I stop, mid-walk, to watch a king preside over a flower. I get close enough, breath held, to examine his tightly wound, shiny, hairy face. The proboscis dangles, then descends. It hovers, then it lunges, needling the center of the flower, with less precision and much more urgent confusion than I had imagined. Is the terror I see only my projection? A tear in that wobbly eye, but would a butterfly cry? For the first time, I understand clearly that feeding is fighting. I need you to eat, the wings beat out in frantic code. Orange flower, October late-comer, your petals are limp, your nectar thin and insipid, but I need you. I need you to live.
On my way to practice, in the tunnel under the road, I spot Menelaus again, wings splayed permanently, in a cobweb. The next day, I see three of him, lined up in a neat row in the gutter. I stare a long while, though I have a place to be, to keep this picture in my mind. In the darkroom of my brain, I slowly immerse his body in fixing liquid. Gloved hands, itchy in latex. Upside-down butterfly, crushed against the wings of my corneas and then the web of my cortex. I’ll keep you perfectly preserved, I promise. I’m loyal like that. I mate for life.
Flashing from the traffic lights, cracks in the pavement along the sewer. I take fistfuls of the grillpill. I salt the meat of my soul. I grow muscle. I stop reading books. I gag when I hear the news. I choke down the memories. The cypresses on the horizon are black triangles against the red sunset. I stare at them until it feels like my head is on fire. My arms drip candlewax like an ancient saint. I ache like a mistake.
Ah, if I were a holy saint, I’d wear a gold hair net and deliver cynical blessings. My color palette would be stone gray, slate blue, clay red, piss yellow. Take heart, I’d say, bending over a broken woman, you will never be a mother. Your body will nourish no life but your own. Take heart, I’d whisper to my ancestor, you will never be a father. No son of yours will ever disgrace the Earth. Not a holy saint, then, but a holy fool.
Take this key, open that door. You were better than expected, but not the best, not the brightest, and you never were.
Of course I tolerate ambiguity, of course I’ll campaign for nuance, but the way you hold contradictory thoughts in your mind and pretend they’re both true is a coping strategy. Just admit you have no courage. Just say you can’t decide and want to leave an opening for plausible deniability. I’d take you back, then. Honesty really gets me going. Just say you will hold back on the decision until the collective tells you what to believe, you jackal of the city. Once the banners go up, only then will you know what you believe, and you will claim to have always believed it. Turn to me and say I don’t know, and I don’t care, I just need to feed. You and me both, sinner.
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