The Black Star

Forget you, my Kara?  Such a thing has never happened yet.  I still recall, even as a shadow might shine upon a sudden eye.  I don't ever really perish, sweet one.  Or forget.  Neither do you, but in a different way.  Did you really think the scattered sands of once-flesh was all and everything?  Do you still believe that, my love?  No matter if you do.  I understand those doubts, and darkness.  I know what it means to see shadows and the way things end.  The glaring finite.  To imagine spirit as little more than a beautiful, necessary lie.  A black star of sorts. Absent, aspirational.  But there is more, my darling.  So much more.  It's why I recall and persist.  I'm patient, Kara.  And devoted.  I notice things.  Your perfume.  Future scent upon readied adornment.  As you re-enchant the body and the world.  Waistline of a dress cinched just enough for a lover's palm.  A nimble, smiling twirl waiting in the hem.  Or a careful curve, focused and solitary.  Many times I've seen you dreaming studiously of dancing cloth.  I often see my pen at the page of your process.  Those moments when spirit comes upon the flesh, even if admitted only as an intoxicating conceit.  Beguiling moments nonetheless, delicately or dangerously tapered.  Like dusk, or arrival.  Cinched, just enough.  I'm not here to ask you to admit the slain still live, Kara.  I know with whom I speak.  At the portico, before the hall.  I'm working to honour my stunning Val’Kiir, even at a distance.  Even if only through dreams.  But there is a question worth asking.  Who mourns the living?  Who weeps for the bright and breathing?  We have so often been both, haven't we?  I know I have.  Sensing a pulse like a sudden melody in the silence.  An absolute fury of light.  Trying so very hard not to settle these hungry eyes upon its beating source.  I sometimes frighten the living.  When I forget my place and remember my wings instead. Black as the first fall.  That overwhelming urge to breathe fire.  But as I said, I don't ever really perish.  There are times when I wish I did.  Exhausted and abused by these vicious, sorcerous wraiths.  A life spent wandering, perpetually torn and bleeding in the demimonde.  There are moments when I want nothing more than to forget everything of who and what I am.  Angel and the flesh.  To be mourned, finally.  Spilled like dreaming sands across the canopies of every lost lover.  No more than the memory of a kind word.  A touch, flirtation, or look.  But I can't allow myself that luxury.  Neither can you, I hope.  Not while there's work to be done and beloved ones to honour.  I have so much more to show you, Kara. On these better days I still give thanks to my Father for the quickening and the hunt.  So I persist, and recall.  I fight my way through to be of service.  Darkly sometimes. On occasion joyous, and wild.  A shining shadow upon a sudden eye, like a living memory of light.

The Black Star from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.