the space above my ears.

Rest on the Riverbed

The first day you really opened your eyes, your sister whispered in your ear, "raise your glass to the two-sided black hole."
She never explained it, but she didn't need to.
You kept it in mind as you grew, tucked it away safely from all the carnage, all that ugliness.
You were two millennia old when you first saw the lovely damage that devolving temptations could cause.
You saw it and you were scared because you were not scared,
And to not fear the corrupted is to love them, making you exactly that.
You think of that show about the ballet dancer with her hips and her flowers and her peculiar openness.
How she danced for eons, writing and painting with her body until her small dainty slipper got stuck in a wad of gum and she was forever condemned.
It feels wrong. It never did before.
You admit that you're missing something, whisper it just loud enough to echo and cause an avalanche.
It's all so ugly and bruised, especially the mirror, it makes you feel sick.
It's all so quiet, especially under the tree.
Silent and still, save for the haunting sway of the seven men who married the rope-maker's daughter and are now learning how to fly.
It's always there, dampening your glow, shrinking that spirit into very small things when really it's bigger than your own body.
You love in little ways, in between the lines.
In stuttering lips and shifting eyes, hoping that if you move them fast enough, I won't see them sparkle.
Your thumb and forefinger wrapped around your opposite wrist, opening and closing in a nervous little fidget.
I see you.
I see you, even past the several hundred battalions approaching the haven.
Further, even, past sun rises and sets in the very middle of the night over that whiskey lake,
Past the post-apocalyptic wasteland,
Past the small kitchen leading straight into an unfinished living room,
Past bodies in bathrooms and shackles through mandibles.
I see you, on the other side of the hole,
Waiting for me.