In the end she said: “He must be pointing his finger at me”. 

And actually he was. 

 

John Doe was from a small town-big city; the type of man that walks with no intention other than to flatter his own feet and admire his passing reflection on the windows. He is slick, tall and ugly. His hands were pale white, and they had been, every corner filled with dust, and darkness. His nails tasted like bitter tears and dirty deeds. The back of his neck felt to the touch, like the skin of a child who grew up too soon, but too late. He was alone. And the calamity he excavated to invent himself a duty, created a whirlwind that got underneath your eyes, piercing slowly at the brain, at the lungs; it was blindness.

He was lonely.  And he was indeed, alone.

And he…

Well, he loved her. 

But if only. And if I may say so, he did not.

 

Now Her: Well, she had pulled all the riddles from the ground, like ripe fruit, and put them in her mouth. She tasted them, suck on them, emptied them of their milk till her mouth was overflow with tangled universes. As if she had swallowed hair, the strings of confabulated landscapes hanged from her tongue, taunting anyone who shook her hand or smiled at her, with dripping watercolors from sunsets she had undone inside her teeth. If you said a few more words to her, or came close to embrace her, she would defiantly flash you, with vistas she had given birth to, inwardly: Very messy! Messy stars, smeared milky ways, tapestries of salt and turquoise, chapped satin lips and doorways that held her body open, like an offering to the unknown.  

And she…She was almost broken; and she was kind of crazy about him. 

 

Exactly ten hours and 25,000 days later his eyes…

Well actually, I want to tell you a little bit more about his eyes, for they were all the eyes that had touched her, but not seen her. All of those eyes coalesced in his, because his eyes, were the last. They were the last, and they were the saddest eyes I have yet to know. They had an ongoing state of broken, overindulged innocence; hanging, lingering. He was invertebrate and ashamed, but would clasp and break her backbone with the speed and impact of a train, leaving a corpse behind, just for fun. He was lost. You could see it; from time to time, in the way his gaze landed on the world or her breasts, you could see the broken bones, the needles, the sweat. His flesh was scarred underneath the veins. There were bruises and cavities all over. 

 

She said: 

I sampled the cigarette ashes off of his flesh; I blurred myself in those stained mirrors. I met his orphan and dismembered bravery. I held it. Like a delicate bird I held his vulnerability in my mouth, kissing it, making my saliva into a womb, gulping the blood from his old wounds, till my insides, wilted.  I almost lost my own sense of nausea from being numb to myself.  But that was from another time; a time when my hips were concealed and an empty mountain. 

 

Had I known the capacity of winter in my hipbones, the seasons alongside my tights; had I known, that the rivers I crossed were my own and the death I recoiled from, my own light. Had I known the ominous hands that I feared were… my own! And had I known they were kind, whole, wise, extraordinary. But not yet. I did not, and could not know this yet.  

 

However, what I did slowly begin to know, was that the saddest part of his eyes was how they said “I am not here” while his mouth and teeth said “I love you”. His eyes, holding an encapsulated stand-still, hollowed little boy, looked straight into her eyes; “I love you” (“I am not here”). And with a nonchalant, almost sweet smile, as his hands took ongoing knifes in and out of ribs and foreheads, cutting feet into dirt, doing his business of excavating, desecrating. Doing his business of loss.  “I love you”. 

 

And his eyes did just that. Exactly ten hours and 25,000 days later. 

As he pointed his finger at her, she trembled, waiting for the wind and gravity. 

As she finally broke. She felt her heart finally drop, dead, culminated injury.

Broken.

His finger: pointing. Her fingers: grasping; His eyes, two caverns of rage taking a child hostage; Her eyes, Niagara falls; His fists, clenched, right above her cheekbones, at a distance between your knuckles and the tip of your fingers; her hands looking for him; his words, cutting deep into her own throat; her voice begin, to be held. All of this the night, before the day, she was born. And with a fury, by the madness of the man she loved, she was finally fully fractured now. Thousands of millennia walking without legs, pulling cartilage out of thin air, out of the tear inside her breasts. At last, rest in peace.

 

Never again 

 

And while he whispered in her ears what was coming, and while all she wanted was to feel protected by him instead of from him, she pressed the accelerator ….somewhere. The map and the north, the redemption and the pain, her now raw and empty feet, grappling for space, moving forward. 

 

Never again. Forth From him. From every him who claimed his name on her bust, who buried a stake declaring her mouth his newfound continent; from every him who provoked the beast in her, just for the entertainment; from every him that pointed their finger at her belly button, expecting water to break between her legs. Forth from him. Away, from the ones, that could not and would not forsake the book of their own entitled mutilation. 

At last, rest in peace.  

 

And she took every mile into the ticking clock, the perfect clock of her gut. 

At last, rest in peace.  

 

In the beginning she said:

 “Ladies and gentleman

I am her.

And ladies and gentleman

I am not, him.”

And you see, this, is forgiveness

As I fall down to my knees, this is forgiveness

As I fall down to my knees praying, glorying

“I am her

And I am not, him”

As I fall down to my knees finally free, to know. 

 

In the beginning she said:

I undressed my calluses at the feet of my savior, and I drank his ointment; My own knees and newfound cadence washed from the dismembered agony. 

The beloved opened fire to rescue me from the chasms of my own lineage, the chasms of my own denial.

 

And per mile I took further from harm, there was a planet that awoke within me; beyond Mars and Venus, beyond the Moon, a hidden solar system uncoiled from my skin and I traveled the galaxy in 93 days, in 1,503.7 miles. I discovered new planets; I deepened the roots to the one who chose me.

 

And love… Oh, Love!!!

He held me across the ocean; he held me in silence; he saw me. Unabashed he kissed the mythical creature of my soul and he pulled my hair.  With bold tenderness he perpetually baptizes the wild and feline shape of my astronomy, my anatomy; He cradles my neck as if it was a newborn grace.  Inside the lullaby of the beard, of the man, who has given my bones back their name; I walk in dignity.  At last, rest in peace.  

 

At last,

let the silent movie of real love trace its glimmer upon your vocabulary.

At last,

let the solid blood of your own choices

safeguard the good and immaculate residence of your life.

At last,

breathe the thick and the thin of your skin without blaspheme.

At last,

dwell in the reconciliation,

in the devotion of his eyes’ vigil over your gentle and blazing body.

At last, rest in peace,

in your own collarbone, which now knows how to rest on the chest of the one

who will not hesitate to love you.

And you see this is forgiveness.