#inktragedies

‘Read to me.’

She pauses and looks up from her stack of paints.

‘Read?’

Smiling, she leans in closer to me and props her elbows on the counter.

‘Read what?’

‘Anything.’ my voice comes out raw and broken, as if I had never spoken a word since she left.

Or as if I had practiced saying those words until i lost my voice.

‘Fine then.’ she leans in yet closer, so close i can count the freckles on her face.

‘I’ll read poetry. Sappho’s poetry.’

I’m too star-struck to say anything.

She breathes in and closes her eyes, and the air is quiet, as if waiting to be filled with her voice.

‘I set that man above the gods and heroes, all day, he sits before you face to face, like a card player. Your elbow brushes his elbow. if you should speak, he hears.’

She closes her eyes, leaning in yet closer so I can hear her every word.

I still don't speak. Stars are beginning to flash in my eyes, flickers of color that are too quick to catch, like burning comets of light.

‘The touched heart madly stirs, your laughter is water hurrying over pebbles — every gesture is a proclamation, every sound is speech.’

What. is. this. light?

‘Refining fire purifies my flesh, I hear you. a hollowness in my ears thunders and stuns me. I cannot speak. I cannot see. I shiver.’

My hands find their way to her hair and suddenly they are intertwined. My hands filled with moonbeams and stardust as her silver hair burns brighter than the sun.

She smiles slightly, and breathes in, drawing up the last sentences of Sappho from her memory.

‘A dead whiteness spreads over my body, trickling pinpricks of sweat. I am greener than the greenest green grass.’

Inhale—

‘I die.’

Closing my eyes, I lean into the darkness.