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It isn’t always gentle and soft, having a lover like sunshine. Sometimes, he confesses things to you, that he could never tell any plastic priest. Sometimes, there’s a shake to his voice, and a shake to his hands, and a falter to his endless smile.
~
One morning, as the amber light is filtering through pale curtains, he rolls over to face you, his liquid sunshine hair dripping around his shoulders, his black eyes deep and earnest. He turns to face you and the light behind him is glowing through, casting him in gold and orange and beautiful beautiful.
He turns to face you in his ethereal silk night-dress, the strap falling down his scarred shoulder, the patterns of the centipedes that crawl under his skin made external.
He turns to face you and he says “I feel like a milk tooth in the mouth of God, and It’s tying a red thread to a shining golden doorknob.”
And his voice sounds distorted from where his smile is feebly trying to heal, and you watch the torn skin crawl together like it does every morning.
And he says “It hurts when It slams that old oak door shut, and there’s blood pouring from It’s mouth, all over It’s hands, slick and red, the taste of filthy pennies. And there’s pain, sharp and screaming.”
And he says “The tooth was filled with rot, and the roots squirmed like carnivorous worms through the gums, and now it’s hanging from it’s little thread, like a heratic at the gallows.”
And you watch him in the bathroom with a sense of numb detatchment—like you can’t be worried for him because you’ve seen this so many times, and yet you’re still worried for him, in a quiet way. You watch blood pour from his mough and all over his hands, like he’s a mirror of that God, and when he speaks again his voice sounds like it always sounds.
~
One afternoon, while you’re sitting together on the porch swing, he’s rocking it back and forth, and there’s a cup of strawberry lemonade in his hand, swishing in the same rhythm, and there are red chunks in it, darker than pink, and you can’t tell if it’s fruit or gore, and the purpose is the same, like the pomeganite you saw Lauren eat once, and how the seeds of it looked like teeth.
There’s something about a meadow princess eating a pomegranite and falling for the queen of Hell. Something, somewhere, in some old and dusty religion, where the goddess of mazes wed the lord of madness, and the spider and eye fought an ancient competition. It all comes to mind when you see Lauren in her yellow sundress, bloody hands held by that Antichrist mistress of doors with her sad, strange eyes, her heartbeat blinking like a red light on a mountain.
But enough of them, he’s rocking the porch swing to the tune of a hymn about shining and mirrors and by the blood, I may enter your Brightness. And it’s with human legs, the centipede parts retracted away, and it makes you nervous, because he never likes to do that.
He’s staring at the church steeple in the distance, white and shining , and he says, “I want to impale myself on it, I want to see my blood drip down something so pure .”
And he says “Before I knew you, I would cut myself open and lay in the sand, and let the bug s eat inside of me. Infection was like warm light, eating me from the inside out. ”
And you’re glad he stopped for you, but you trace over his scars like you caused them somehow.
~
One evening, on your first All Smiles Eve , he’s showing you how to make caramel , and you see the scars on his hands that never quite healed right, because it’s hard to draw healing from a town that’s on fire , and it’s hard to draw comfort from a town that was ripped out of you and replaced by a nest of centipedes.
He says “I have nightmares where all my teeth fall out, because I ate all the sugar that they forced down my throat, and now it tastes like acid because I rejected it so many times that my mouth has a vile and bitter aftertaste when it doesn’t taste like blood. ”
And you hold his hand tightly in yours, and you help him to stir, while he says “They always said that reaching God was the highest goal , and yet I felt filthy for loving Him. It always seemed very look, don’t touch . Lying with him for ten years, watching him stoke our fires, eating with him, laughing with him, brushing his perfect hair out of his deep, sad eyes, how can I do anything but love him? Such sad eyes for a Smiling God , he has. He has two sides, one that I love as a man, and the other I love as a prophet .”
And you think something about a two-faced diety of doors , and you think about that scientist, with streaks of misery running deep through his heart like the streaks of grey in his hair.
And your sunlight dearest says “It always felt wrong to love, then. My father had always told me that to love was to ruin, to impose your own image upon a thing . To dirty it and to confine it. I know now that this is wrong.”
He puts his mouth to yours, and he tastes like caramel and sweet and salty, and nothing vile and bitter at all.