Your heart?--it is a frozen orange,
inside it has juniper oil
but no light
and a porous look like gold: an outside
promising
risks to the man who looks.
- Miguel Hernandez
Love (And Other Catastrophes)
You ask me: What is it like. Why am I here. How can I feel.
It is enough to remind a man like myself of more innocent times, days of bygone chivalry, when the virtue of youth was not so readily dismissed; the way you blush as I groan, your hand brushing static up against my ribcage like a steel-blue web. My heart judders - caught - beneath your fingertips.
My pain is your education; we learn one another's strength. But we are prisoners, both of us crippled. Curiosities suspended in amber. They have amputated our wings.
Yes, you, my dear. Have you not wondered, dared to imagine, what lies beyond the high walls?
And did you think, princess--
Did you think maybe it is sweeter still than this?
THE END
15 November 2007