Beyond Millennial Beauty

We were lovers. We were millennials. It was beyond millennial beauty. You and I. We were lovers, true.

"I can feel it you know." He said.

"What?" I had asked.

"Insanity."

Within the nanoseconds of silence that lingered between us, the image of a raven, queer yet oozing with dark beauty, appeared in my mind. Perched upon the dead of the living branch, its talons were an ugly, thin hold-fast on it. It's beady eyes - glazed with a mockery I was unsure of – probed at something beyond, to the earth below it – and where my minds eye could not reach.

"That is what it seems like anyway. Day by day, it violates me. Worming it's way through every tissue."

I stayed quiet, watching the muscles between his eyebrows inch closer together to form a hollow frown. His eyes were hidden behind lashes no man needs - that every women desires- and his gaze was fixed on the magical dance between cream and coffee. Steam drew spirals as it crawled up the air, carrying with it the intoxicating smell of coffee. Then he looked at me, smiling as if whatever worry or misery that had hung over his head evaporated.

"Sometimes I blame it on the solitude," he continued, "It can drive you crazy if you have too much of it. Especially when your spirit was as lively as mines used to be."

I remember wondering what type of solitude could do such damage. I gave him a smile, chuckling away the thought.

"I remember," I said, slightly surprised by my realization that everything that burned in him burned still, but not as radiant as before. It was a fire burning and inviting heavy dark clouds and rains that would storm thunderous and violent, causing its very earth to quiver with the taste of its power.

"You've slipped into a disturbing version of wonderland."

He had laughed then, and I was mesmerized, for what escaped his rib-cage was fierce and raw. As if a slave tasting freedom for the first time in forever.

"You're right."

"So what is it like?" I finally asked, "To feel as if you're slipping into insanity."

He was silent then. I watched him once more, wanting to slip my fingers into his mind and attempt to understand its deepest parts.

The crevices.

The boxes.

The Memories hidden away.

The Scavenging thoughts picking on his brain.

And there, once more, in my mind the image of the raven appeared. His wings unfurled with a tenderness that seemed to make the black of the feathers pour out as each is revealed. It's beady eyes still mocking. Judging.

My attention was now on the swaying trees in the park beyond the clean glass of the coffee shop when he had responded. Protruding in the side walks were vengeful roots, challenging the lifeless bricks and demonstrating its power. The wind caressed the trees and the side walk, and the grass and the benches and all that its perverted hands could touch. And the most vulnerable quivered under its touch, their movements erotic and raw. When we made eye contact, behind glazed eyes was the answer to my question.

"Scary," he said, "But I welcome it either way."

His eyes said something deeper though. It was a brutal internal fight. A kaleidoscope of vivid colours made up his soul and spirit and aura. A mirth the ethereality of his soul, an inkiness' intertwined its, perhaps, parasitic self with his soul. Inching closer to his core, threatening to rot him from the inside and leave him hollow. Desperation was what I saw, holding onto the last threads of sanity. Sometimes there were parts that had succumbed, letting go.

Ultimately, the beginnings of a transition was what I had seen. Morphing him into something unorthodox to the world; and with a beauty hidden beyond the thin stone surface. But the world would never see his beauty. The world was ever so ready to judge and dismiss its opinion. But I knew better.

There was beauty in everything.

In him especially.