dog and moon

the story of the dog and the moon.  it's already a failure.  it's a failure seven times over, and seems to be worse every time, and the last time, the seventh, is the worst of all.  and it's hard to know if it was the last last time or just the next last time.  so many times.  it bears repeating.  every time is different.  every time is different.  it beats against the back of his chest, relentless as a dog.  he is the dog,  she is the dog.  there are two people in this story.  it's a failure.  it's an utter failure.  the telling is a failure, this is a failed telling.  he was the dog and she was the dog, and now they both still are, and there's the moon, and they can't reach it.  they knew that going in.  they knew that they couldn't reach the moon going into it.  they knew that much, but they acted like it was not true.  the story gets sadder.  it gets sadder even though it's nothing very different, there's nothing very different between the seventh time and the first time, but it's sadder because it keeps repeating in the same way, they keep doing the same things, and it's sad because that means they are both so very hopeful, that all they have is hope, that the moon is too far away and so all they have is hope.  and there's a sense that the hope might be enough to replace the moon but it is not.  but it means something.  because hope pulls on the heartstrings of the sea, and the sea has a special pact with the moon, and they are both very hopeful but it's still the saddest story because it repeats so much and they don't even recognize that there is a causal connection.  something moves in their repetitions.  something shifts in their back and forth.  something very far away.  something that has to do with the sea and the moon.  and something they can't do anything about, but has everything to do with everything they hope for.  and that's the story of the dog and the moon.  that's the whole story of the dog and the moon. 

more or less

And then there’s this part here.  It’s all in the same white flood of memory, the backlog that is downloading for some reason.  Because it is sad, I will alienate myself by calling the “I” a “he” (like every other great canonical work of great impotence).  ((haha)).  (((hahaha fuck you dude))).  There is a her, a she, who is not you, because when I mean you I will still say “you” because it’s always you. 

And always will be.

At least so far.

Oh, that was almost cutting or biting, but I was going to say something so much worse, you can imagine.  Something snappy and sharp, like “You better watch out girl you are about to get eclipsed,” but that’s not true.

At least not so far.

Snap my fingers in a z for-ma-tion….

The dress, the dress in particular, the one mentioned in that famous play “Desiring Flight,” the one that makes butts look big, bought in a downtown boutique in a city in Southern California, and bought to go clubbing later that night, but not with me, and then sitting in the car while she’s driving and me wondering how the handles work, and if I have enough money in my pocket to open the door and roll out and spend some hours on the town by myself before getting a cab back to my godfather’s house (snd I don’t, I just spent it on a horel room the night before)  ((I learned so much about the hospitality industry in those days)). 

And then thinking, in the car, how other people are advising me to watch my back around her, that she’s playing me, that she’s manipulating me, and then there’s a thought, this thought that I forgot, the one that kept me in the car.  I agreed to this, with all the talk about harlots, I agreed that this is how it would be, and the old men in my head tell me to not let her do this, and I think, “Do what?  Have her own sexual identity?  Explore and express it the way she wants to express it?”  And I do want her to do this, and as long as we’re aware of disease, and careful, then there is no trouble here at all, except for the fact of an unbearable longing and a constant itching and the constant scratching that we do together, this is exactly the kind of gender trouble that brings flesh in contact with other flesh and something that was only a metaphor becomes true, it’s big trouble, big big trouble, and I like big trouble, and I like the butt that dress can barely hold, that I can barely hold.

I almost died there, and I almost learned something there.

Now we’re back in Esenada, she’s driving her car around hills by the ocean, and it’s raining.  And she’s touching my hand and she’s touching the shifter, and I feel her hand wrap around mine when we’re turning sharp corners, the moment when both hands should be on the wheel.

And she says, “How does it end?  What’s the last scene in Unbearable Lightness?”

