your beauty

It isn't so just because I said it. And it isn't so just because it is what others believe. Your beauty is a constant, a mark in the map of the universe. It is a sign and an acknowledgement. It is the root of all roads and any places made home. It is the mother's knot of creation, fixed into the earth and the firmament, written into the rules that make us human. It is that ached for place, so long ago and faraway that it makes myths seem like trial transcripts. It is that longing left over from before all worlds were born.

I would write this to you in a letter, save that I have used up all the words. I would sing this to you below your moonlit window, but all those coffin nails have a price attached. So instead I creep like an illness, infecting each line like an idea passes. Each line an echo of an echo, a picture of a mirror in full reflection. Instead I spit riddles, puzzling out each verse as the night unwinds. You shine behind these dreamer's eyes, you dance like the light in the tide. I paste all the words I stole on a note that would ask that ransom. The price: you knowing your value in these tales of theft and endings.

You know the slow moments and the lingering losses. You know the worst places, the weight of the fist, the kiss of the boot, the work of gun barrel and knife blade. You know the burden of keeping the pieces despite each break and shatter. You know the work of holding the world together when no one else will. It is that love you have reverse engineered from crimes and atrocities, and made it something brighter than most human feeling. It is that beauty you imbue, having endured such torment and battered trust. You hold each heart bare and beating in your hands. It is your name I breathe, like any criminal prayer. Your beauty almost enough to make an afterlife bearable, or a belief in heaven worth living all these lies.