, opinions declared, but an invitation to meet beyond these academic environs remained latent.

Months pass, every now and then he would lay his head over my shoulder when we read, or sometimes I would on his. But no words were spoken. No numbers shared, or emails exchanged. No details. Just a weekly reading, and the occasional mug. Then he asked, out of nowhere. One Thursday afternoon.

“Will you keep me company tonight?”

It was my turn to nod.

The scene came back. I was in him, and he was me. The gravity of the act threatening to consume us both. Every heave, every thrust, every grind, and pump, he was there to accept me. The sheets crumpled beneath us, simultaneously soft and delicate, brittle and piercing. He dug his teeth into my shoulder I released my emotion into his being. I felt his gush, his release arriving almost at the same moment. It was wet and hot, and yet comforting. It didn’t make sense, and I was thankful it didn’t. It didn’t have to. Reason has no place here, now. Spent, I guided him around my bulbous stomach, never letting go of his hand. And he knew exactly where to nestle. Between my legs, and into my heart.

We were feline forms spread atop an alley wall. Engulfed in the absolute bliss of our sensual violence. Entrenched in the depths of a union hurried beyond the pervasive dusk. The only witness to our weakness are our glasses strewn haphazardly on the side table. The solitary bedside lamp lit the sheets that sheltered us like spotlight on an empty amphitheatre. Contemplative and convulsive on its silent perspective. Our clothes scattered clumsily across the wenge floors, their ruffled softness a foil against the ensuing ravaged physiognomy of our act.

Kisses were famished, hungrily devouring each others’ breaths. The parched lips parting into convoluted forms to accommodate the segue of our tongues. Consuming spit like flames to the warmth of embers, fuel to an embalming pain that must be fed. Feeding off the hunger of both. The gluttony immensely uncompromising. Muffling the screams of two.

Hours pass. I forgot how long, all that mattered was he was sleeping soundly, tranquil and content, and I was in him, into him, and of him.

Dawn was breaking, sunlight violating the serene drapes that shielded our nakedness. An alarm goes off in the adjoining unit. We didn’t mind. People were starting to get up, frantic to regain their lead in the rat race of life, crazed and eyeing the prize of success and adulation. We kept still, in each others’ embrace, oblivious to the urban chaos resuming its velocity. Here, we were complete and content. It didn’t matter that it was a workday. It didn’t matter that our morning breath tasted of coffee and cigarettes, and last night’s cheesecake. It didn’t matter we were at a loss for words, or conversations to engage in. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.

He looked right at me, adjusting his torso to face my sleepy demeanor across the covers that laid witness to last night. His eyes melting me into the lump of clay against the deluge of spring. Debauched, passionate and irrational. Consuming, absolute. His eyes were searching, pleading, almost begging. A question lingers, but he doubts his decision to verbalize it. Attempting to allay the anxiety that the preceding evening was a mere lapse of judgment. A, daresay, one-time-only affair. He mustered the courage but his voice was cracked, failing. He uttered finally, a whisper.

“Will you stay?”

I took his hand, the same tired hands my fingers embraced throughout the night, heedful that it may disappear into the ether of day. The same one I refused to let go, through all the positions and actions, movements and meanderings. I brought his hand to my lips, and kissed it softly; letting my mouth taste his saltine skin, and my nose to smell his earthy exhaustion. No hesitation, nor regrets, nor second-guessing. Our eyes met. The words came to my lips, still caressing his hand.

“Yes.”



Image from here.

Saturday.

You’re leaving? He queried.

Was I ever here? The sharp reply. The repetition meant to reiterate the gravity of the words. A double-slap served as cold as the Gobi at the last ice age.

Yes physically I am with you, now, among copious now’s and even more diverse then’s. But was I really here? You had my arms, wrapped in your porcelain skin, every night. But did you have my embrace? You had my body, every inch of its wearied landscape. Every one of my furtive marks, every peak you have challenged, every fold dug and explored. My fluids tasted in every imaginable source, as I have yours, much to my derision. But you never owned my flesh. You’ve tasted my lips, basking in my tongue’s graceful meanderings, and slurped every drop of my salivating urges. But have we ever kissed? Your lips were more consuming, voracious, desperate and passionate than any I’ve ever locked with, yet each seemed more ordinary than the last. I rested my head across your bare heaving chest every night when we’ve retired. Hearing the confident oscillations of your heart, slow and uneventful. Staking its claim and knowing its prize. But have you listened to mine?

