On the Occasion of the 100th Proposal
i.
Every night, the weaving of a distinct tapestry. I close my eyes and she dons a different dress, a multitude of colors swirling into threads, winding and twisting on the loom inside my skull. She is mine there, and I am hers.
ii.
It is 3:00 am, and I am shaking. I have not contrived any manner of frigid ghosts to crawl up my spine, nor do I shiver at the cold front creeping through my window sill, canvassing my skin.
No, I shake because I am stratospheres above, dancing unharnessed, thousands of feet above the ground. A one man trapeze act, trembling to keep steady on a thin wire, stretched out between waking and sleeping.
Forgive me for I know not what I balance on, imperfect equilibrium between fact and fiction, between nightmare and dream. I have looked for the adequate arrangement of vowels, unwritten combinations of consonants to express the unknown and unknowable.
What do you call honey dripping thick with sweetness insipid and bland to the taste? What do you call flowers blooming in the thick of spring smelling only of empty wind?
Is a dream not a nightmare if I wake without her? What fools we are in our sleep! To believe such a masterpiece could be made for these meager hands, to conceive of such beauty at our feeble fingertips!
iii.
One can only bare so much timidity and disbelief. With one last final shudder, the tightrope snaps under the weight of my trembling. I grasp for something to cling on to. I am grasping for something to cling on to. She is mine, I am hers.
