We, nimble fingered, smelling of bay leaf and soapstone. We, ignoring the space where Pangaea breathes into Panthalassa, sea-sky becoming indistinguishable, bred into confusion and birds cooing upside-down. Cutting hair with dirty kitchen scissors. Taking bikes and going and going, not really wondering when we should turn back.
I wrote you an opera once, a sort of perhaps opera, about box jellyfish. It started with your hands are nematocysts, but I did not know what I meant by that. I wrote you letters once, you wrote me letters once, but I got tired, you got tired, didn’t you? We took bikes, but you were the one who turned back.
I am without water, and you are full of it, am I the Cassandra to your Poseidon? CPR doesn’t restart the heart, it only delays termination. Sea turtles eat box jellyfish, but we’ve never seen turtles. CPR only delays termination. When I stood next to you I could hear the chords for my perhaps opera in your pulse. I did not want to go home to an empty mailbox.
Panthalassa speaks untruths I hear, but I am the Cassandra to your Iphigenia. CPR doesn’t restart hearts, especially not nematocyst hearts. Did I do something wrong? I only wanted to cry you a perhaps opera. Sea turtles are immune, but you are silly flesh wired to a killable heart. We took bikes, and I dragged yours home. Rescue boats tied to the wharf, but you cannot make a drowned bird coo, and you cannot love that which has no intention of returning.
But what happens if you do, what happens if you can not stop yourself from loving what is lost or maybe never yours at all. Answer me that in song.
“Sea turtles are immune, but you are silly flesh wired to a killable heart.”
Arrrggggh. D:
Loose and greasy first-person narratives have made me lazy when it comes to looking into things like these. D: And while braid of images was gorgeous, I have the feeling I’m only picking up on scraps of it.
DELICIOUSLY INFURIATING.