lepidoptera

my sweet idol

In the loveless void, my Sweet Idol, you. When I hit you back, I brace myself to never see you again.

Indeed, this thing we have

—it’s fragile. But it’s grand. But it’s not anything at all.

Not love but obsession. Not love but limerence. Not love but shame. This thing we have is

We parasocialize until dawn. I conspire with comets at the well. I recall how Love felt in another life.

Yes, I am certain you were there.

A notification pings. It’s an email. It’s not you. This thing we have is … what exactly? (Oh, what I would give to make it real.)

They say reclused loners read social cues pessimistically. They say war veterans have hyperactive nervous systems. I read books that teach broken people how to be normal. How to be worthy. How to be

You respond.

Your name dazzles on the screen in the pitch darkness in gnarled hands in the loveless void in the void you fill. I shoot you up I smoke your voice I hold your morphine hands. (Can’t get enough of you baby, your Love is so fucking good.)

The movie plays. In it we have children. We have acreage and cattle and everything George and Lennie dreamt of. Our roosters are infernal and our kids are autistic, but we’re happy. Our library is full of tomes and our cupboards full of booze. I cook you farm-fresh meals, and you say shit like “Babe, this quiche is vivacious!” We toast marshmallows under comets and one of our kids falls down the well: the low-functioning one. Another holocaust happens, but against a minority we don’t really like. This thing we have is flawless. You own my soul and I own yours. But fuck, this shit is in escrow now. And now, you’re nestled against my chest with our limbs entwined, and soon the cocks will crow and you’ll stir awake. A black hole looms over our idyll because you don’t yet know I’m the one. The holocaust is coming, but don’t worry baby. I’ll rend the darkness that threatens us and deliver you upon my wing. I’ll be your Orphean muse. I’ll be your everything if you just let me in.

Oblivion. At dusk I wake from the permafrost of our dreams, rise and shoulder their weight. Vermilion flames I raise would raze our idyll, and so I idle, and so I chafe, and so I pave the way with my blade (for you, my Sweet Idol).

The toil is Sisyphean, Steinbeckian; for even the hero must court the dame; for even the prophet must ravish fate.

I ravish fate expertly, sagaciously; and how divinely wretched are the Fates. And how resplendently cruel is the abyss—this thing we have. And how gallantly stands the duke in the loveless void; wielding his sanguine blade, weathering the permafrost of our dreams, setting his Sweet Idol free.

Solstice. Like Eros, I buck my hips and make you see stars: the blessèd tip of Orion, his light of ruin spearing down.

Equinox. As conspired, the comet passes though the loveless void, and together we fall down the well.

My Lepidoptera, how beautifully you die.

Your wings beating, your heart blossoming as you leave me; your poison scales dancing, gleaming; filling my lungs, filling the wondrous void.

This thing we had was sublime. My idyll crucified and Idol lost, I spread my vermilion wings, tongues of flame like a requiem blaze. I do somersaults and howl and shoot fire at the moon and throw my phone down the well. A kaleidoscope of butterflies comets by. I wish on it. I follow it east of Eden. I bake a goddamn quiche. I toast marshmallows in oblivion until the infernal rooster crows; and the prophet stirs, and the duke ascends; and the Idol is reborn.