It isn't the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor —from breast to knees—
and the battle was so pure
an Angel wears it after you.
✧
T
he fire fills our silences, so they stretch not uncomfortably; they are filled instead with the cackling laughter of the flames devouring wood, of light, of heat. I might recognize her drying skin, if I were to look more closely at her through the silken guise of smoke and flame. I might begin to recognize all the signs of predator, if she were not so far from the sea. As it were, I hear only her voice when she speaks at long last. And why did you not go to him? Her voice hardly breaks the night air; it hardly rises above a whisper of flames, and nearly becomes it instead.
I am long in my answer, before I say: “The reason we rarely face the things we fear.” I pause again; this hesitation comes from a refraining, a desire not to share. I cannot help it, however, when I add: “And that is because we recognize them. I never approached because in all the ways that mattered, I was not staring down a darkened hall at my father. I was staring down a darkened hall at myself, as I would become.”
I do not expect what she admits; and I suppose that is one of the reasons I do not mind sharing my fire with her, tonight. Despite her belief the comment is overly revealing, I do not understand it—perhaps because I do not dream. “Do you mean you would create these people, these things, from your dreams—? Who would you make?”
Damascus’s eyes have not left her, but I do not find this atypical. The great dragon licks his chops; a sound guttural, disgusting, slick flesh against hard teeth. It feels, strangely, as if we are building toward something; as if our confessions are fuel to add to the flames, or the rising crescendo pitch of a song I cannot hear. The tension that exists right before a beginning, right before the arrow is notched, the sword is swung, the words are said aloud.
(What I do not consider is how all of those things can, dually, represent an ending).
