Salted Concord

Salted concord, this love was the grapes of your wrath. You made wine of me and I of you like old days. Like analog. Like folklore. Like fate.

  I ran to the ocean to escape you, but it contained you. It whispered to me like you used to. Every voice was yours. I remember you now as a poltergeist or the spirit of the sea. The Northern, opaque fogs became my conquest after you. When you enter its impending nature and feel its core, you will find that it shifts slowly and billows. Your energy. Solid Earth, tempestuous waters, cognitive air. These were fogs that made the lands seem haunted. I found you when I was lost and when I was blind. I knew you when I was breathless and consumed.

  When I loved you, you felt like primordial Earth. Woody, deciduous. Wise in your silence. Eroding. Soft beaches meeting turbulent ocean. When I loved you, I felt like the moon above you. Illuminated, changing in our union. Now and forever influencing the tide.

  Our union was as ancient as table wines. As the divine body. Creatures gazing into flesh and bone and calling it completion. Holy in embrace and resonant with fear. Resonant with soulful affliction. Children loving like it was the first time and the last time. From you, I called in the planes of mercurial wavering. Oceanic, dark black in its expanse. Flashing until burning. Spinning, sweltering, reactionary. And you conjured extreme weather in a person. Lightening inside fingertips, quicksand for eyes, hurricanes inside heart center. I weathered you. Surrendered to you. I came out alive, exhaling the breath of illusion.

  Salted concord, secretly saccharine. Deeply knowing. I found magic in your veins. Sonnets on your lips. A manifesto written from your aching. A magnum opus born of fragmented mind. I saw you as an artist with an unforgettable signature. A poet in denial.

  When I loved you, I saw you best in darkness. Quiet apart from breath. Tapping into feeling. I remember you now as a silent scream. A look that spoke a thousand words. A voice that exclaimed nothing. Embodying the role of apparition. Of absence.

  When I loved you, you felt like ritual. Like dream state escaping into a physical world. A whirlwind, a prophecy. A tragic end. There was only before you and after you. With you or without you. I remember being lost in time and void of reason. Being overtaken. Drowning in a turbulent ocean.

  A union like grapes on the vine – symbolic of growth from a perfect storm. Of being sacramental when ripe. Of intoxication, of abundance by our creation. A union requiring lifetimes of distance to bear fruit. Requiring the lands we never walked on. Requiring the skills we did not have. We were the lifeblood of the cosmic world, experiencing eras of time. And you were conditional and denying.

  Salted concord, you summoned the life of my body. Seemingly raising the dead with touch. Inspiring a feeling that is primitive. Enacting an esurient behavior in our joining. Bodies viewed as beveled and malignant. Flickering and smoking black. A great rite that birthed the hexes. An embodiment of all that was luscious and sinful. I became the goddess of Spring and soon, life would fade to death. Seasons shifting. Terrestrial severing, abiding by cycles. You became withered and gaunt in our winter. Altar candles reaching their ends, leaving bright shrines alone to face a dark night.

  There was a gnawing at my atmosphere. Wax flowers growing in spirals through the draught. As your world persisted in contemplation, in reverie, mine became real. You lived inside your mind as if there, you inhabited a different body. One who’s skin and psyche was deathless and impermeable. You lived in an illusioned timeline, where you were commanding beyond the quiet and a creator of worlds. One that painted vivid imagery of legend and leagues of spirits. One that deserved to be held tightly in your hands and fastened tightly against your skin. You sought to extend that which was fleeting. The bone structure of your desire reflecting your worthiness and a yearning for directional cadence.

  I was of Earth. Venusian, physical. Actualizing the transient, turning ether to matter. Living in the theory and application of passion. Personifying the dissection of my desire. Anthropomorphizing a turbulent ocean. Breathing voice into its mouth. By my side, you were solid. Planted. You drew down the moon with me. Sparked dreams into life. Manifested your desire for the first time. It was as if you bended the Earth that bore you or used the elements to support you. Loving me was the challenging of universal law. Denying the lifestyle of energy. Acknowledging presence, rooting deeply. I was the gorgeous embodiment of your fear.

  Salted Concord, how do you describe the room now that I am absent? Now that I embody the role of apparition. You remember me now as a poltergeist. As the spirit of the sea. A reflection, a flame, distant and symphonic. Who do you serenade with songs, imaginary and fervent? Can you praise beauty in this darkness? A barefooted praise to what is Earthly and Venusian, or more simply, a stilling of a turbulent ocean. Further, a lifting of the opacity of fog – an exhale of illusion.