Nearly dead with the effort of saying nothing, I tell her, you are one gram of exotic spice in a time of cartography when a dozen lives would have ended at sea fetching favour for a queen. You are the cutting need for chisels, the impulse to etch, and the pull to put pigment to canvas. You are the stars under glass in magnified incandescence. You are sonnets, scores, and combustion engines, literature, plays, the mother of invention. You are the explorer in every heart and the dream dwelling in every mind. You are all that and evermore besides.
I gather my wares as might a mynah. A few scraps of song, some things not necessarily like sonnets but substantially poetic, perchance some art pieces, various vows, of course, and affirmations made of strong yet supple cords, spider silk possibly. I bind it all together with countless fine devotions and shape a nest around us. I coo, heedful of pride, as you percuss the air with a pleasured display of span. We preen each other of free of woes, flock together, and roost until sunrise, when I fly, as might a mynah, knowing my mate ever awaits me.
Sharing space together but me separating myself by insecurities, an evolutionary vestige still clinging to my chrysalis. You know, it’s not always going to be sonnets and sunshine, I say. There might be times where it’s gloom too, and grey. Arris smiles with her eyes and opens her mouth wide, unleashing a kaleidoscope of butterflies. They flock around the room, flutter, flap, and fill every available space, countless wings in the colour of all things beating their response upon the stillness in the air, a chaotic order of magnitude. So, I say, it doesn’t matter? And the butterflies abate.
A Few Short Words 