Kori

As far as creation was concerned, there was no storm or tempest, war, famine or plague, no salvation nor rapture that compared to Kori. You could not convince me there was any deliverance to be found anywhere else but along the slopes of her face, within the jaded valleys of her palms, and the fiery flint which crowned her eyes in Olympian gold.

Everywhere she went, she commanded the totality of human whims like flowing ribbons in the wind, forever winding about her without once being graced with her touch. To say she was simply attractive would be a crude oversight beyond ignorance; her beauty, while stunning and primeval, in fact had very little to do with her vast intrigue. Those I questioned could never explain what it was about her that filled the heart and lungs with lead. They would struggle and fumble their own thoughts in a helpless craze, trying to put to words what no living language ever could, and many would quickly find themselves hopelessly undone. No one could say where she came from or what she wanted for they did not know, and for a long time no one knew who or what she was, if not the very breath of divine chaos. All anyone ever came to know was her name, along with the air of mystery, madness, and wonder she courted wherever she went. And in a world ruled by self destructive human nature, there was no being alive more beautifully dangerous than she.

I myself had been wandering the world in a silent and confused haze when we first met. I had been lost for some time in the dark looping canyons of my deepest thoughts, and hers were the first rays of infernal shine I had felt in years. Before her I was a shadow without shade, formless and numb to any and all semblance of warmth like driftwood on the sea: longing to be recklessly scorched and burned. At the time, I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was she saw in me. Years later she would say she saw an endless expanse, to scorch and burn forever unbound, so that her form would paint the dark canyon with light. “What more could I ever want?”, she’d always ask. “Devil knows what.”, I’d always reply.

The day we met was set outside of time it seemed, at both the beginning and the end of all that would ever be. Church bells rang faintly along the old Sicilian hills, and the sky was coated in a topographic atlas of soft clouds, which mirrored the heavens succinctly. I have no explanation to attest why I came to the market that day, besides the cosmic waxing and waning of fate itself. At this point in my life I had become accustomed to aimlessly milling about unknown spaces, with a spectral anonymity that only the dead allow. It was there in that colorful marketplace of flowers and wine that my immovable person met her unstoppable force, as suddenly and abruptly as hell rises to meet the fresh air above. Her eyes bore into mine with raptorial sublimity, and in one fractal moment, the anonymity I had fostered simply melted and revealed to her my bare existence. She had somehow unearthed me among the droves of faceless figures as a tiger senses her prey, and I knew by the terror in my throat I had been snared in her jaws. For her, my blood was in her teeth, and with the fresh taste on her lips her hunger would only grow with my own. Reality was both painfully and beautifully raw in that moment, and the love that would follow would only ever widen the wound until the whole world was ours.

In silence we approached one another, and in silence we walked. It had curiously gone without saying that the newborn spark we struck was duly forbidden against all codes of order and sanctity. We dared not speak until the crowds were sparse and the clouds hid us from view of all creation, and only then, in hushed tones and soft voices. She spoke first, and even in a whisper I would have gladly given the voice of the wind, waves, and eventually the world for her own. We did not talk of our current names, where we came from or who we were, for it did not matter. “You meet me here tonight.” she said, more with her eyes than her tongue. When I nodded she paused, before reluctantly turning to leave. It was when I grabbed her hand that all of time firmly ceased around us. The gaze we shared was ancient and infinite, of a long-dead language before words, one which only passion remembers. We held that passion in our palms as long as we could, in the silence and cover of the absence of time. But then she left, and with the ghostly weight of her hand in my own, I was alone once more, with the lingering scent of fruitful wine in the breeze.

I must admit, I never left that spot where she left me. I had nowhere else to go, and I was horrified that were I to leave she would no longer come--or worse still, cease to exist outside my own head. So I stayed, and watched the sun as it slowly slid itself beneath the deep blanket of endless night. And as the round face of the moon bore its light down below, I could see her shadow crawling to embrace me. Here she took my same hand, awarding me the permission to leave my worries and regrets to starve behind the starlit silhouette of her beaming visage.

And we ran.

We ran, screaming, into the deaf blackness of night, much to the brazen horror of all who could see. The world was all at once furious with our freedom, and we laughed as they scrambled madly after us. Before they could catch up the night beget another, and another, and one hundred more. Our first night together stretched into thousands, and it seemed there was nothing on earth to make us part. The world was ours for a time, and as long as I was beside her there were none to defy our rogue supremacy. Draught and famine beset the land; crops, livestock, and entire forests crumpled to ash while kings, peasants, and despots alike languished at our union. Mountains shook, the oceans heaved, and like that first day so long ago, time firmly ceased. Creation had gracelessly buckled under the weight of our romance, and I wanted nothing more than to hold her, while we stood in the rotting carcass of all that ever was. Though unfortunately, with all things born beneath the mortal sun, fate has named them all and our love was no exception. In the face of our elegant calamity the gods had demanded her home, and we were helpless to stop it. “But what if you do not return to me?” I would cry. “How am I to live if not by your love?” Here she would sing to me, in that dead language which only passion remembers. “With patience, my love,” She’d always say. “Given patience I will always return.”

With that the long night ended, as she left me once more with all the worries and regrets I had buried long ago. Now, all that remains are fresh Sicilian flowers, two glasses of wine, and a half-empty bottle of pomegranate merlot.

As far as first dates go, I’d say it went pretty well.