And I am so very happy then, and she’s so very happy then, or at the very least, our heads are calm, and I remember how that question seemed ironic at the time, and even though all the fishermen thought we were on our Luna de Miel, I knew it was done, and it didn’t matter if it was over for a good reason or not.  It was complete.

And when I wake up from that daydream, I am aware that you and I, we never had that moment, in all the perfect moments where the moon spoke to us on a hot night with mad dogs chasing ghost birds, there was never a moment when I felt like this had been completed.

almost this

It was like this.
I was sleeping on the floor at the foot of a wheelchair, electric, and when my friend tilts his legs it bumps me just a little.  We're watching androids marching over humans who are too round to walk, their skeletons buried somewhere deep in their flesh, and the milky white countenance of the robot who was worthy of love, and her name was...
Daydream.  On the floor, it was like this.
We're at that booth in Tijuana, maybe in was Ensenada, I think it was TJ, that booth where they sell tea sets made of ceramic or clay and sell them in those woven bags, the kind you get in deeper parts of Mexico, except everywhere they have them now.  You wouldn't know that, necessarily.  You should know that.  I mean.  I would like it if you would know that, only because you knowing that would mean that I took you there, that we spent a significant amount of time there.
I know someone else could take you there.
It's not about that, I don't care if they do, really, if that's what happens then that's what happens, and it would be nice to be thinking, "no, I hope she goes because it would make her happy, it doesn't matter who she's with," except I'm not thinking that because it is about me taking you there, it is about that.  That's not very complicated.  It's not about power, it's about things that make you happy.  Uh-huh.
We're there in that part where they sell those, except here the we has nothing to do with you, this is from before that, maybe before you were born in another lifetime, in this lifetime it was the year before I met you.  In this lifetime, this was then in this lifetime, before I met you in this lifetime.
I was sleeping on the floor and remembering this, very close, I mean very clear and close, I could clearly see her hands very close, and she was touching the bags, and I could see the colors of each of them, like I could remember everything, like I could go back there, into that moment, into that hotel, into that sleeve of a memory that I filled that held me all through that night and into the night following that one, it was as clear as that, and if she could keep her hand still just long enough I could jump through it and hold it, and she always moves her hand, and it's though I accidentally let go of the balloon, that moment when you realize it's going away into the air forever, and her hand moves and that sucks air from the back of my throat.
This is the sound that would begin a cry except I'm not crying and don't have to fight it from coming, I'm not crying.  I'm not thinking about crying.  It's just the sound, it's that sound, and the same sound that the back of my throat makes when it's starting to turn from a puppy dog whine into something more serious and urgent, we both have sounds, I know it's not a contest, that was supposed to be sweet, we both make sounds, here I'm talking about you, not her.
And I'm not thinking about crying and even if I were, even if it were about that, it's a moment in time that got trapped, trapped because her hand moved, and because that moment inside there is one where we are still talking, and we're not, and I am thinking that there are fewer things more painful than reaching a point of not talking.
So I'm glad we're talking.  Except not right now so much.  I think that might be ok.  I don't think that has anything to do with sounds that escape out of the back of my throat when I remember things that are closed and are starting to cake over with salt and sand and the clay of a thousand broken pots.

I'll fix this

Daydream where girl in Mexico is buying pottery in a woven bag.  On a beach where everyone thinks we are on our honeymoon. 
Lobster.  Remembering details suddenly like these objects are right here.  And then the conversation about unbearable lightness.  Ok more on this its just an outline.  Don't read it twice, there's nothing in it about you yet...

part nine of six

(Things were kind of upheaved, and there wasn't anything to go on to make sense out of anything, and all he knew was that all the usual places to put levers were moved, and all the familiar identities had stopped working.  Like so many people who get caught in a storm where there is no rain, it was impossible to navigate because it looked simple.)

(HE says something very self-indulgent.)

