( A shiver before the searing heat of touch, not for what it seeks out, winding upstream as carp swim, leaping the dragon's gate in search of transformation. No, nothing so grand, but the ache of fingers in his hair a call back to simpler times, or not simpler, no, he lies to himself in nostalgia and carefully curated memory. A call to times where certainty had lain in his breast, thrumming, that to two people, he mattered; to one person, he was worth caring for, remembered as a child, as a young man grown.
One lap, to lay his head on, the calm of the storms in his life allowing him a moment to breathe. Uncomfortable in hindsight, how little he understood her readings of him, how little he could thank her now for her love, for cementing to him that family is warmth as well as rigid expectation and duty and honours he tears the face from for want of righteousness not bedecked in the jewels of tyranny and convenience.
He is death, and he feels it, the cloying sweetness of decay as Lan Zhan's fingers succeed where his washings have not, and for one moment stretching long between this breath exhaling, this breath indrawn, he imagines leaning forward, imagines bracing and embracing, and then discards it, but for the silken ribbon coaxed free of his hair.
Presented, and a wrist that follows. Here a pulse beats, here meridians lie, here blood is blue against pale skin, deprived of air. Are we the men our mothers would wish us to be? His fingers weave the ribbon around themselves, and he lifts Lan Zhan's wrist, lowers his head. One hand ties, a vambrace of red against the white, blood against snow, passion against the fog of daily existence. He studies his work and the answer between them, saying, )
We are the men they did not yet know to imagine, ( and he inhales, ribbon tied, devouring itself and freed. ) I can only feel they'd wish for happiness, true living, and those who do more good than harm.
( In this, and here, the bow of husbands, the heavens witness, the forebearers silent, the present evershifting, remade moment to moment. In the acrid bile the world tears from their throats, the spirits caught and netted as decayed fish left to rot, and the reality that life is not static, that death isn't either, that what is claimed is not permanent by nature.
This is a choice, he feels, one made every day, footprints left in the detritus of the forests they knew in their youths, washed clean with season and storm. Soft, near to drowned by the winds and the surf that pounds below, the dead hidden from view, the lighthouse looming white and broken overhead.
Red, wound and binding, oxygen rich veins flooding two hearts, filling lungs. )
no subject
One lap, to lay his head on, the calm of the storms in his life allowing him a moment to breathe. Uncomfortable in hindsight, how little he understood her readings of him, how little he could thank her now for her love, for cementing to him that family is warmth as well as rigid expectation and duty and honours he tears the face from for want of righteousness not bedecked in the jewels of tyranny and convenience.
He is death, and he feels it, the cloying sweetness of decay as Lan Zhan's fingers succeed where his washings have not, and for one moment stretching long between this breath exhaling, this breath indrawn, he imagines leaning forward, imagines bracing and embracing, and then discards it, but for the silken ribbon coaxed free of his hair.
Presented, and a wrist that follows. Here a pulse beats, here meridians lie, here blood is blue against pale skin, deprived of air. Are we the men our mothers would wish us to be? His fingers weave the ribbon around themselves, and he lifts Lan Zhan's wrist, lowers his head. One hand ties, a vambrace of red against the white, blood against snow, passion against the fog of daily existence. He studies his work and the answer between them, saying, )
We are the men they did not yet know to imagine, ( and he inhales, ribbon tied, devouring itself and freed. ) I can only feel they'd wish for happiness, true living, and those who do more good than harm.
( In this, and here, the bow of husbands, the heavens witness, the forebearers silent, the present evershifting, remade moment to moment. In the acrid bile the world tears from their throats, the spirits caught and netted as decayed fish left to rot, and the reality that life is not static, that death isn't either, that what is claimed is not permanent by nature.
This is a choice, he feels, one made every day, footprints left in the detritus of the forests they knew in their youths, washed clean with season and storm. Soft, near to drowned by the winds and the surf that pounds below, the dead hidden from view, the lighthouse looming white and broken overhead.
Red, wound and binding, oxygen rich veins flooding two hearts, filling lungs. )
Sought together, side by side.