Concrete Bride: Full Reverie
Prologue
It’s your own business whether or not you believe God exists, but I can guarantee you that darkness does. I’ve heard its voice, seen its eyes, and felt my heart fill with its presence. Of the two routes, I’ve sought out the latter for most of my life. I can’t explain its pull on me, but once my mom called a few summers ago telling me about the fifth cancer growing in her body, I gave myself up entirely to the shadows. Countless mistakes were carelessly made as the regrets continued to pile up.
C.S. Lewis wrote about pride being the nexus for all other sins. Hubris self-love, self-pity, and self-hatred all wound together into a brilliant ball of over-confident arrogance. I, then, owe myself this much if nothing else; the absolute truth, in its rawest form, forever erasing the gap between artist and audience. Through the advice of angels are words engraved onto my moral compass reminding me of my life’s sole purpose; redemption.
There are indeed parallel plot-lines that shape this story: the absent father, the ill mother, and perhaps most tragic of all, the bride that I’m in constant search for, only to never truly find. Still, I could never deny that the overall journey is a beautiful work-in-progress. However, to see a bigger, cleaner picture, I sometimes need to take a few steps back and reexamine the artwork, especially in trying times that require a reshaping of reality. In order to find some sort of solace, I must retrace the thread in reverse until I finally come across the origin of everything. Like a splintered piece of discarded wood, I haphazardly nail it back together through these fractured memories.
I should start at the very beginning—before all else. Though born in Romania, I never learned how to read or write it properly, yet I hear much about Mihai Eminescu and how he is the country’s most beloved poet. Some consider “Luceafarul” to not just be his masterpiece, but the longest love poem ever written. I couldn’t find a perfect stanza that stood out to me so I wrote one myself;
“My future love—someday we’ll meet
I’ll be your endless pride;
Names spelled in stars above concrete
All shine for you, my bride.”
Pure Revolt
My parents grew up in a communist setting that I can’t even imagine. Many nights, my mom and I would stay up and talk about her upbringing in Romania and all the things she’s glad I didn’t have to go through. I still remember seeing flashes of tanks as we drove by armed soldiers before they got me out at four years old right at the height of their revolution.
“They’d follow me, everywhere I went,” she said of the Securitate. “If I stopped and spoke with someone, they’d later ask them what I said.” My father’s writing made certain that he and my mom stayed in the spotlight. Oppression impedes art, especially the type that makes an average citizen think for themselves. So as Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime took control of the country, all media became filtered and self-expression was completely marginalized. Luckily, both of my parents were revolutionaries in their own ways. They both protested evils and the various wrongs of the world. They both stood for love, peace, and freedom. They both expressed themselves through art; my mom through her dancing, my dad through his writing.
“You’d have to be sharp and read between the lines,” she’d tell me when I’d ask how he was still able to publish his work in such an oppressive environment.
“They shot him and his wife in the street,” my mom would eventually tell me of Ceausescu’s demise. The revolution was very much televised; its rise, its peak, and its aftereffects. The feeling of needing to be defiant has been coursing through my veins ever since I can remember. Generations of bottled up rebellion came passed down and properly coiled itself onto my DNA.
Once the revolutions of ’89 spread across the Eastern Bloc, my parents knew they’d need to leave for brighter and better futures. My mom said a little prayer once she felt the plane’s wheels lifting off the runway, knowing she’d never be coming back. If I close my eyes and try to focus, I can sense pieces of that four year old-feeling still alive in its afterglow of when I see her running towards me in the big New York City airport, full of joy and happiness and pride. I try to capture that moment more than any other, but it’s also the one that’s most fleeting.
Hereditary Angst
I remember my school teachers always mentioning how my dad’s talent surely got passed down to me too and I hated that, so I actively stayed away from writing. I knew he was a success in his own right and the thought of me trying to compete with him intimidated any attempt of trying it away. His legacy haunted me throughout my youth; his ability to speak throughout the night, his intellect, and his charm. I once saw my mom’s eyes welling up at the sight of a street vendor selling roses to passers-by.
“One time, he bought me the entire bucket of flowers,” she said of my father. I’ve been personally hugged by club bouncers and looked at with slight pity by retail store customers when they’d found out I was his son, probably because they figured I’d eventually follow in his footsteps.
