...Etching, Divine...
"May I peel back a bit of your soft flesh and etch my name upon it?" She looked at me with Her crimson amber eyes, Her halo of burgundy hair flowing like the rays of the sun. A piano softly played in the distance past the smoke of the horizon.
"You may." I simply answered Her. She began the process, with fingertips as hot as Hawaii lava. So hot that I felt like I was inside the sun, helpless and eternal. The white light scorched against the backdrop of the sky and we soared together, She searing Her name upon the inside of my lips. The words that would pass by them now would be collectively inspected for traces of unbalance and patterns of insanity made to be broken.
My empty hands itched in anticipation as the words began to come through them, fast as the fire that grew in the pit of my stomach.
"Burn, burn, burn...then Heal..." I knew what She meant of course, and I knew who She meant as well. I could no longer play the patronizing game of pretending to love when I did not. I had wanted to really have it become real, but it just never would. I had come upon my own definition of what true love was within myself, and extended it only to those who had gone far and beyond what my own expectations were.
I had learned to let go of love so that it could breathe, so it could grow on its own...and sometimes it did. Sometimes it would bloom into this beautiful new relationship with a pair of blue or brown or green eyes - the spectacular windows to the souls of those whom I encountered. Sometimes it would breed into the words of a wonderful comment, or rise up out of the gesture made in silence. Sometimes, though, it would die right there before me on a bitter bed of regret.
The placement of Her name upon my lips gave me a right of way that closed my thoughts down, ceased to blister the insides of my eyelids with their intensity.
The scent of pink roses drifted through the aisles of Her garden. They wound their way around the great pathways of the castle and bound themselves to the spirits that tended the beauty of this Neverland that waited for my return. Tiny sweetheart flowers gently held themselves tightly in buds that looked like the mouths of angels. Soft white petals drifted with pollen and sunshine while the bees rubbed themselves against the powdery yellow dust.
"Come back, again, you have been gone too long." I know She is right. I know that my circles have run themselves in a figure eight and have worn down the earth in Her forest. Her sea has been empty without me, the shores had so many secrets left to tell that only the crows and seagulls could hear now.
"Please forgive me." She knew my complacency, my mortality and my fatigue were just enough to keep me from crossing the bridge between us. She knew the burning would help me to remember. She warned me that She was about to set my whole world on fire...and I could do nothing more than truly believe Her.
