For Faun
a lustful rural gods return
It’s not even 10 am and I’m already over it, the hill, the bullshit, the anxiety and the questioning and the wondering why. Grit on the surface of my body, dry and crumbling, falling away like dead leaves that huddle in the corner of the patio, leftover from the glory of the fall. This change in me is not negotiable, not the fallacy of time nor illusion can push me back. You came to me out of nowhere and of course I opened wide every door with tears in my eyes. You held my hand while I displayed for you the ruins of your illusion. Even now I keep thinking of more things to give you, turning myself into the junk lady, famously asking, “What’s the matter, my dear, don’t you like your toys?” as we wander this forest of guessing games played listlessly in the dark. Honestly I’m grateful that you dropped out, saving us both from my performative grasping. This silence has allowed clarity to come to me, with time and ideation now I see it all for exactly what it is, and however you feel about it is none of my business. For real this time, I can tell that I don’t care and I mean it. It all feels silly now, my excitement upon unwrapping you, turning you over and asking you 20 questions and you asking me none. I get caught up in my own projection, in the ecstasy of abandon that is desire. When pausing to ask myself why this felt so odd, I brushed off my own resistance, my intuition again rebuked as skepticism, my voice silenced before she even began. Listen to her!! Why, indeed? What could you possibly expect me to do? Fawn over your every word and lay my body bare at your slightest touch? Think about you obsessively and wilt in the absence of your gaze?
Oh, yes, with downcast eyes this is the dance I perform in my sleep. The curtain rises on another rendition of you and me, with your leaving as graceful as the slippery stroke of your pen, off again into an obscure but reachable place, beyond the door of invitation, the door of I know everything, and lastly passing under the threshold of your grand illusion of me. She does live with 7 cats, in her waiting she weaves an endless bolt of longing for loves gone by, and yes she leaps to your service under a thin ray of sunshine. Pick me! Her words arrive quiet and unsure, those of a child as you knew her, a witch turned back in time. I suppose I should thank you for that drink from the fountain, casting me back to memories long undisturbed. I could have told you two months ago she doesn’t exist anymore, that girl in your pantheon, the woman who lives here now is made of flesh that wrinkles, a soul shining on stone walls hardened by time, and truthfully it was just this very morning that her heart was layered with fresh petals forming a tight bud of hope in her lonesome chest. In some sense she is a baby again, but not the one you remember, a wiser and more shrewd version of that child exists for her own sake now, to love and bathe her own dreams in fire. She exists not for the sake of your memories, your desires, or your whims of esteemed satisfaction.
So vivid so arresting &so clear