Being spoiled my entire life, however, and given everything I’ve ever wanted, backfired with flying colors. Everything eventually gathered dust or endured unmerited misery through my destructive nature. I’ve taken freedom for granted before so I too, eventually felt the desperation of losing it as I laid in my lonely bunk, gathering dust, enduring self-merited misery. Still, the regret lingers.
Of all the perfect pictures taken of my socialite parents throughout their photogenic marriage, there isn’t a single one of my mother smiling. None showing even an ounce of happiness. I remember my dad sitting by the living room window, blowing streams of continuous smoke through a small fan sat upon the sill. Though I never once saw him raise a finger to my mom and still; nobody should have to endure so much just to stay in line with social norms as she did throughout the union. I never once saw them fight, but nor did I ever see them kiss, hug, or even hold each other’s hands.
The day finally arrived when the school principle came to my second grade classroom, calling my name through the doorframe. We walked down the hallway and turned the corner to see my aunt and a man from our church down at the other end, distraught and anxious. My aunt began crying before getting the words out;
“Something bad’s happened,” as she gasped for air. I already knew. I’d felt it before she even spoke.
My apartment door opened up to a scene that implanted itself into my nine year old head and hasn’t dissolved since. The room I had come to call home—full of strangers in black, eerily gathered around the living room bed his body still lay on. Trembling whimpers amidst waves of crying. Through the crowd I saw my mom in the corner, sitting with a face more sullen than any I’ve ever seen since. She looked up to toward me and shouted out my name the way only a newly-grieving widow can—full of hopeful solace. My dad’s hand coming out from his light-blue pajama sleeve looked off-colour, void of all energy, so I brushed up against it with my own. I can’t remember much else other than it just feeling wrong. People I’ve never seen before stared on at me, waiting for some type of emotional response. I calmly left to go to my room and tried to escape the resumed ritual of mourning happening out past my bedroom door. A whole world out there, if one can only leave their little box to go see it.
Little Box, Big Apple
The little box is always the same, every corner is overrun with trash, layers of dust have collected everywhere, and the silence surrounds all. There is no laughter from long-passed memories, no music to inspire a happier presence, no friend to share anything with. I’ve always wanted that best friend that knows every bit of me—every angle, which way it turns, how, and why. I know this world is unimaginably wonderful if it’s seen through the right lenses, anyone can appreciate the beauty on their own. The little pieces of heartbreak that come with it is when you realize how much better it’d all be to see it with someone else. My life’s sacred tragedy; longing for a best friend to share it with, not realizing that even if they’d existed, my depression would’ve just driven them away regardless.
It redesigns itself into different versions, but the vibe’s always the same. Every word; a new angle shaped. Every phrase; a new wall set. When the sentence is fully complete, the room comes into view. The quickest way to purge darkness; simplicity. The night is forever-lasting inside my little box, there hasn’t been colour nor light nor any sound of true happiness at all for years. The only shimmer left; sparkles of future hope. Something to strive for, to become better for, to radiate strength to as it’s done for me. It will always remain locked as long as I refuse to dig up the key I’ve buried long ago, deep under the dirt, through grime and depression, anger and disappointment. The key to reminding me that the sun once did exist and can again; honesty.
After my dad died from lung cancer, I moved to New York City with distant cousins allowing my mom to grieve in solace. On a busy intersection in Queens is where I found and fell in love with my bride. It was all around me; beneath my legs, sprawling up the sides of skyscrapers, and flooding down the streets in every direction. The people moved in clusters of energy, always in motion, never stalling long enough for the pain of past mistakes to set in or that of an anger you’re too young to process. I knew this is where I belonged. Once the rays of a bright glowing sun fade out to pitch black, only the stars are left to shine. Night falls over the city and I’m left to fend from within the fog. I see the sparkling punctures through the canvas, promising that somewhere down the rivers of time, there is hope. It exists, if only through my reshaping of what is possible.
Demons & Lovers
I once attended a private Christian school up the street from our first apartment where my mom would patiently wait with the biggest smile on her face as she’d sit alone in its dirt parking lot counting down the minutes until I’d finally appear within the crowd. On chillier Friday-evenings after getting home, we’d celebrate the weekend’s beginning by baking hot banana bread together in our lively cornered-off kitchen; small but happy.
