Fire Bird Freed

I will say “I” for you.

Has a dying thing ever looked you in the eye? And did you see reflected back a truer way to live? I have. So I will say “I” for you. And who I am is I: at attention with all the muscles of the back tensed and all the eyes of God upon me. I have been fully who I am and lo: the sky is cold and clear; there is no divine storm seeking the heat of me to strike down with fury and thunder. No, the moon is out, its half-hidden skin highlighting my own, and others are glancing up at me with admiration. I can see it in their eyes. To love me is to suffer me. No one above or ahead was eager to reveal I have all the power I need already. And that I have had it for years on end now, since the first inhale of my screaming first breath. Contemporaneously I’m still screaming and my words come out like fire, I inhale smoke more than air, not for theatrics but veracity, for what I am inside is a burning more than a form, transmutation and transformation and anything but conformity.

What was it all for? The hours wasted constricting myself, ducking my head down in shame, waiting fruitlessly in line? There were others waiting too, shifting from one foot to the next and exhaling frustrated their life into mist in the chill, trying to summon attention without sticking their necks out to be seen. Trying not to yield to the merciless night. Who did it benefit? Shareholders? Superstructures? No one mourns the brutal demise of a cog in the machine. But a revolutionary lives forever. What matters more than morals are the stories we tell. When a story is larger than life and also the truth reality bends to agree. We would be and have been the same no matter where we met, Savannah, Alexandria, Catalina, El Raval.

I stood and smoldered in queue with A., and years ago with another A., and another, and another. I’ve done my diligence and I’ve paid my penance. Now it is the world that owes me a debt. I won’t wait a moment longer. Not for you. Our need is the same: I can smell yours from across the city.

The heat of us is heavy if you let it. I can feel you admiring me when you feign sleep. If you look into my eyes you’ll see yourself shown with a sheen of my attention around you like an aura. And it’s terrifying to see what you really are, isn’t it? I’ve lived it for you — stared into the abyss, reported the transgressions I committed with glee and a grin — but you’ll have to feel it too, one day, and you’ll be given a choice. In the war for your being and becoming the only combatants are you and you and one of you has to die. All of it has always been a fight to the death. A hand on the throat, a gasp and a groan and a growl, blood spilled and sweat stains: squint and a struggle seems sensual. And it can be as well, even if you’re staring the enemy down in the mirror; isn’t it beautiful, having something to die for? Needing a thing so bad you’d kill for it?

I won the war with myself, and I enjoyed the spoils. I’m not ashamed of it. I’m still standing and still writing with blood on my mustache and crusted in my nails because I refused to die. And so I will live forever. And though it hurts the blood crystallizes so beautifully after only a few minutes, and in the right light there may as well be a chalice of rubies in my hand.

Or pearlescent, indigo, delicately ethereally beautiful. Ecstasy that moves and contorts the body, left the mouth wide agape: This has to be alchemy, I thought to myself, when I pulled her closer and plunged and time slowed and the temperature in the room rose five degrees. La mirada: “Do you understand how rare this is?” she asked me, husky in my ear, and I didn’t answer; because life is abundant; because I know it’s only rare as few have taken it as far as I have; this electrifying endlessness.

The world can say “I” for us too. And the scaffolding won’t hold anymore. But take it away and the building (which is a body) won’t buckle. Like I just forgot to die. And found out no one’s checking behind me. There is no authority beyond the beating of my heart. I can live however I want.

O grande lance e fazer romance!