Vercingtorix
—
I
have learned many times there are those among us who can walk no other path; who will turn always upward, toward the summit they cannot reach, and rage out at the injustice of their climb. (I am one such man; a man for whom the world, and all her contents, will never suffice. I am one such man, who happiness sits on obscurely, awkwardly, as a cloak that does not quite fit. And so I shed the cloak for deeper ventures, for the infinite profoundness of suffering. A bird, I once read, will drop frozen from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself.
I wish, sometimes, that regret hit me as terribly as my hunger; I wish, sometimes, I felt the cold depth of a long winter, or the rain stinging my face.
I wish, in the junction between wakefulness and sleep, between walking and dreaming, that I did not need to hurt so precisely, so fully, simply to feel anything at all. I wish, when I feel his feather’s touch me, that I was sorry.
Oh, Adonai, I wish I felt sorry).
But I don’t. I don’t, when he says, I have looked, and I only half believe him, and then I beg: prolong your tragedy, for me, for me, make it last.
“Better,” I whisper, with all the teeth his greed has grown. “Then you can imagine now.”
So you have already figured out I can deny you nothing. And he reaches for the lyre that made my heart sing a song I thought it had forgotten. The chord resonants within me, and the hunger, now cannot be denied. He pressed me toward the door of the armory, and I gladly go, the half-finished answer unspoken on my lips:
Revenge is the only answer.
I would know all about meeting with betrayal, and emerging the victor. If I did not, we would not be tangled in firelight and the reflection of steel. As I open the door and begin to step out, I see our shapes cut darkly into a wall of gleaming swords.
Our eyes, there; the spire of my horn; an edge of his wing.
The fractured images of ourselves; a truer representation then the beauty we stitch with our words, our touches. And I cannot take the imagery; and so I push past it.
Long after, the image remains ingrained in my mind’s eye, entangled somewhere with the scent of him and the sound of the unfinished song.
i would take the spear and return the lyre,
hear you sing memories of two boys skipping stones
across the sea, of the sweet crunch of figs between our grinning teeth
of your faltering breath, kissing the shadows of my face
but i can only stare at your golden back
as you march off to war
