I took back the goblet, soiled
and stained, last symbol of the love we shared. Its brassy exterior bore the
rainbow shaded fingerprints we left upon it the one time it was used; inside
lay the stains of pomegranate and three small seeds. Eight months was all it
took to destroy nine hundred lifetimes of love.
Once we stood beneath the
stars, siamese twins at the back, gazing upward at the heavens, wishing
to see each other's faces. Brother and sister then, as now, our love no
less strong for it. Then as now, we had to be apart to be together. I held
tight to the pomegranate tree as you walked away, our flesh stretching,
bones twisting in ways no mortal man has endured since; your pulling gave
us wings...
Again when we were young, in the deserts of Judea, you gave
away your best friend, my love!, for thirty silver coins. You always were a
mercenary. I went away with you, Brother; one act to show me it was you...
In Spain you sought me out
again, I, an old noble's daughter; you, the rough hewn Basque. Life was
never simple then, but it was joyous and full of life. We showed the world
the magic love could make, and they taught us that fire could destroy it.
We lost our daughter then, and the sun rose late that morning...
For five hundred years, you forgot me...I saw you flutter
by in France, a thieving birdlike boy in blue. Was it your eye that I caught
in the Arabian dust?
Then I found you again in
dreams; for eleven years you were at my side, my constant and bawdy companion.
I loved to wander alone with you, neither of us speaking. We just stared
into the eye of the world.
I saw you fleshed, then, in a coffeeshop, but we were still
young. You begged food from me in Denny's, but I barely saw your face. I heard
legends of your exploits in every corner of the city, and you I know, heard
the worst of me.
At last I found you, pouring
my drink in a transient corner of coffee hell, and my heart sunk like a
stone, because I thought you, in your eternal infamy, would turn me away.
I had never been so wrong. We shared six months of bliss and rememberance,
and then we forgot again. I realise that I was wrong to forget, but you
keep drifting away...
Will I find you again, half a millenium hence, to share a
brief taste of the world's beginning, and then to drift away? Or is this the
end, the bitter end, of nine hundred lives of love?
VonGraeding '99