wherefore art thou » dead poets society

allegro moderato

come morning and the ecstasy of being alive numbed into the painful hung-over bleariness of reality. honeydew sunlight, crystalline in its golden nectar glow, oospiltr the window sills. it spilt, thick and viscous like blood, over the bodies that winter morning had claimed and sat like a greedy king on a throne. two bodies lay basking in that late morning honey, intertwined. fingers twisted together like metal wires, knotted at the knuckles. bare chests pressed against each other, smooth like marble but soft like silken curtains and warm like freshly baked bread. legs and feet jumbled in a pile of wreckage — ruins from a war against humanity, a war against what could not be and never would be, a war against death and time. breathing became one. her exhale became his inhale. sweet grape turned sour in summer heat that now reeked of ferment in winter. the breath that seeped into his throat and lungs — here.

and he would wake. and he would watch her. her eyes, deep set and hollow, skin clinging to tbe structure of her bones. he wondered if he could slide his fingers under her skin, would he be able to find something underneath that wasn't just viens and blood and bone. who was she? even now, as he stared her up and down, bare as a newborn, he still felt like there was something missing. and maybe he had to come to peace with that. to surrender curiosity to the iron gates of her being and admire her like a monet painting — to see the flecks of paint and color but not know what the frenchman had in mind when his brush danced across the canvas. he understood something, by then. he was to be an art collector. to polish the lavish frame around said monet painting and to have it displayed in the walls of his home but never anything more. he could have her body and her consciousness but never anything more. but he accepted it, as he did time and time again, head bowed to the thought that his proposals would forever be overruled.

he would wake and watch as she fell from her dreams and her corpse awoke from it's slumber, her soul still trapped somewhere he couldn't quite find his way to. try, he did. but there was just something that she had that he didn't that allowed her to dream of oceans that never ended and trees that could speak and clouds that could become anything you wanted. neil knew, somewhere deep down, he and evaline were different. that no matter how hard he tried to understand art and literature and culture and something greater than life, he would one day fly too close to the sun and fall victim to the sea below. but evaline was invincible, resolute, grander than art and could not be bested by something as trivial as gravity.

her lashes fluttered open, the light catching in her eyes the way that stained glass did in cathedrals, and he closed his own and willed with all his might for the moment to last just a heartbeat longer. and another. and maybe just one more.

the morning was slow as they collected the fragments of their consciousness, gingerly lifting the shards with their fingertips. but as soon as evaline was awake, neil noticed her frame grow rigid and her teeth chewing away at her bottom lip. suddenly the morning sun no longer felt welcoming and instead, lay a spotlight that highlighted her bare shoulders and collar in a way that made her feel disfigured and vulnerable and, above all, ashamed. she had always toed a careful line between freedom and discipline, in a hypocritical sort of way. in a way that made her seem disingenuous. she believed in art and expression yet feared violating rules and being reprimanded, perhaps evident in the way violin demanded strict precision in where her fingers fell yet produced sounds that could break your heart. there was always a duality to her, and this was and always would be her achilles' heel.

neil could only watch helplessly as she began to dress herself and last night's dancing, shrieking, laughing, manic colours in her eyes simmered down to nothing but a vapour trail. and as he had grown so accustomed to, he swallowed back the burning frustration that threatened to wrench itself from his clenched teeth and leap at her. it was brief, and he was quick to throttle the life out of this feeling. because he could never dream of hurting her and because he knew his place as a collector of art.