Tuesday 5 November 2019

Closest to Home



That I would fall for love.  That you would fall for me, in the best of ways.  In such a fragile, human way.  I truly never imagined it, Namah.  Upon blade, flame, shadow and curse.  Upon the bloodied vintage of mad kings and their consorts.  But never did I imagine upon leaf, or wave, or open sky.  The whisper of an earnest goodbye.  The softness of genuine regret.  You always told me that that love bound and held all things.  Even the brief flicker of mortal love, but I didn't really believe it.  I chose blindness because I thought I was honouring you.  I chose weakness because I thought I was giving you strength.
   But, like Icarus, you soared too close to me.  So desperate to reach up into the inverted heavens and touch a star, or an arcing wing.  What I was.  What I might have been.  If I hadn't loved you with such savagery and abandon.  But my love was a pestilence.  My lust was blackest ink roiling through a once-perfect clarity.  You got too close to me, Namah.  Too close to the sun at midnight.  And I burned you terribly, and you fell.  I know because I watched you, horrified. You fell for me in the hope that angels and mortals might remake one another, in a better way.  A gentler way.  You placed a secret within my secret.  It's the only reason I still exist.  The only reason the Earth isn't a sphere of ashes and cinders once more. 
   Tonight I listen to the cascades of spark and colour.  Works of fire exploding all across Londinium skies.  And I think of you plummeting through symbol and myth, shapeshifting as you fell.  Have you settled yet, my love?  On any shape in particular?  Girl, dancer, poet?  Painter?  Those evenings did weave at your brush and pen, Namah.  That terrifying newness.  That brilliant hesitation of light.  When I was fury, and demon, and the death of all demons. But you leapt that I might survive.  Into the cauldron's maw.  Into mortal sense once again.  Into earnest goodbyes and softest regret.
   You fell that I might arise.
   Each facet gleaming.
   We are both so much cleaner for it, with a real chance at peace now.  Namah, beloved one, you made it so our sickness was only a nightmare.  You made it so we were never monsters at all, only writers and artists.  Space and time – light itself – folding around the gravity of the innermost hidden in your breast.  That glimmer of true love that stole my shadows and broke my heart into beating once more.  
   I talk a lot about how you died, and how I brought you back.  But I died too, Namah.  I died every single night without you, at the realisation of what you sacrificed for me.  You fell, my sweet one.  Like Icarus you fell.  Into the trees, into the sea, into the church beneath the sea.  And there you remained, until a friend was willing to tear apart her own wings for you.  Tear her own flesh and spirit.  Light and earth and temple.
   Creation bled on the day you were born.
   A thing of grace.
   I remember your Father’s eyes.
   These wings are yours, sweet one.  Now and forever.  We had many friends once, beloved. And such a family.  Some of them are with us again, all around.  This is as close as we have ever been to getting them all back.  Many tales.  Many shapes.  These tales and shapes are only a glimmer upon the vast hidden truth of angels.  To rise or fall with purpose.  In service, always.  In love.  Attempting to touch the stars with an arcing wing.  This way, or that.  For lost lovers and gallant friends.  This wren is working to honour you in a new way, Namah.  The right way.  I am devoted that I might re-gift you with true power.  The soft, gentle power that I had lost within myself so long ago.  A power you restored with an act of true kindness.  A darkened sorcerer somehow finding the strength to humble himself, in hopes of finally sparing his beloved.  An almost mortal way that says none are above any other.  If just one of us ascends then we all ascend, because love conquers and connects.  Love is never alone.  Not even in death, or in darkest nightmare, or high above the earth in morning's light. You're my home, sweet one, ascending even higher than you dared to hope.  I carry you with me.


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