VANITAS ― Poetry

ii.

What if you could stop time? 

I ask, as my fingers touch his eyelids, 

eyelids that have never known tears 

so I kiss them so he can feel mine

Why would I want to stop time?

he says, as his eyes roll down my face,

eyes that have never seen love, 

so I stare at them, I lose myself in them, 

in hopes that he will take all of mine

he doesn't. he never has and he never will.

love for him is like blue to the ancient Greek, nonexistent.

for them the ocean was black and the sky white or grey

and that's how you see the world, too, Tom. 

You're Hellas in human form.

I think this, and I think it very quietly, 

praying they won't hear me, praying that he will. 

I whisper all of this in my mind so that he will read it

but he doesn't think my thoughts are worthy of literature –

certainly not of the one he keeps at his bedside table.

Time moves too slowly already, 

he says, in that dogmatic tone 

that always makes everyone agree with him instantly, 

accept all of his lies as if they're sacred lines

in the most important page of the Bible. 

If anything, I'd like to speed it up

so people could finally catch up to me and my plans.

I want to ask him if I'm included in his plans. 

if I'm at their beginning, middle or end. If I'm there at all. 

I don't even mind being scribbled down quickly, 

reduced to the corner at the back of the page

as long as I'm there, 

because, Tom,

there's no epic poem without i

and no Odysseus without us.

and then he looks at me and I'm sure he's reading me, 

all of me, down to the very bone. 

I want to ask him in what language do my veins speak. 

in what tongue does my soul weep.

Why would I want to stop time when I can stop hearts? 

That's what I want to do. To stop hearts –

every beat, until the blood no longer pumps.

Until all of it covers my hands. 

(hands made from heaven to command hell)

Until the whole world is just a trail

of stopped hearts I left behind.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day – 

but a heart, broken or not, is always wrong.

I gulp and I dive into his eyes, 

desperately trying to find something in them, anything.

I find nothing.

And where would my heart be in that trail?

I ask in a whimper, for that is the only strength I have left. 

he has liquified my energy around the sharp edges of his face, 

through the solid glare of his hellish grace. 

the dark shadows in his eyes shine like light to me. 

Would it be the first?

No, love.

The last?

his gaze on me hardens. there's something there now – 

the opposite of what I want, the antithesis of love. 

it's possession on the verge of obsession, 

but it is so well disguised I could have mistaken it with love. 

I have mistaken it with love.

like all the others before, like all the others after. 

I'm not the beginning, nor the end. 

I belong in the middle of his tragedy.

against my will, my mind configures

all the possible answers, as if he's writing them himself.

No, love. Your heart would be the one inside my chest, 

since I no longer have one, since I've lost mine lifetimes ago.

or perhaps

Your heart would be the one on the throne.

but he doesn't say any of this. 

he doesn't speak, not in words. 

he always says more simply when he stares. 

he has a gaze that could give birth to civilizations, 

bring ruin upon kingdoms,

make entire empires crumble and fall. 

and I'm just a house of cards waiting for the final blow, 

so frail I could be carried away in the beak of a crow.

his mind, the stage to which I always bow.

I'm waiting for his last strike

whether he does it softly or

completely yanks me out of myself. 

I almost prefer the second.

violence and pain are just preludes to love,

that's what I've been taught, 

and that's what he keeps teaching me.

he looks at me, 

and his face is a stone I can't carve life back into. 

he's the most beautiful part of death.

he looks at me and my heart skips a beat, no, all beats, no – it stops. 

completely.

Where would my heart be in that trail?

he looks at me and I know the answer.

even after it has stopped beating, I can still hear his words, 

as he walks past me to reach the end of his glory. 

The start of all tragedy.

Oh, darling...

Why would I need to stop a heart

that has never even started?