Those eyes were piercing, searing his very flesh through sustained moments. Inciting a churning sensation he knows too well. Time’s glacial disposition defies reality, amidst the anarchy of urbane milieus, they stand there. A crowd shuffles hastily, bumping, grinding, grazing and glancing. Yet, their solitude felt most palpable. A purgatorial state where here isn’t here, and the passing of time irrelevant and utterly imperceptible.

His dissonant fingers fidgeting with the ominous sweating trademark. An eternity of anxious hyperventilation stares him at such close-range he can almost hear its deep putrid breathing. Foreboding, and starving to devour his fragility. A vulnerable heart ripe for the picking. Bursting with a mélange of past castings and previous collisions. Its seams loosening its strings, and integrity faltering from its core.

His eyes were welling. The futile struggle to hold back tears coming as an intrusion. He used to be that one that leaves them empty and broken. A tumultuous heap of weeping and begging. Fraught and distraught like children orphaned. His attention, an elixir, poisonous, volatile, intoxicating and addictive. And they were his junkies, banished with a ration inadequate its weight in gold to sustain their sanity and composure. Crawling and groveling for his disinterested affection.

Now, as if fate casted him in the sarcastic tragedy of the year, his eyes were the ones saltine and septic. Melting his knees, with a stoic catastrophe looming. A catalytic degradation of his core, blossoming from the depths of his false pride. Crumbling. As if he was them. But much more desperate, and defeated.

Can’t we talk this out? His plea.

Why? What for? I’m not as fickle-minded as you. Was the rebuttal.

What changed? He questioned.

Nothing, really. I just woke up and realized this isn’t a dream. And you’re not my dream. Silence.

Fingers became still, their breaths misting the windshield that humid summer afternoon. The expressway sped in front of them, endless, boundless and meaningful. Like a destination, offering to their wanderlust, a pleasant discovery alluring and seductive. The cardiac surgery unfolding before his eyes, with a dexterity he used to muster. He hoped they just kept on driving, sans the trajectory or logic he verbalizes often. That the least reason he needed was no more than to keep them in that state. Together.

But he realized, the same exquisite hands weren’t his, and that the gesture they portray aren’t as supportive as he imagined. Because he had seen those before done by the same limbs that terminate his arms. Except now they are at his sides, motionless, catatonic, much like his heart. Caught in mid-sentence, he moved his palms. To the closest set of fingers in front of him. Imploring for a change that is unlikely and unequivocal. A spiteful fate he chanced upon. Not by chance, but by the chances and indulgences he took, and forcibly exacted, from the person in front of him.

It came as a surprise. The motion was swift, agile and elegant. The intent forceful and decided. No second-guessing like last time. Suddenly the car was imploding, crushing him in a heap of shards and shrapnel. A scene recited before his glassine eyes. Surreal and expedient. Abrupt like a passing breeze. Hot flash of humility on his oblivious and derelict existence. He didn’t see it coming. Now he can’t bare to see it leaving. It was immediate and firm, complete and crisp.

Thud. The car door closed.

Silence.

Suffocating emptiness. Like the passenger seat.

Capture me. In the cataclysmic chasms of your chestnut stare. Effervescent and elucidate simultaneously, crisp and crumbling across the lines of your fingers. Melt me, with the enrapturing flames engulfing from the bosoms of indifference.

My dyslexia feeds your immortality. The more I steal the defeated glances, the more surreal you become. Beautiful and bare. A god beneath the heavens, vengeful and bitter, and elegant and stubborn. Caressing the earth with a discretion beyond your divinity, bringing forth ejaculations of inspired debauchery. For men to consume, and for you to observe. You create worlds, but never inhabit them. You draw the scene, and cast the curtain.

We touch, yet your preoccupation with the man before us is apparent in the frigid sensation of your palms. Holding but untangling, touching but unrelenting. I catch a glimpse of your eyes. Deep like melted chocolate, sublimating and suffocating, piercing and imploring, welling in its saltine depths.

Then I realized, it was a mirror.



Image from here.

