#sofia samatar

his eyes were a mineral green, the color of seas where shipwrecks occur, the color of unripe melons, of lichen, of glass

his eyes were crushed dried figs

his eyes were rich signal lamps still burning in a shipwreck

riveted by those eyes, with their low light, their impalpable darkness

as i had felt on the open sea: as if the world had drowned and something new had taken its place, a ringing brilliance, fathomless and transparent

at once the world became aware of her presence. with a violence, a blinding rupture, she was there and the air opened, trembling, to receive her. the city wept. the air shuddered, flashing with the strain of having to hold her, humming like sheets of steel, like sheets of lightning. there was the chaos in the hall of a disturbed geography, of a world constrained to rearrange itself. she raised her small hand. there was the shock of opening vistas, of landscapes over which i hurtled, helpless, and she said, in a voice as intimate as if she were pressing her fingers on my brain.. 

she arrives in chimes. the air tolls and bellows. now I understand that light has a sound. her voice metallic, a harp of light.

she is stranger than the effulgent sea, more alien than the pale coast, the foreign city

her hair was like the ramparts of a city

i used to lie awake at night out of pure happiness, because of an apple, because we had seen butterflies, because he had laughed at my jokes

the country spilled like a bolt of silk unrolled in a market, like perfumed oil poured out in a flagrant gesture.. that lucent countryside

the night sky was distended in my dreams, sinking to earth with the weight of destructive glory behind it.. i touched it gently with a fingertip and it burst like a yolk, releasing a deluge of light

the blood in the body like oil in a lamp

all the fulgent stars were drawn about her like a mantle, and her face shone clenched and angry, a knot of flame

the lost and shimmering look of new-slain warriors

a new world lay before us, a blaze of gold, a bleak, profound desolation: the savage and solitary, stretched out at the foot of the mountains, the great plateau that led to the birthplace of dragons.. a shape to make men weep, exactly the shape of a desecrated sea.. never would the image remain undamaged in the memory. it was too vast, mystic, impenetrable.. i felt, dazzled, that i could never contain that sweeping vision - pure nothingness, an almost featureless wasteland, golden, streaked with incarnadine, the color of a fingernail.. the eternity of the desert

there is no dog who is not a nobleman and no water that is not frozen

what do you think of this sea? it is beautiful, like a long fire

she had been made to answer a desire which I had carried all of my life, without knowing it... the voice that inhabited the wind and rang in the sun on the trees of ice and occupied the empty space in my heart. I had not known of this empty space, but now I recognized it, and it bled, and I was wretched, distracted, and happy

i felt my breath go like an ache, a tearing of cloth

she lifted away from my heart, tearing it as she vaulted into the sky. her foot snagged in my veins, ripping away, floating free

a wash of blue poured over the sea, a blue of dazzling, ineffable tenderness. and the city took on the delicate colors of a bed of roses on the brink of death