gaze

Before you were you enough to recall you were wide eyed, your hungers bent to illumination, your vision pressed against every vivid skin. Along comes the light to burn away the placental tendencies, the flame now loose inside you, another facet to bear the fire. You awake in the world astir, language steeping through your senses, the self risen and churning with the unspoken. You point it out and say the word until the word is pointing for you. You say aloud all you see, until you see everything else looking too. Bite down on that forbidden fruit, the garden will never be the same. Welcome to the waking world. You are here.

Most of our lives are like wasp’s nests, built of what’s available by whoever happens to be around, unplanned but allowed the providence of legions headed in pretty much the same direction. Also, they are full of a shitstorm of pure vengeance and pain if you kick them hard enough. Swarms of stares and words and obligations, the harkening of the hive, whether we resist or oblige. Id and etiquette, empathy and appetite. The gaze an anchor of language and intent, a circuit to the unseen architecture that bends and binds, the monkeys never typing all at once. All awake within the power of the place you hold.

I remember everything. The soft touches to the leash lessons. The bare shoulders, the brushed back hair, the summer a silty weight against your skin. The hunger and the hallow, kisses and bruises. The recitation of the recipes. The devoted gaze, the clamber and sigh of knees and hunger, the sacrament of oath and salt. This I harbor in my heart, this lingers upon my breath. I bank away my witness. I saw you then, I see you now. The way the light wove its way along your stride. The way it made you look.