Do you wonder? Across sultry evenings
in the consolation of your sheets,
alone and warm yet piercingly bare,
that another longs for the same
space between
your skin and the waifs and wafts of your blanket?

Do you worry? That his perplexing gaze
portends no more than the amusement of a man.
Childish and uneventful, appraising
yet uninterested.

A transitory glance that will be forgotten
in the next minute, but will haunt you for days to come.
In stupefaction of an enthralled imagination caught
in the florid kiss of longing.

Desperate for touch.
Delusional for a connection.

Do you comprehend? That
meaning does not equate with motion.
That actions are mere translations of an underlying alacrity,
or lack thereof.
And you are a pawn in the chessboard of your own doing,
shortchanging by solitude, overshadowed by overzealousness.

Because we seek
what we cannot waver, and sought that will falter.
The anarchical machinations of a distressed
freefalling existence. Latent
of capitulations set by our own karmic gestures.

Clandestine caresses of a deceptive delirium,
Distraught. Deranged. Despotic.

A closure creating chaos.
When the stubborn psyche refuses rejection.

Image from here.

To The One Remaining Unfound,



Do you hear my pleas? When night strokes her frigid embrace amidst the chasms of my eternal solitude, do you feel her grip as well? In the confusion of continuity across an existence dynamically mediocre, do you find yourself bored and bared too?

My minstril is weak, yet it is persevering. I only hope you find me in time before the melodies I inhabit are expunged in totality. I shan’t lose hope, only that you allow me the indulgence of knowing that you, too, yearn the same. That this longing I must brave sways you as much as it does me. And when fate allows our paths to cross, be as observant as you are. To recognize the spirit that caresses the same arias, as the violin that beats in syncophation nestled in my chest.

I am better for the most part. There are days when the reality that maybe a lifetime is deficient to transcend our physical abyss is a salve worth considering, for in the knowledge that you too find this ironic truth palpable can we purposely go on with our own lives. Serenity gained not from defeat but from conceding. Not from defiance but from subservience. That destiny unwilling, but eventually will falter. Maybe not in this realm, or the next, neither in this plane or the one parallel to it, but eventually.

Because our mortality draws a line so exacting and unequivocal it must scare you too, to discover that our hearts are doomed to wander aimlessly, creating meaning from melancholy, reason from repetitions, and balance from the barren. It is enough to know that our objectives are similar, and that the cineaste of fate has written a plot that omits the scene where we finally meet. At least the playwright has failed to conclude it, and our epilogue remains unwritten.

There are worse days, such as this one, when my travails span from south to north, seeking the company of people I barely know. Attending a marriage as a familial responsibility, or catering to laborious meetings on a late dinner at a venue replete with couples and partners, engagements and proposals. Reminding that my presence is a mere observance of their own successful theatrics. While mine remains unsung, and the words failing and sublimating continues to be unscripted, unopened, and unpenned. A tragedy effervescent, fleeting and pestering.

It is almost over. The heaves that make me hyperventilate in a frantic daze of sweaty palms and stuttering dyslexia, shivering internally from a psychological cold, swollen in sorrow from the tears that never fall, longing for an absentee touch that may never even emerge. Because you don’t know it yet. Or have been pre-occupied in someone else’s embrace. Or the realization that I am what you seek have escaped, and continually avoids, your consciousness.

But do not worry.

I am neither mad, nor enraged, tired nor exhausted. I will continually await you, in the blinding alleys of the night, and the searing brilliance of the day, in the corners of my sight, and the myopia of your ways. That one day, fate will be agreeable and allow the opus we seek to perform, finally a voice to which it can be played. That the scene long left unwritten in the drivels of drafts and soiled parchments of time be finished so we can conclude our lives in the ever-after; resilient against the curtain fall and the critiques of our audience. That your hand will seek mine, in a hold that will brave against the passing of time and the weathering of our youth, so tight and Herculean that fate herself with bind it in acceptance. That senescence will fail to part our hearts.

That your breath, will be mine. And your eyes will be the ones that welcome my everyday. Clear, tearless, confident and certain.

Because when this is all over, you would still have me. In your arms, and in your hands. My heart willing and loyal, complete and congruent, in a beating rhythm that you will distinguish amidst the false and the frivolous. But for now, I remain in your dreams. And you in mine.



As always,
The One Continually Awaiting

Introduced in The Beginning.
Continued in Vesper Meeting.

