- inspired by Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' and Madeline Miller's 'The Song of Achilles'
Beauty is terror, love is pain, and all good things eventually become the things that destroy us. In the end, that is the mistake that we make. We are mortal and therefore it is in our nature to succumb to ourselves. To convince each other that the ache inside ourselves is a longing for comfort, that love is a necessity not a desire. We tell ourselves that beauty is wonder, that beauty is a concept we idolise and kill ourselves to obtain.
Take a wildflower amongst a sea of its own. That is, I, the sweet flower swaying in time with the breeze and whose radiance captured the eyes of the divine. At least that is what he told me. He said I was radiant, that I was beautiful, that out of all the other flowers in the vast fields of colour, I was the one who caught his eye.
"You are young and free and everything I am not" he said.
But if I am a flower then he is the sun. Shining in the eternal darkness, the embers that grew into a flame. So maybe he is divine. So maybe he is celestial. His body is built of stars and his eyes are pools of light. His face is a series of constellations painting him in the glory of what he is.
And so, the flower and sun silently loved each other. And every sunrise to the moment the darkness blanketed the sky, they stared and basked in each other's beauty. The desire to touch, to hold, to keep something so beautiful. That is why the sun grew selfish. It was in his nature. A thing of such beauty deserves to walk among the gods.
Which was why, after staying silent for so long, the sun began to speak. At first in little whispers too quiet to understand, but slowly, gradually telling the tales of his love to the flower. But as I said before, beauty is terror and love is pain. The flower yearned for the radiance of the sun. The radiance that made him feel alive and free and beautiful. He began to see himself the way the sun had seen him. The rosiness of his cheeks, the earthen hue of his skin, the spectrum in his eyes.
Soon the sun shone brighter for the flower. So, bright that the light felt ethereal amongst the mortal world. But the flower found himself crumbling under the sun's mighty kiss. For love, should not bring pain, should it not? The sun's terror underneath a mask of beauty. For this is the sun's true nature. The selfish desire to touch something of such beauty knowing that it will die. For nothing could withstand a kiss from the sun. All it is good for is destruction, the sun could never love a flower.
One day, when the sky was painted midnight and the trees cast a silent shadow in the field; the sun decided to walk among the flower to see his beloved. And so, with a heart full of sorrow and tears of gold, the sun found the wilted flower, alone, still dreaming of what it would feel like to touch the stars. The sun, still drowning in his grief, raised his chin to face the stars and wept a silent prayer to the divine that he once was.
Beauty is terror. Love is pain.
But there is one thing the gods choose to forget about me.
I am not a flower.
I am a man.