HE: I know these threads aren't cut, but they look cut and they feel cut and the sounds are all sounds of threads when they are getting cut, but that bird in the belly hurt for so many days in a row that it finally got old, and stopped waking me up at night.  And my little girl knocks on the window where I'm smoking to the moon, and she's showing me drawings of a woman with the head of a bird.  It's an uneasy time.  Five days ago I became a godfather again, stuck in a repetition of that ceremony that brings things back to life.  I can see the ghosts of the things that speak to me at night, and they tell me to pay attention to my hands, to make things and let the enchantments come from them.  It's not that I'm out of spells, but I don't have any good ideas about what I want to see next, and that means that I'm clearing things away, and cleaning up the things that have been silent on the floor of my room for too long.  And there are some mornings when I see the road in front of me with the eyes of a bird, and there are lots of days when my eyes are as sharp as a cat's, and all the muscles in my wrists and back are growing tight, ready to do something, ready to make some graceful forward motion that will put me back into this life, in this body, on this road. 

(Now he's on fire, in front of a class, and he's talking too fast because the ones who are paying attention are thinking too fast.)

HE: So, uh, there's reasons why repetition is comfortable, and why it can make you uneasy, and when you see the repetition outside yourself, repeating itself, well, that's uncanny, that's the uncanny, that's what you're doing, but you tell yourself you're doing it by yourself, so it doesn't matter so much, no one knows, but when you see it, when it plays out in front of you, everyone knows, and you get that feeling that the clues are all there, and everyone else in the world has put them together, and they're waiting for you to come to the same conclusion: either this has to change, or this has to stop, because it can't go on like this forever, because it can't, because we die, because everyone dies.  Every love story has an end, and it's always somewhere close to the grave, or in the grave.  Dead lovers might come singing, but eventually you'll see them yourself in the grave.  That's the best reason to burn yourself into the side of a rock, and let the oil in the skin leave the mark behind, because we always leave traces.

STUDENT/Objet A:  Twenty years ago I would have said I don't understand you, because you aren't in love and you've never taken drugs.  But today I don't understand you because you haven't played my video games.

(They all laugh at how ironic this is, and what a horrible situation we are living in, and how this classroom, oh, it's so much like life.)

PETIT STUDENT A: Have you ever brought anything back from the dead?

HE: Like a monster?  Like a Frankenstein Monster?

(And they are all so thrilled, because they've heard about this, he has a reputation in the academy for doing things that others wouldn't do, because they are afraid of tenure.  But no, not him, not with his alcoholic past, his motorcycle, and his wounded hand, no, no not him.)

HE: I have not thought about that in years, kiddies, not in years, but oh, there was a time, oh there was a time.

PETIT ESTUDIENNE BB: I want poetry, what happened to the poetry, something changed, there's no more poetry in my days, and your tongue is rough and all formulas and predictions.  What did you see by the side of the road today, and what did that tell you about who you are?

HE: I saw the skin of a monster, freshly shed, and it reminded me of another morning, a moonless morning, just like this one.

PETIT ESTUDIENNE BB: The sun is in the way, it's between me and God, and I'm stuck in time, praying to that.

(But, oh, hoho, this student is not who she pretends to be, she is a monster in disguise, and when he recognizes her, he keeps the secret, and suddenly there is fire.)

(And on the desk in front of god and everybody, a monster comes back to life.  And his hands are filled with oil, oil that starts to burn under his skin, and the hair under his shirt starts to turn in impossible directions.)

HE: In all of the work, there is always a wolf somewhere just beneath the surface.  The skin of the painting, the plaster on the statue, and the border between the subject and object, they all work together to disguise the wolf.  This place, this stuff, this discourse, is populated by monsters. 

PETIT ESTUDIENNE BB: I used to think that when we recognized ourselves we became whole, but whenever I see myself, I am all hunger, and entirely incomplete.

HE: That's just gorgeous.

PETIT ESTUDIENNE BB:  And when ghosts come back from the sea, they don't bring any cooling water, they come with fire.

