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suppose i were to place my hand in the space yours occupied a moment before.
would the difference of time and space negate the thunderclap of our connection?
now trace that idea through the annals of five hundred lonely years.
you, eroded into your composite parts,
and i, the splitting image, the shadow eclipsed by the light.
sometimes i will hold my hand over shallow pools of water and feel the lightning begin to nip at me.
every movement i make and each breath i swallow takes you further away;
dust. you are dust. so i fill my lungs with you and hold you there
and i’m canceling out one half of the space-time dimension
the same way heaven’s heart upon us canceled you.
if i don’t move, if i don’t breathe, and if i steal the momentum of every raindrop and wave of light before it can escape the horizon around me,
then you should still be here. eternally.
and yet when i open my eyes there is the most curious sensation:
an intruder has slipped past my guard, exchanged energy and breath to occupy the space where you should be.
her colour charge is red, white, ignoring the foundation of quantum chromodynamics to disguise herself as every shade, none of them, pink like the sakura blooms
right hand reaching for my left, breaking the chiral symmetry i held so long with you
making our hands clap, bringing the thunder, parting the crimson curtain and lifting me up from beneath the dirge of clouds.
suppose i were to speak a word that carried the sum of all love.
would it branch out in all directions? what eyes would witness that singular instant?
not yours, for they have vanished like the flap of a butterfly’s wings.
not mine, for i have kept them closed. i have cupped my ears and wound down the internal clock so tidal forces can hoist your fragments in woven spiderweb. you are suspended between my lungs.
and yet she does not care.
when the singularity vanishes she remains. she laughs across the delicate arch of her uncalloused hands. she bids me look behind myself, perceive the sun peeking forth across the valley of spider lilies.
and yet i know if i do, if i turn to look, you will vanish for good.
orpheus in the reeds. the observer effect. if i spin left, you must depart right. we are entwined faster than the speed of light. the name of my eurydice, my truth, my makoto. we are both just instants pulled apart by sieving hands, wrath visited down from the forehead of the heavens.
i turn about. i hear the clap of our meeting palms. i exhale and feel you rush to meet the rest of yourself scattered across the earth.
miko embraces me from behind. unaware of my own reaching hands, i let them fall. i inhale.
she is the scent of sweet dew and the concept of love, never in vain, proceeding apace with the world’s endless directions and refusing to abate.
i clasp my fingers over hers. together, we are watching the first sunrise.
suppose i were to breathe in the same place you stood once upon a planck length.
would i absorb the sentiments that peeled from you like fluttering petals? are you gone from me, so far gone that you are no longer part of the observable universe?
i am missing you and seeking you out in the beat between every exhalation-exultation.
and yet these spaces are growing shorter while she teaches me the way mortals breathe.
i wanted to feed off the energy of the blackest stars and live soaked up in you to that unimaginable end. i would make reality forget the very concept of an ending.
you are already gone. i do not know how to stand in your place without you behind me.
the back against mine is different than yours. her skin is softer. she dances blue flames across her knuckles and swallows all my desire.
she parts my legs and i writhe. she sends me to a blankness where we are fully separated. the first few times, when i had returned to myself, i had crashed down to earth in inconsolable panic.
suppose i were to have moments where i did not think about you.
would that push us further apart? is the distance so incredible that a few nanometres have ceased to matter?
suppose i am the lacquered rice bowl, struck by lightning and broken into pieces
and she is the gold dripped in to the spaces between, the places you ought to be, running over the edges and making me whole.
i did not want to be whole without you. foolish. an inconceivable notion.
suppose she twists all the laws in her favour, and the reality born after we fell apart has invented a different ei.
an eternity without a shadow. a spinning clock who flirts with the sun and never meets the same shade twice.
i am so many things without you. she is so many things to me.
this new form of mine is unknowable to my own eyes, unquantifiable. i do not grasp the rules of this universe formed in the wake of you. i kept the land suspended between two planes, holding you as long as i could.
when she is in my arms, the clock spins so fast. the people will forget you. they will lose the idea of gods and their hearts and their eyes, plucking them from our open chests to take ambition for themselves.
they barely live a breath in the scales we knew. they would die on the edge of the blade for the chance at happiness.
to live is to desire loss,
to accept it, knowing each blink consumes a tiny fraction of the world.
the edges where you shattered me are covered up in the embrace of her body.
i will never stop missing you.
but she smells of morning dew.