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Inauspiciousness spelled the theme of that cycle. The nights seemed colder and harsher as the lanceolate foliage of Elysium turns a dull brown despite the endless downpour of the preceding fortnights. Wuyue was gradually sublimating to the ethereality of nothingness. She has had very little improvement since the last bestowing cycle. Ararat can do none more than lay witness to her degenerative progress. First the cerulean of her skin turning into the pale flesh-tones of a freshly-caught salmon, then her hair slowly turns from silvery to pitch black. She has lost appetite even for the gluchan she used to devour with much gusto. These days subsistence consists of a few drops of nightdew and a waft of edelweiss.

The antikythera clicked with a foreboding reverberation. It was as if an omen was being sent, yet its discrete nature ensures that none would take heed. It was a silent harbinger ticking amidst the anarchy of the impending cyclic closure. Only meant to remind, but never to remember. It was a dissolution that will find a voice after a segue have long passed. A song finding its rhythm when it’s player has freed the instrument.

Wuyue was fast sublimating. Her palms cold from the struggle to remain in this plane. The dews of the edelweiss was no longer effective in alleviating her pain. She was almost gone.

“Take my minstrel,” implored Ararat.
“No,” she replied.
“I beg you Wuyue. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t. As long as you’re here, I’ll be here. In you. With you.”
“Please. Here won’t make sense if here is without you.”

He bared his chest, revealing the glint that cerulean vesper annals speak of. The Law of Ethos was now in play. He reached in, pulling his minstril from the depths of his spirit. Beautiful. Sporadic. Effervescent. Perfect. Ararat was moving quickly. He knew he had but a few moments before the quanta-cycle is concluded. He already missed the chance when transcendence came and Wuyue first refused. He held out his minstril in haste, ready to bestow it. Tears were flowing from his burning peridot eyes. His lips trembling as luthian phrases spelled out in chant. He could taste the salt. There was no time.

“Take it,” he begged.
“I love you Ararat.”

Then she was gone.

Suddenly it came to him. The events of the past few fortnights. Her dwindling health. The loss that his fragile heart could not bear. The trauma that perseveres and engulfs. Complete irrevocable. He lost Wuyue, but in the process he has also lost his minstril. Both cannot be regained. He knew that very moment that only time will tell when her fate will be his. Yet surprisingly no fear crept. He’d rather be with her in oblivion than spend an eternity in solitude.

So he waited. Days in contemplation. Waiting for his eventual end. He lost interest in the luthian scripts. In the gluchan he used to cook. Meaning was devoid, a distant and forgotten throbbing. Emotion were absent, a mere weakness to prolong a pain. Days became months, months became years. Yet his virile posture remained. And the end he longed for never came. Wuyue became a reminder, then a memory, then a feeling, and finally a hymn. Subtle yet omnipresent. Palpable yet intangible. She was gone, and so was his will.

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Then one evening, the heaven’s wailed. A wail so painful it almost brought him to tears. Piercing like Wuyue’s last utterance. And a faint sobbing was heard outside his abode’s threshold.

That our family be able to finally have a decent meal together, complete in attendance minus the usual bickering and squabbles. That we survive, even once, a full meal without pushing each others’ buttons. Physically getting everyone at the same table at the same time is already a gargantuan feat. It would be a miracle if we could actually sit in peace and enjoy the feast me, and my mom and dad have prepared.

Finally meet someone either serendipitously by fate’s sinuous selection or capriciously through my own efforts. Someone; not as a mate, or a partner, or a fubu, or any of various titles that define the relation of one to another, but rather someone to bounce my subversions off. Someone I can look forward to spending time with, without the complexities of trying to get into each others’ pants, or the restrictions inscribed in formally dating exclusively (even though reality spells this so blatantly). Someone who would prefer my company, despite of my adiposities, or my nuanced eccentricities, or my darting opining, or my half-broken heart, or my bruised perceptions.

To receive a sincere and unexpected hug. That compressive warmth that says it’s ok, you’re safe, and everything’s going to be fine. In spite of the fact that neither of these insinuations ever hold truth. To achieve that suspension of disbelief in order to quell the lingering leit motif of melancholia.

The alleviation of my parents’ deteriorating health.

