SONGS OF ORPHEUS
Without Will's asking, you take up the lute.
Your playing is beyond reproach, accomplished and sensitive, yet lacking in a way which you cannot name. Can only sense the contours of, like vague shapes in a dream. Something is missing - an attitude, or a weight.
"A touch of the divine," Will breathes, wonder on his face.
They die. They are mourned.
They rise again.
And you find yourself awake.
Will, when he comes, is much the same as before, tender and forgiving. Qualities to better reward him dead than alive, for eternity is kinder to those who have learned patience.
You smile at him - and at Joan - with as much warmth and love as you can muster. Their cold, opaque bodies seem to absorb it; nourished and sated, basking in the new-found intensity of your emotions. It affects a metamorphosis. There is nothing fair about this: what they lost, and what you have gained.
"You look happy, Tom."
"Do I? I suppose it is because I am." That much is true.
When you touch Jane, life seeps through your skin, a net criss-crossing the creations. They cling to you.
They do not like to see you sad.
28 May 2007