Shadow Play

This hasty poem has been scribbled on a crumpled handwritten note left at the corner of an abandoned building in one of the long-forgotten towns we passed in our delirium:

I’m swimming, breathless, in your river. 

It gets me where I want to go.

I’m dancing, reckless, struck with fever.

I’m feeling more than I can show. 

The cities echo with your laughter.

They’re filled with glimpses of your grace. 

Our shadows know just what we’re after. 

They’re locked in secret, warm embrace.

That was then, way back when. Now our shadows are no longer hungry and you are never going to read this.

I first saw you atop a mound of chattering cacti. You were standing with one foot held high and an expression of intense concentration. You looked down at me and winked, or was that a twitch of anguish? There was the spark of recognition. Distant thunder, smell of rain. I approached and the ground gave way. I grabbed the ledge in a feeble attempt to hold on. As if I ever had a choice. I let go. Blood rushed into my head and I hit the ground. The pain shot through me like a forest blaze. Somehow I was still whole, all limbs attached. I looked up and saw the patch of sky that showed through the rupture. The same sky stretched above you. At that thought I became buoyant and feathery and reversed my drop until I rose out of the hole, landing on all fours in the fresh mud at the break of dawn. The world had irrevocably changed and the cacti were on fire. You were nowhere to be seen. I dug into the soft earth and found your invitation on a layer of shed skin. Meet me where ancient things find new life, it said. 

I headed for the antiques market where you waited in a halo of electrified air. We let eternity take its toll as we stood there staring. Seasons changed. We started pacing, never leaving each other’s sight. No sudden movements. We became increasingly distracted from the imminent danger of our proximity by the surrounding delights. We both laughed at the grandfather clock with the foul-mouthed winged snake. We marvelled at the matchstick warriors, gasped at the baritone gargoyles, and whirled away with the cluttering debris at the centre of everything. You said the flames won’t hurt us when they’re blue, not really. I thought, what if I want them to hurt?  

We walked to the nearest bar skipping over bones and bomb shells. You dissolved every last sugar cube into your absinthe. I just stared into my glass of wine. Your face was all that I could see. We drank and spoke and drank some more until the edges turned fuzzy and soft. I asked about the great mysteries and your answers bred more questions. You asked about me and I showed you my tightly wound entrails.  We carved into each other’s flesh and marked the floor with the intricate designs of our promise. Then the sirens went off and we dashed back into our hives, heavy with happiness and blood. We licked our wounds in mutual longing and counted the days until our next date. 

We met again in the primordial cave where our shadows lined the walls, starving and larger than life, waiting. We fed them all our fears and doubts until their teeth were sharp and then we pulled them off one by one, laughing all the while. As the shadows fled we proudly wore the teeth as necklaces and danced until our limbs were sore. We soared on stolen wings on branching lightning and resolved to catalogue every single moment of our shared conquest. We brought down the roofs of the shelters we encountered and rolled in wreckage with wild abandon. Your feverish touch and vertiginous eyes never left me in my waking dreams and I forgot where I began and where you ended. I lay next to you listening to the rumble of your thoughts until it was too much to bear and then I listened some more. 

Come with me, you said, to the maze of mirrors. I need to show you the truth. The blue flames will turn to the warmest hues of orange and you will love me more than you love this dazzling artifice and the savage games we play when no one’s watching. Follow me. Watch your step. The vines grow tangled and fierce in these parts and one false step will rob you of your minutes and months and years until you’re nothing but a whimpering husk and come, we’re almost there. All I wanted was to hear you speak and the words were friends in dire times and I didn’t care about the pain in my feet and joints because you were still talking and I hoped you’d never stop and then there we were, at the source of our splintering reflections. They were all standing with their backs turned, pointing at the centremost mirror. Look, look and don’t stop looking, you whispered, and so I did. 

All I glimpsed at first were gathering silhouettes taking their seats in some kind of amphitheatre. Then the first rays of sunlight hit the scene and it was all set into motion:

A flickering jester scampers on stage, fading away before the music starts; a spectral symphony of tiny footsteps and worn-out dresses, followed by a smattering of applause and distant cheers. The helpless marionette’s writhing dance is the main attraction. Shrill voices fill the air. Dance, they scream. Dance! Slave to its strings – invisible intruders inexorably enforcing their will – the puppet snaps awake. It moves in jerks and jolts and clumsy pirouettes. Falling to its knees, it claws at the space where its eyes should be. The audience’s reaction is deafening; a delirious laugh track. The faceless plaything curls up into a foetal position as smoky tendrils wisp across the ceiling and tongues of flame lick the walls casting a violent shadow play on the falling curtains and the crumbling pillars and the ceiling caving in on the crowd that roars with laughter to the end. 

So it went in an inescapable loop. The silhouettes changed shapes and sizes and the jeering, cheering and dancing were never the same, but the end always came. I turned to you and you rested your head on my shoulder. Is this it, I asked. This is it, you said. I put my thumbs on your eyes and pushed, gently at first and then with increased force until your mask crumbled in my hands. You shimmered and glimmered and exposed your marvellously monstrous underbelly. You put your fingers on my cheek and traced the outline of my lips before pulling at the edges with an impatient growl. It all came off with the softest of sighs. I was exposed. You lingered, disbelieving. I struck a pose to hide the fact that there was nothing to show. I stumbled, naked and empty. You tried to pretend that there was something more but we both knew then that it was over. 

The shadows came back and tore the necklaces from us while we bowed in fear. Their teeth restored, they towered over us and grew in sinewy strength as we diminished. They bit into our exposed necks and entered our mouths and ears and eyes until we were filled with their billowy forms. We were fat with bitterness and shame. We snarled at each other and ran until there was nowhere left to go. We hid. We hid when the frost came and we hid when the ice starting melting away. We hid when all was dry and barren and we hid when the sea swallowed the land and the drowning was a comfort. We hid through all our tiny deaths and we hid while our bones ached with inaction. We knew beyond all doubt that this state would never change and then it changed and we ventured outside, blinking like newborns, ready for the rest of our lives. 

We saw each other only once after that, at the foot of the crumbling tower in the glare of the descending sun. I was covered in barbed wire and broken glass and you were encased in layers of blades and thorns. Beneath the veneer of civility, snarling, frothing protrusions awaited. However, impossibly, there it was again. The spark of recognition. We spoke reluctantly of past provocations and misguided frustrations. We followed the path of a trillion alternative manifestations of our imagined destinies. We cuddled up close and lost track of time until the sun completed its downward journey and we vaporised without another word. 

Our story has played itself out and all that’s left are the drifting particles of dust. 

Somewhere else the sun rises and illuminates the stage and the play’s renewed. The faceless marionette snaps awake. Dance, they scream.