STUDENT A: We know this.  We know the formula.  Nothing makes desire, it can't be created, only reanimated, and that's why I'm wondering if I can get extra credit for telling you about my weekend.

HE:  You sure can, laddy, you sure can.

(And they all gather in the antechamber where sophisticated ladies smoking pipes are talking again about Rimbaud and Kerouac and Baudelaire, because it can never get too French, but spring still refuses to open her mouth, because the dance in time is still pregnant with longing, as slow and sticky as molasses, and the things of the grave are moving aside for the things of grace, to infiltrate the too-bright world in a very silent and wondery wandery time.)

(End of lexicon.)

end of play part two

(Oh ho ho ho, kiddies, it's not over, no, not yet.  Not yet at all.  It goes on and it gets much much worse.  First off, the not far away of everything turned out to be very far away, and the longer it went on being not far away, the further away it all started to look, and that's when things started to take a very peculiar turn.  In the first place, there was nothing.  Nothing ahead, and the behind started to look smaller, so much smaller, and it kept getting smaller until the behind looked like nothing at all.  But first, before that even, there was this moment that came up suddenly, and he found himself sitting in the most easily accessible place in the universe, where everything made sense, and this is what happened there.)

(He is sitting in that fashionable way, crossing his legs in the studied gesture of his time and place.  There is a loud thumping on the walls against the insides of his head, and he is dreaming about the things that he could have here if he were somewhere else, if he were someone else, and the list is extravagant and impressive, except for.  Except for the lingering thought that this is exactly where he is supposed to be, because this is the night that nothing happens and nothing changes utterly forever.)

HE: Oh, this is the place of easy accessibility and it is exactly what I thought it was going to be like, and it's horrible, horrible, horrible, I wish my eyes were bleeding but instead it's just like this, just like it is, endless and interminable.

(And of course even that's not true, it's not endless, and it's not endless in any extraordinary way, but one that is entirely mundane.)

(This is what life is like without you.)

(And suddenly, without any warning, there are some figures who appear, and from a distance they appear enormously attractive and terribly interesting, but as they get closer we see that they are absolutely not.  In this theater, which is entirely based on all the best new methods of social change, there can be moments of improvisation.  The performers might take the time to enact a kind of dialogue amongst themselves about the concerns and local politics of the day, and there might be a small argument, and this is the moment when it can open up to the spectactors, who will make suggestions on how this might be resolved.  Except this is not one of those moments.  And if it were, I would shoot myself in the neck with a blowdart, because that's how I roll.  However, there is a possibility that people in the audience may make suggestions on how they could make their lives just a little more interesting, and it would have to begin with how they talk amongst themselves in public, because they have to start saying things that are either shocking or terribly important, because there is a sense that we are really running out of time, and can't keep doing things the way we used to do them any more.)

HE:  Have you ever been arrested, come to from a blackout in a room filled with people who are looking at you, eaten something that you suspected might be poisonous, smoked something you thought might be laced, stolen something, had hot needles under your skin to leave permanent marks, walked into a sexual situation that you thought was suspicious (and then walked into the same situation again? and again?), put your hand out to an animal you have never seen before, petted a dog who made sounds that made you nervous, held your ground when a car was coming toward you, slid on pavement at a high speed, lost bone in a machine, been cut open in front of people who were not surgeons, taken a train to a city you've never heard of, walked a city whose language you could not speak, stayed out past four in the morning in that same city, or, have you ever fallen in love with someone who promised you they would hurt you?  If you answered yes to three or more of the above questions, I forget the answer.  We could be friends.  That's it.  We could be friends.

(Oh, but not tonight, this won't work tonight, this is not a good month for lists, not in public, there's something else that's going on, or something that's just about to go on, and they're all waiting for that, and it's just about to happen right now.)

(End of play.)

aha ono

(Scene: It's one of those spectacularly stormy nights, dark, too, yes that, dark and stormy is exactly where this all starts.)