For a brother, a better grasp of fiscal reality and the understanding that I too get exhausted sometimes playing breadwinner in a household where my opinion holds little sway against his uncompromising dominion and vicious disposition.

The virtue of empathy and the capacity for compassion and acceptance for those whose days are filled with somnolent distractions against the backdrop of inner turmoil.

Personally, to achieve that consuming conviction that it’s ok and to wake up someday believing this with total abandon and complete admittance. A clarity transcending the undercurrent of disbelief.

And lastly, to set a bounded heart free.

Introduced in The Beginning.

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That evening the heavens did wail. Her downpour was forceful and persevering, like a flood that threatened to engulf the whole of Elysium Fields. The raindrops trickled its turquoise blanket across the lush fabric of the fields, cold and comforting, silently heaving in the blowing winds enveloping all in a sodden solace undeniably foreboding. In their mattress of turf Ararat’s embrace felt the most comforting to Kundush. Pulling Ararat closer, he could almost taste the ethereal scent of his breath cascading behind his shivering neck. Sending waves of caresses that still his heaving heart.

The mist edges its glacial claws tugging between their entwined bodies. Exquisite memories restored before his tightly closed eyes. Of that vesper night almost twelve annums ago when the very same heavens wailed beyond his comprehension. The solices where all too bright in that darkness, each in a symphony of its own, casting vivid beacons amidst the pitch black expanse. A vacuum filled with the opus of the heavens oscillating in a rhythm that mesmerizes.

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He lost track of time, and the circadian cycles willfully ignored to remain in the path that his weary limbs needed to draw. He was cold, and painfully so. After almost three fortnights of torrential rains that surprised the elders. All those nights he was trapped in the Illuminatia, in a desperate attempt to salvage the manuscripts he had gingerly crafted as arch-scribe of the Elysia Seta. Yet he persevered, despite a hunger that threatens to cannibalize him, a sublimating hope that focuses dread, and a fleeting energy that he continually chased.

He was weak, famished and frigidly exhausted, and the split second that proceeded when he tripped on the cobbled pavement felt like a millennia in slow motion. The few scrolls he was able to reclaim from heaven’s tears tossed in midair and beyond his reach. They fell a few feet away on the puddle across the pavement, soiled and spoilt. Their poetic verses and florid illustrations dissolved in the morning dew and diluted by the pouring rain. Gone.

His legs finally gave and crumbled on the muddy bricks. Tears started flowing mixing with his saltine sweat and dripping with the pouring rain. He could taste the defeat in his lips as he clutched the disintegrating pages. Fumbling to remember what images were inscribed moments ago. Without realizing, his eyes began to swell and the sobs became wails. Calling to the heavens for a verdict undeserved.

He was unaware of a shadow approaching. An agile phantom.

“Are you ok?,” the man asked.
“I wish I was,” Kundush said.
“Why don’t you come inside and get dry. It’s freezing out here.” was the welcomed gesture.
“I can’t. I have to retrieve my scrolls.”

Without a pause, the man dove into the puddle, gracefully picking up the scrolls and fragments from the mud that was slowly thickening. Kundush stared, unable to comprehend the generosity and kindness this delightful man gave so willingly. The man was now covered in mud and sweat, yet his face remained as calm as the afternoon three fortnights ago prior to this deluge. With no hesitation, he proceeded to collect every last fragment lost in the drifting waves. When all was retrieved, he took the bunch of scrolls and manuscript fragments, wrapped them in the gauze that was tucked earlier in his rear pocket, and placed it carefully under his robes.

He held out his hand to Kundush.

Once standing, he took him in and wrapped his robes around both of them. Warm and cozy. Surreal yet utterly real. He held him between his shoulders to temper the delirious chills Kundush was now having.

“Now, can we come inside? I made fresh, hot gluchan.” he queried.
"Yes." was Kundush's muffled affirmation.
"Name's Ararat."
"Kundush."

Unconsciously Kundush reached inside the robes, and took Ararat’s arms to pull him closer. His warmth was relaxing, sending his frustrations and grief of the past three fortnights into oblivion. Therapeutic and timely. As he was led to the threshold of the house, Ararat started to hum a melody Kundush have heard before in the carallian annuals. A delicate smile slowly emerged from Kundush’ frail and tired lips. And it stayed there throughout the night.