Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

It's possible I'm moving through the hard veins
of heavy mountains, like the ore does, alone;
I'm already so deep inside, I see no end in sight,
and no distance: everything is getting near
and everything getting near is turning to stone.

I still can't see very far yet into suffering,—
so this vast darkness makes me small;
are you the one: make yourself powerful, break in:
so that your whole being may happen to me,
and to you may happen, my whole cry.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made.
I shouted out:
'Who killed the Kennedys?'
When after all
It was you and me...

- Jagger/Richards

Thursday evening through to the following dawn, the Tower

I cannot stop hearing it, that song, echo of it in everything. I thought I had shut it out, I thought -

Even when Tezcatlipoca made me forget my Fall it was not like this. I could remember the sound of it. I thought I remembered it. And then Zann played her song, and it was not perfect, it was human, what she did, but it was enough. I hear the bell sounding inside me, and I cannot make it stop.

It was the sound of what is before, and what is, and what is always. It is the sound of what I hate. It is -

Me. I cannot deny it now, what is still in me, what I thought I had carved out. Perhaps I had. But in the hollow places that were left there is now space to echo, and the notes of the song resound like a cry in a great cave, like a bird riding a storm.

I have been a great liar, these many years, but I had not realised I was lying to myself. The size of it shakes me, what I have not let myself know. Did it begin with Tez? I think it was in me before, but he was like water through a crack in porcelain.

I said: I cannot. But would not that be weaker? I chose not. I made the choice to Fall, and I made the choice not to do many things, after that. It was not incapacity, it was choice.

But if this is something I still have to choose -

It hurts. Oh, it hurts.

I take out the bloodstained dress Tanwen wore, such a long-little time ago, because there is nothing else left.

"ٲنَا ٱحِبُّك" I say at last, and for a moment I feel the tower tremble.

And now I must choose not to again. I must. I will.

In the chamber, shadows lengthen toward dawn.

[closed]