(Note: I don't really know where this is going.)

(He, recently back from the dead, a small and insignificant death, one that can't enter into his story as anything really important, but still, to him it moved through him like a kind of death; he, now covered in white cloth again from head to toe, is smoking insanely in the wind of the night, but inside his head it is cool.  He, a magician back from wars that no one else could recognize, is less tired than worn, but has been learning how to gather things together that will help things in darker times, and these things are made of silver and copper and shine in the dark.)

(And she, meanwhile, also back and forth in wars that only she can recognize, is not so much tired as exhausted, having been moving back and forth between the world outside her head and the world inside of it, and has been going through many things.)

(No one really knows what's going on, and it seems like secrets that make the details of their days, but they are not really secrets, only details, and not as important as this.)

(He holds an object in his hands and we can't see it.  She, in another part of the world, holds an object, and we can't see it, and it would be a good close reading to assume they have the same objects, or that they match at the very least.  He speaks to his object.)

HE: When I sleep, I want you to speak, and I want you to give me a yes or a no.

OBJECT: What is the question?

HE: I don't remember the question, it's in my heart somewhere, just read my heart and you'll know the question.

(She speaks to her object.)

SHE:  I want you to glow in the dark and tell me the story about the woman who disappears under the top sheet of the ocean.

(And just like it began the first time, this is enough to call in the mermaids and they come in singing.)

MERMAIDS:  Clock strikes upon the hour and the sun begins to fade.

(Oh, but it's so terribly tragic, so completely ridiculous, because it's obvious that they are not into the song, they haven't rehearsed, and it's embarrassing enough that they don't even try to go on, they just sit there angry and embarrassed like mermaids get.)

(Meanwhile, in another part of the world altogether, there is someone who is just like them, the he and the she, but both at once, except not really human, more like a dog or a fish or a dogfish.)

DOGFISH: You think I would be happy being whole, but it's really boring, because I cannot speak, I cannot speak at all, I am a dogfish, and this is worse than anything.

(The words are true enough, except that no one can hear because no one speaks dogfish, and so it has to go on, it simply has to keep going on.  He gathers in the gathers of his warrior clothes and gets ready for the next morning, and she gathers herself to make potions in the air with the fire in her eyes that won't make sense to anyone until she wakes up, and the wind is starting to pick up, because they hope that everything will change and the wind is about to answer.)

(End of play.)

tender days of youth

And it becomes something that happens more and more often, the things that populate the dusty parts of my vision are from realms whose access is more or less constant enough, they can be verified in return visits, and there are those around me who can see them, and tell me things about them that I might not be able to see or hear, because they are too close.  And while I might be seeing the things from the bottom of the sea in their mermaid forms, they're coming more often in forms that carry more of the weeds and wreckages, and they carry things that make them heavier than the others, and much too heavy to sing.  And it's fitting enough because I am not hearing songs so much any more, and I'm finding myself not wanting to hear them, because they come too close to the things that I sing when the world is green and covered with water, and I don't know if I can trust them.  It's lonelier here now that the songs are far enough away that I can hear other songs, but the world is starting to smell of the deep and dark sea.  And I get the feeling that when the rain comes through, something will be left that I had not noticed before, but it's been trying to get born for a lot longer than I could have suspected, but buried so deep that I couldn't hope for it in the dusty part of my vision, the one that speaks after the mirror. 

It's always a question of endurance when it's time to give birth again, and it's a question of absolute resignation, because the thing that wants to get born will make its way into the world somehow, and it will be much much worse if I'm fighting it.  But, oh, I did not count on leaves falling like veils this time of year, and so much shedding along with it, and the deep and strange pain in the muscles of my stomach keep playing on the frets of my belly like they were trying to play a scale, something like a scale from my time before and after the ocean, when I learned to turn into that thing that breathes under water, when I learned that I also had to make the decision to keep walking on the dry parts of the places where we live now.  And I don't know what this is, because it's too new, or not quite yet born, but I know that in a few days I will be made godfather again, and there are things that go with that, but I also know that there are too many things about this that I can't trust, and in truth I can't really hear any more.  Or maybe it's better to say that I hear and read the words, but I don't know what they mean. 

