palimpsest

It's a palimpsest. It bears the scars and tears of time. And it wears them daily, and it moves in them. The limp of dancing too much too early, the sag of neglect at a young age, the strength of a sprinter, a leaper, a spinner, the graceful bend of a cheek, here, there. And it bears these layers and keeps them, and memorizes them, rewrites them, rescinds them, puts them back. It is the water. It is the sea. It is clay and yet it is its own mountain. My palimpsest. My darling. My enemy. My memory. My life.

Light

I am the blinking light in the arrow sign. And I blink for you. Ever going on and off, each time is my heartbeat beating against my cage, each time, I cast out the light that is the brightest I can muster. And I do it for you. I am in love with you, you the small sign that guides the traffic. I love your bright arrow. In the rain I watch the water roll down you like the most beautiful waterfall of tears. And I shine for you - ever on and on. And you will never know. Or perhaps you know, but you can never say. You always say "One Way" and for me, you are the one way I know how to love. Take this light, take it and know it is for you. This light that shines from me again and again.

Love. Love. Love. I am the blinking light in the arrow sign. And I blink for you.

Beauty

There was beauty and there was beauty. And she had only the former. There was something rather odd about her proportions - they somehow referred to bad health. And her skin, a glowing golden hue, sometimes seemed to sallow. And there was beauty, next to her, staring at her, expecting her to take part in her own lovely life. And beauty-the-former could not quite do it. Although she tried.

And then she met a lion. A sleepy, hood-eyed lion with the best of all possible coats. But the lion, though he cared for her, preferred that other beauty, that beauty she couldn't quite attain. And she longed for him.
She wished for him in the night, against the calmness of her pillow, which held her, but was helpless to soothe her loneliness. And she wished for him in the day, when she spoke to others and their voices rang in her ears, barely touching on the echo of the warmth that she felt when she was with the lion. Not her lion, she forced herself to remember, blushing, just the lion. The lion that lived there in its sandy cave, the lion that stretched in the morning to the sun, the lion who offered.

She had scampered past his cave and tempted him to follow her, and he had done so, and pinned her, and snuffled at her face in a playful manner, but had discovered that she was not quite the one that he desired, and so he had pulled quietly away, and no doubt she would find him with that other beauty soon. And oh, how it stung her - like the buzzing of a thousand bees in her head.

The other beauty lived beside her. Calmly, not noticing the breadth of their differences. The differences that she felt so acutely. And the other beauty felt and heard and cried and laughed and was, of course, as human as she. As inhuman as she, as much prone to love and to joy and to sadness, and she refused to make her a monster. Because, of course, you cannot blame the beauty for their loveliness, as you cannot blame the genius for their intelligence.

Walk with me, she asked one day, and longed to take her to the edge of the water and simply push her out on a boat int the sea where she could never return from. Each day the jealousy grew worse. Each day, she walked with beauty and could not reconcile her burning passion from the feelings of human empathy that encompassed her. Until, one day, the storm broke across the sky.

And there was beauty - as beautiful as you could possibly imagine. As beautiful as the rain and clinging white and gray and wetness could make her - every contour easy to define. And there was lion, circling her, watching her, wanting her. And there was she, watching the storm come in. And beauty was frightened and intrigued by lion, and she was alone and watching as the barren tree that beauty stood against was circled again and again by the golden coat that she desired to touch and caress.

And then she felt it, the rumbling underneath her feet, the way it trembled, the earth, and she knew immediately that the water was coming. And the beauty and the lion were in deeper ground. And she also knew, without a slightest doubt, that she must warn them, that all other things were the pain of living and that this thing was the truth beneath it all. And she cried out, and the lion turned, and the beauty looked at her with startled eyes. And although she cursed herself later, she was glad, for a moment, glad for these two whom she loved.