boudika
i think you will
set yourself on fire
before you realise
even you cannot conquer the sun.
rebellion sits well
on you; like a red coat
or the gilt gold burnish of youth.
(i do not believe
we shall ever see how old age
looks on you.
you are breaking my heart)
set yourself on fire
before you realise
even you cannot conquer the sun.
rebellion sits well
on you; like a red coat
or the gilt gold burnish of youth.
(i do not believe
we shall ever see how old age
looks on you.
you are breaking my heart)
There is both an austerity and heaviness within the alcove, as though a great storm rests just overhead. A palpable tension exists, and Boudika finds herself waiting, nearly with bated breath, as though rain is about to fall… The mare dubbed Copperhead thinks, then, that grief comes in waves.
It drowns. It saves.
It rages, and strains, and goes dormant for a time. It can twist, and gnarl, and corrupt. It can transform things once beautiful into what is hideous, and unrecognisable. Boudika has known many widows and widowers; she has known friends slain and, more tragic still, those maimed, those who have allowed their grief to become a maelstrom in their gut, corrupting them. She thinks of the scent of liquor her father always seemed to carry; she thinks of the one time she asked, “What did mother look like?” and how he had snarled and sobbed at once, had screamed, “Never ask me that! You do not ask about her!”
And Boudika never asked again.
It is a similar thing that happens now. The golden mare trembles like a grove of aspens, but Boudika is not so naive as to mistake it for weakness or fatigue. There is a tension that bespeaks of rage, rage, rage—the sort of limitless blackness that opens up as a chasm where a heart should be and demands something fill it, and that something can be anything.
Boudika is not expecting the stream of gold that leaks, like ichor, from the stranger’s nostrils. “I don’t.” And Boudika is faced by the woman who streams gold from her orifices and shakes as though fighting off a transformation. Another woman may have taken that as as sign to leave but Boudika stands for a moment longer.
Her soul is echoing, echoing, echoing.
A part of her feels an anger, sharp and strange and betrayed. And she thinks I would like to feel so fiercely. Everything she has felt strikes her hard, yes, but Boudika compartmentalises; she hides it; the tears never come and the anger is released only in private. How much does it take, to love someone to the point that your body leaks the sun?
Boudika wonders if the other is a goddess, lost. She tips her head and drops the flowers to the ground where they tumble and bruise. The air is filled with their tender scent, and somewhere far away a child laughs.
“I am angry too.” She thinks of the moment she first fell in love and knew it was a love that would always, forever, be damned. Boudika does not try to console. “And sad.”
The name strikes her now, as it hadn’t before. Acton.
She cannot stop the question from coming, and when it does come, it is bitter.
“Do you wish he hadn’t been a hero? That he would have stayed?” Then, her voice sounds strange: “I think I would have wished that.” Boudika admits something of herself then, something deep and dark and selfish, and she is not ashamed. She wonders, if she had had a choice, if she would have chosen Orestes had lived instead of herself. If she would have traded something for him, something invaluable, her life or another's.
Yes, she thinks. If I could bring him back, I would sacrifice something that great.
But was that not the paradox?
Did the best not die young, brave and glorious and unable to be saved? Boudika turns her face away, expecting anger, expecting frustration or rage, and she wants it. She wants it.
The fullness of her heart is replaced by knowledge of an absence.
@Bexley | "speaks" | notes: text