I can't see myself inscribed in those patterns on my stomach, even though they inscribe me, and on most mornings I wake up and feel the thin layer of fur and the words start to make impressions on my finger tips, and they tell a story that I don't understand, because I don't recognize myself in it.  There is nothing that anchors me to anything that resembles an agency, and I keep getting glimpses of roles that I am not willing or suitable to play.  I am supposed to avoid threes, unless I am willing to go to war.

But I'm told that in this pattern, the wars I enter into are wars that I am fully equipped to win, but the definitions of winning keep shifting, and they shift too often lately for me to make up my mind in any certain direction, except I have the sense that in any war, sometimes the best way to win is not a recognizable win, but one where the figure leaves the battle field and finds something else somewhere else to fight for.  I am not decided, because I am not yet fighting, because no one is giving me anything to fight for.  Until that much is clear, I think I have to leave here, I think I have to go.

So while the air continues to get darker and thicker, I keep seeing those sea monsters that populated the world that opens in the darkest chambers of my heart, but instead of falling into the lyrical poetry of loss and magic, I am falling into classrooms where I am talking about things that are useful for changing the way we have always done things.  The space where coalitions take the place of surface relationships, and representations are negotiations that allow for multiple possibilities of identity, and even though the price of subversioning these things is to take away soundness of mind (in certain uncertain terms), it's worth the admission to begin learning how to see things in a new way, and learn how to play with the new alliances in ways that don't do violence to the ones who are playing, because this is a coalition and not a battle, not on this side of that terrible dividing line.

It's a new role, and one that takes over the easy uneasy longings of the morning, and the nights are filled with abstract sea monsters that are lulling me to sleep.  Learning metaphorical languages keeps opening me to learn these other languages that fill my head, the Romanian, Polish, French, and Yoruba sounds that are starting to fill up the waiting room where the next thing gets born.  And I am sometimes struck dumb in the language I learned when I was young.  And I see the shadows of things I have invited here, and I don't know how to read their movements, not for a lack of light, but for the lack of darkness.  It will come.

There is a terrible storm coming, and it's one that wants to break me into pieces so I can get to decide which ones are useful, and which ones will help in the battles I need to keep fighting, and which ones I have to leave behind because they have been undecided for a little bit too long, and my hands are tired and cracked and pulsing with too much travel.  These mountain passes and stretches to the ocean always bring the past and the present close to me, like they were my favorite children, and sometimes they come to me like lovers on a very stormy afternoon.  These places where our skin is covered with sweat that we can't differentiate, with humidity from atmospheres that don't care to announce themselves in an orderly fashion, wake me up to streets where it is too cold for release, and too pregnant with waiting for rain.  But the storm will come.  I am afraid that the storm that is on its way will take the smallest things and make them grow, and take the largest things and make them disappear into a locked room that waits for another day.

And I'm old enough to know that there are some rainy days that will never come.

And there are enough nights that glow with equal measures of dark and light to see the marks that were made on my skin in the dark, and they keep me hungry, but in this place I am very much alone, and I have to reflect.  If I keep reflecting forwards and backwards at once, it's because I see things as they are and were, and see how things could be, and I don't think I'd agree with any of the roles, or consent to any of the options, because tonight I'm in a waiting room between realms, mermaids on one side and mystic scholars on the other, and all I know for sure is that this next terrible storm has something, or everything, to do with birth. 

so so so so so

Orpheus descends, because he wants to show her pictures of the wedding.  Eurydice is looking.  She's looking at the pictures even though she'd rather be eating dirt.  She's looking at the pictures, for one thing, because she's stuck in the underworld, and for another thing, because she misses looking at him, and for another thing, because he tied her up a little.  She says, "Someone salted that tongue of yours, it's not so sweet right now, or maybe the honey on your tongue just wore away, but either way, this is making me rewrite the things you said to me when we were young."

