02. Venus eyes

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I remember the birch woods where the trees stood shivering, their roots buried deep down in snow. I found them gawky and uncomfortable at first sight - skeletal beings with ghostly expressions and deep black eyes, I knew they are looking down at me as they quietly sway their fleshless limbs almost in a warning, inwardly seething at a trespasser that I am. They stood tall above me, as tall as I could see tilting my head upwards to the milky light of the winter sky. The sky too was thin and pale, poised atop the needles of the tree branches, it quickly started to turn and swell, as if rattled by my presence. The mouthless faces of the birch trees were looking upwards now, throwing their arms in the air - bare bones, crooked fingers, loosing their last skin as the dried out leaves went dashing off into the air showing no signs of life yet forever bearing the scornful expression. They were off to a better place...but the birches still surrounded me, they just stood there itching and scratching the swollen sky until it bled a sunset and into a hollow night, peeling all that was left of its skin, revealing something alien, at once beautiful and grotesque. Her skin was shiny and black as if made of patent leather, her eyes gazed absently in a dim glow and could easily be mistaken for the outlines of Venus and Jupiter.

I always knew she was inside, under all that skin flushing of sunset corals and pinks, under the hilltops of her cheeks and beneath the hollow ditches of her collarbones framing the narrow path of her neck. I saw it in a movie! And now I saw her crouched and limp and cold alone out there as I looked up into the dark mirror of the sky. I thought I'd wave my hand at her and cheer - she almost simultaneously waved back, and as I moved - she moved, as I turned - she turned in a silent mime dance of just two of us.
- Was there ever two of us? I did not dare to ask, as she was quiet and mouthless just like the birch trees.
Our dance, as pagan as it was sublime, made me feel drowsy and tired. She begged for more, her fingers clutching my wrists and it turned my hands cold, numb even, but I wanted to run and never look back. I wanted to stuff my face with snow and feel it melting on my skin like a kiss. I wanted to run to that oak tree and hide myself within his hollow chest of a tree trunk like I used to when I wanted to enter him, I wanted to fill the void between his every heartbeat, but instead I ended up devouring his entire being, I feasted on his heart, his eyes, his tongue. I twisted him, I bended him until his branches made a wooing noise, until the gale winds left him quiver and shake at my sight and torn us apart.

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