Leann

It was a time of islands emerging and we were the underwater mountains ready to become. Our lives swayed with the tide, and we played in the gardens hewn out of sea-foam nets. Yes, we all start as living water. It’s a material so full, so charged; we dance. We spin, whirlpools of light and phosphorescent pollen. As we twirl, we grow stronger, our eyes bunch into knots of matter and, suddenly, we can see. And there is so much to see – our stained-glass universe trembles in the fractured light and we wrestle the sight of our home from the darkness like pearls from a shell.

Yes, the strength is in the water – it nurtures and fills us with light until we are ready to emerge and touch the sky. The water will turn silver, and we will fling ourselves into the real, the big life, islands freckling the nymph-face of the Earth. We slow our dance as we look, our limbs come into being, heavier heavier, until we grow feet. Our feet dig into the bottom of the world, solid solid, we feel solid and rooted, and I am here now, here now, almost real, almost there.

Where did everyone go?

My heart beats for the first time and the sound is lonely and dry. My head swims, sloshes, I know it wouldn’t be that hard to drown, but it’s the deserts of my heart that scare me. I got myself a drought-heart and it has never not been thirsty.

And there You were.

You were the wind, the teeming tropical breeze, the beginning of a wildfire. They were scared of you above, especially during dry season, which is every season these days. I’d watch you stiffen against their unkindness, sinking into the refuge of the sea like a shipwrecked sailor. You soften underwater, everybody loves you here. A current so gentle, so warm. They greeted you loudly and looked into your eyes. They called you Leann, a name smooth as a rock polished by running water.

“Leann,” I whisper and break the name in two with my tongue like a communion wafer.

Leann, you made me kneel in front of plastic altars, you made me clutch at tarot cards and wear necklaces made out of chicken bones. Even now, your face floats along the surface of my sanity, my heart as soft as the flesh of your inner thighs. For you, I would’ve turned into music. I wanted you to dance to me, be comforted, moved and unfrightened by my presence. You were vast and savage like an undiscovered island. I knew that when I go to you, you will break my compass and burn my dictionary of familiar words. I was just seafoam, but you were always a piece of the sky.

So what could I have said, when the feeling was so big, still is, and I want to clasp your legs against my chest and kiss your knees? I think about you, I think about you, but it’s not as simple as that. You’re not just in my head, but also my throat, my lungs, you’ve wrapped around the joints of my fingers… Your name sticks to the roof of my mouth like a boiled sweet and that’s the only way I hold you most days.

I went to the Mermaid Queen with my drought-heart on my knees.

“I want love.” I grovelled against her seaglass eyes.

“You are a mountain.” She drawled. “You are to become an island.”

“I want to be loved.” I pleaded.

Clouds were gathering under the yoke of her pupils.

“You will live for thousands of years…. Is that not too long to love?”

“Please,” I whispered and gave her the pearls that hid behind my ear.

She pushed them into her glass eye socket slowly and nodded. “She will love you.”

The fire moved in its furnace, and I felt the tectonic plates shift.

You were there when I returned.

Your eyes splintered into mine and I almost howled.

“It’s good to see you.” Words glittered in your mouth like gold teeth.

We talked.

Joked.

Asked.

Confessed.

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

My heart flapped like a sail.

You ran your fingers over my cheek and the world reduced to the lighthouse of your touch. Your gaze travelled along my jaw, my nipples, my spine… I felt your lips on my neck, your breath ruffled my skin, and I grew hot all over. You touched me slow and everywhere, like you were sketching me onto myself and then licking the charcoal of your fingers. You held me taut, filling the pockets of space between our bodies with elements molten and thick.

How I wished I was beautiful! Your eyes settled on my whirlpool stomach, and I wished I could smooth my body like a wrinkle with the back of my palm. I am so big – a rolling field, a net for a fish, I don’t hold my lovers, I wall them in. And you… Your beauty coiled around us like an executioner’s rope. I wanted to run but you started whispering spells into my palms. My heart drummed into your cheek, and I prayed it beat more gently.

This fragile thing between us – I wanted it to be lithe, pliant, and airy. But my heart felt gnarled and fleshy, and I was embarrassed for you to touch it. I didn’t want you to bear the weight of me. Not that you couldn’t have, but I didn’t want to be anything but gentle with you. I didn’t want you to carry anything that didn’t fit into your palm.

What’s the price of love? I can tell you what it cost me even though you didn’t pay the same.

Love turns you into love. It’s a room where everything is the wrong size, and the books are all in foreign languages. Freedom is supposed to be a habit, but love turns it into a vice. This is what I wanted, I did not complain. I expected love to tame me, to draw cobbled pathways across the overgrowth between my heart and my thighs.

But you made me fearless and wild. I felt the corners of the world and I traced their hems with unbent fingers. I strung you a necklace of the bone shards of the universe. I wanted you to have everything, love, to rub all the living dust of this ancient soil into your furrowed brow. I didn’t notice when the walls of our paradise started dripping sulphur.

You left too soon and so silent.

Why did you soar back into the lonely world?

I haven’t seen you in months now, I haven’t touched you in lifetimes.

“What happened?” I screamed at the Mermaid Queen.

“You fell for the wind.” She shrugged.

I’m so sick of my love.

If you are gone, why do I still burn?

I’m afraid to touch this scorching part of me, but it’s also a relief – this mild thing I act as is not all I am.

What is this sense of famine?

Why is the skin of dreams so soft and undefended?

Something has to give.

I was living water, daughter of the earth, and you were a piece of the sky. I swallowed the sun when we kissed, the sun that I discovered was not a lantern of light but a ball of breathing fire. What mountains rise of lovers that devour suns?

It’s time for me to emerge. It’s time for me to become. But how can I when you are all that I am?

No, I am not afraid. You may be a piece of the sky, but I am a mountain of fire.

The earth shakes, the ash gathers. My love, the wayfarer on this river of sulphur. Your name, no longer a prayer but a rupture. Pare back the ash and pumice, the magma solidified into rock, and you’ll find the imprint of your fingers.

Leann ----

I fissure.