He says, "Oh, but I'm happy now."

She says, "Uh-huh."

He says, "I thought you wanted me to be happy."

"You're an ass hat," she says.

She looks at the pictures. "Oh, you both dyed your hair the same color," she says, throwing up a little on her grey, military-inspired Italian boots with the two inch heel.

"I think you need to get over me," Orpheus says.

"You say that, and you still keep talking, and you're still Orpheus, and I'm still Eurydice," Eurydice says.  "The dice was loaded from the start."  It's true, because they didn't get much of a chance, it was all too mythic, and it would be so much better if he were just a little boring, but he's not, not to her.  Because when he talks, there's something about it that speaks to the underside of her ribs, the place where some drunk and mad faerie wrote the truth on her insides when she was born, he talks to this part, because he says the things that are already written there.  He knows this, she's told him this, he understands this, but he doesn't understand her because who knows why because, it must be hard to understand her, things are never easy with her, and even harder when he's not with her, she keeps things hard.  "The dice was loaded," she says again, because the last time she said it, there were long sentences of narration, and she is trying to remember the thread, because she is so distracted.  She is really hard to be around.  This is important to keep mentioning because it keeps being true and more and more true.  She is impossible to be around, because she's never satisfied with anything, that's her problem.

But what can she do?  She's straight out of a myth, and besides, she's a gemini with an aquarius rising, and that's so complicated, she's always in the air, and no one would ever be born who could understand her really.  Unless it was a perfect compliment, like an aquarius with a gemini rising.  They'd float, though, a combination like that, they could live in the air, off of poetry and pictures of sketches of each other, and that could go on for a long time.  It's not her fault.  It's certainly not his.  But, she says again, "the dice is loaded."

"Aphrodite doesn't play dice with the universe," he says, and immediately wishes he did not keep speaking, because she's right, he shouldn't keep talking, but something about her turns his tongue to honey.  "And you know I think about you all the time."

"That should matter," she says, "but suddenly it doesn't, because it doesn't really make any difference.  I think thoughts, and they really aren't worth a fuck if they just keep repeating and I don't do anything with them.  And I'm paralyzed with thoughts about you, and it's like that for you, too."  That's what she says, but it's not really true.  Because by now she's already starting to move a little, and she's starting to crack a little, and there's flakes coming off of her skin.

She is covered with salt.  It's been happening a lot lately, because she spends so much time near the ocean.  She licks the salt off of her mouth and wishes she could live in fear, the way other half mortals do, because it's easier to make little decisions when nothing is mythic, and the moon is only a night light.

He says, "I know I like being safe more than you do.  But for you, love is like heroin, you want the same thing that heroin does.  You might not be so healthy yourself."

She feels healthy, but she knows he's right. But this is what happened right before he showed up with the pictures of the new girl, the little woman, the one who's so good at dreaming.

Eurydice was living in the underworld for eight months, and she got used to seeing his name everywhere, and she got used to seeing their stories reflected in the waters of memory, the waters of the moon that filled her fountain.  For every full moon, she set aside the day before and after to make images of him from the salt and honey that she collected in the underworld, and those days were magical and mystical, and those days were a little tortured, because she knew he wasn't in those images, and she was even starting to wonder if he heard her when she was talking to him, and drawing images on his icons with her tongue.

But for the other days, she was busy finding her way in the underworld, and learning how it is to be a witch, and do things with strings and ropes.  And she was understanding that she understood the ropes enough so that she was considering, if it ever came down to it, that she might let him tie her up a little.  It was a trust issue.

