I. 'The spirited part seeks to exchange pain for pain'. — Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Republic Looking into the blackness of her eyes, I found nothing. Involuntarily I filled the darkness with a living form. II. Lamb, now you lay down. The fleeting glory you clung to washed ashore and is now kindling liable to burn. III. I saw The Brutalist. Carrara marble is so white, it casts light even in the air. The paths carved within the mountain wind; you'll need a guide somewhere you can't hide that typical, terrible crime — unspeakable only when we take on someone else's shame. "Because you are beautiful, you think you are above it." and then an act of violence proves that you are not. It was like when my best friend's mum laughed in my eyes and forced her hands into my tights to rip a small tear larger, at her daughter's birthday party. A depravity so shocking that even now, I cannot describe it, except as a horror. All that said and done, nothing stops the rise of light. Absence remains the only gift for those who cannot hold a seat at the banquet table, as a peer with other lovers. IV. Societies create complex social rituals for managing envy. The homogenous acceptance of a hollow culture makes a hecatomb of modern man. V. Icarus boy — at first I wanted similar plumage but now all of your feathers fell off in the sun. VI. The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart, which the mind glides beyond gracefully. I felt she wanted to gobble me up/ I hoped to eat you alive and lick your bones clean. In both cases, instead of a home we gained a casket. Its original use forgotten, now kindling to burn. VII. "All the little pieces they took from you, they're coming back now. They'll miss them, too." A tug in my navel pulls me into the arms of my mother, and her mother, and her mother's mother before her. The pearl is the pistil, the centre of everything, containing the past and future inside all at once. On a slab in Sud de France, the sun warms me inside out. A drop of blood seeps onto the limestone. If God blesses me with a baby, I'll perpetuate the mystery for a little longer, while it's already done.
