dionysus (resub) — d4 / fin

Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Jun 26, 2023 21:47:50 GMT -5

we sip away the end of summer from an old bottle from the cellar. the year we met, you mused, reading the label. coincidence or are you feeling sentimental?

does the world revolve around you? i threw you the corkscrew, and you scowled.

the wine tastes of salt and citrus by the ocean. your hair curls in the humid air. when you turn towards me, the fading light touches your face, over your temples and nose bridge, soft into the cradle of your cupid's bow. i follow your eyes to the stitches across my arm. somehow, this feels like the last time before i let you go.

i missed you.

you touch my hand, skin warm and barely flushed. i drink from my glass and bury a flinch. who is feeling sentimental now?

we drink into silence. in an hour, the sun sets, and the waves crash onto the shore, deep jade and black. i watch you sleep on the beach, shoulders rising and falling with the rhythm of the water. i didn't tell you when you placed your hand over mine. i've never called it what it was out loud.

on Nysa, they say a sea woman was enamoured with the sun god, that she did terrible things in jealousy, in desire, in hate. she lay herself bare to the sun for nine days and waited for him to forgive her in vain. never once did he look at her. she died. her blood became the flowers of the mountain. i watched the petals on the slopes follow the sun across the sky even in after life. and what i want to say is – i think i was meant to know you.

you and i will never be different. not in a thousand years, not if we were born as different people. i will always want you, every rebirth. every form of us. time and time again, the story never changes. you will never want me back, and yet i will always find you. just so you would look at me, one more time.

in the darkness, you stir awake.

i touch your cheek and you suspend your sleepiness, shrewd again. carefully, you hold my wrist, fingers over an old scar.

are you okay?

i let my hand slip. you hold onto me still. the darks of your eyes search my face and i have known that look for almost half my life. you are hell and i am flame-gazing, you are you and i am me.

yes.

i wish i could keep you like this. somewhere, this memory will live in me, like all the other fragments of you that i've kept over the years. i could almost believe in a different ending for us now, sitting across each other on the beach, your eyes on mine. sun-soaked. eternal.

but the moment passes, and you turn away from me.


i love you.
dionysus