And at the same time, she was meeting new people, because there's always someone new in the underworld, and people wanted to meet her because she was famous in that underground way.  And there were nights when her loneliness fell off of her completely, like a coat made of his skin.  But the morning always came with the promise of another moon on the way, and she felt him drawing near, and it made everything else seem pale by comparison, and she learned that she preferred his skin, the one with their drawings written all over it, to the body of another lover, and even though it seemed like neither of these was really real, one had to be more real than the other, and his skin always won, because when he did write her, his words spoke to the undersides of her skin, and made her itch terribly, something fierce, hot mess itching.

Over and over again she found herself at the foot of her love goddess, and she would confess, before sleeping every night, "He is the one that I love, and I don't know what to do."

Just between us and the goddess of love, this isn't the first time she ever felt this way, but it could very well be the most, or the best, or the worst, depending on how you look at it.  The goddess of love, having seen all of this before, would shake her head and wonder why even half-mortals think this is something new, that no one's ever crossed this river before. 

"The idea of living without you kills me," she says.

"Me, too," he says.

"That's not true," she says.  "We're both somewhere, though, right now we're somewhere, and I guess that means we're both liars."

"You can be a real witch," he says.  "I just wanted to show you these pictures."

"If I could tell you something new, this is what I would say," she says.  "There are nights when the moon watches me, listens to me trying to tell you things, watches me throw cards and play with bones, and I tell her to send me news about you, and she does.  And when she shows you to me, you look just like you do when you're here, looking at me like I were the only thing you ever loved in this world.  And I want her to show you how I am, because I'm looking at you the same way, and it's the loneliest thing in the world, because it's true, but it's so far away, and I'm getting older, and my face is showing maps in the corners of my eyes, and in my left eye, there are maps that lead you back to me."

"You should tell me that sometime," he says, "but I think I should go."

"You should," she says, "because my right eye has a map that leads me to where I can't see you any more, and all I have left is this skin, and the skin will eventually crack and turn to dust, and I don't know how the story ends."

They're both silent for a long time, and no one leaves and no one is staying.  She is stuck in this feeling that if the moon were just a little brighter, he might see everything in her, and move back and forth in time, a hundred shapes for a hundred seasons, a hundred misunderstood loves, a hundred lost wars, and he might see that the way she cried at her birth, and the shivers that ran through her body when she was old and dying, all of these were windows to the diamond in her heart, the one that reflected him, because it was put there so he would recognize her, and while the waters of the moon are rising up again, she sees something in him that shows her the exact same thing.  

eurydice confess

She wakes up and sees that her ribs have been pierced through, and left with the markings that tell the story of lost love.  She isn't sure this is necessary, she can remember all her own, without having her body remind her that this writes on her, writing on her bones.  She won't share the marks with another lover, not now, not for awhile, they're too fresh, and she feels like she is all feather and bone, and the story written on her body is drawing fresh blood. 

What is possible to bear, what is a weight she can carry on her crooked shoulders, what gives the wet feathers on her shoulder blades enough strength for flight, is that she never knew, she really never knew, that her name was her name, because all this time she thought she was him, she thought she was the one who was singing, when she is the one who is being sung. 

What is impossible to understand is why they keep letting the writing bleed on her body, that she is there to be this, to be used for this.  When she lets herself be written, it is like flying without wings, and the pain is just something to carry with her when she is trying to make the moment marked for her with a song, but she can't sing, she doesn't get to sing.  Her voice only plays the dull sounds that fall on the ribs, and she's the only one who can hear the echos, because they play through the caves of her body when she misses him.

But this is enough, enough for now.  She hears the ocean clearly for the first time, and does start to understand that the reason it was always so near is because it's right here, on the other side of the cave walls, because she is underground.

"When I thought I was you," Eurydice says, "I could understand why I kept turning around to look for you.  But now that I am no longer you," she says, "it makes me sad that you have to keep turning and looking, and so long after that day when you turned around and lost me here."