We’d have daily sermons every morning in the gymnasium where all the students would gather on the bleachers above the pastor, watching him preach through the little vignettes he’d relay. Ninety percent of the time I’d be in my own world, but every so often, I’d hear a word or phrase that’d make my ears perk back up as I’d refocus my attention.
“The devil wanted to turn as many people as possible towards the darkness, so one day he gathered all of his most loyal demons and sat them down for a meeting,” the sermon began. It goes that he went around the room, asking everyone their best idea on reaching the masses, unimpressed by all until the last one opened its mouth to speak;
“We tell them to turn their lives over towards The Light instead,” he started saying, infuriating the devil at the thought of spreading the opposite message to his true aim, as the servant continued, “but to wait until tomorrow to do it.”
“Genius,” the evil one confessed, sitting back in awe of its simplicity.
Meanwhile, I’d continue basking in my favorite reverie: the dancing, the tablecloths, all of the fine threads outlining the bride—everything that goes into planning everyone’s biggest day—their wedding. The moment two best friends become an official union, a partnership, a team. Placing the other’s hand in theirs and taking a leap into the unknown with breaths anxiously held for future potential.
There’s an idea that’s stayed with me throughout my life. Two lovers laying side by side on a hill, underneath a tree’s shade, their view from up above revealing the whole world spinning down below—everything that’s ever happened or will happen, all working together simultaneously. Interconnecting lines of energy, independent of time and space. Then I reopen my eyes and I’m back in reality; back standing on a street corner waiting for the crossing light to turn green, back in my mom’s trashed bedroom while she sleeps in the hospital, back in my little box of isolation where two is still one and shade is nonexistent as contrast is nowhere.
I once heard about a rose coming up from the concrete, so that’s where I always tried to find her—my muse. Through the cracks in the pavement I’d envision her seeds bursting open, a beautiful flower blossoming alive with scarlet petals and thorns on its spine. I never sought out comfort in relationships, I always wanted a challenge. “Always keep moving,” even if it was in the wrong direction. For two points of reference to make better sense than worse, they need to elevate one another as opposed to driving each other down toward the cement ground below.
The beast with two backs has pride of its own. It wastes away in bottles, pills, and chaos while deluding itself that it’s found freedom at last. No line is uncrossed as the mutual narcissism between the two lovers grows with self-bestowed importance. Once ripped apart, the fog lets me continue the sad ritual solely for myself.
A Dark Romance
Shortly after my stay in New York, I moved to my true hometown of Ann Arbor. It’s the perfect one—autumn leaves lit its pavement on fire, sunsets were multi-colour, and there was always music. Art was everywhere, so I was drawn to its artists the most. My high school especially was filled with all kinds; musicians, actors, and writers galore.
Within one of my classes sat the makings of future-womanhood wearing all black and draped in a quiet sorrow: a classmate. So simple, so inevitable. It was a physical attraction that turned emotional over time so the immediate energy wore off but underneath a forming friendship were the sparked embers of a roaring fire, patiently waiting. I’d give her hand massages during class, in the dark, where our connection was first made. She’d throw my own away from her if the teacher turned on the lights too quickly, making me grin with all the possible potential.
We eventually slept side by side in a room where our games of self-destruction would begin. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. Plato’s words echo throughout the corridors of time—away from the originator and towards countless young couples who hold onto each syllable, until the real world finally demystifies their wonder.
Late nights dancing, ripped fishnet stockings, refueled rebellion through capsule-form and white lines which disappeared off our stomachs as quickly as they’d been laid. Carnal desires expressed through bloodshot eyes; we waltzed around each other’s verbal ammo with impatient readiness to utterly retaliate.
A swallow doesn’t make a summer but that didn’t stop us from trying. Sunset-tinted fifths of rum—one after another after the next until they stood emptied like the statues of fallen soldiers. Like our reflections we couldn’t escape; in the bottles’ transparent glass, in the lonely mirror which hung behind their table-top pedestal, in all of the raindrops that fell on our bodies during those collectively hazy months.
We were empty ourselves. Tired and malnourished from an unhealthy addiction to complete chaos, drawn to all that’s unstable—inside and out. A romance forged from the embers of past fires, forgotten but never forgiven. Past writers of unclosed chapters from separate books that felt similar in scope, or familiar, like the anger raging inside us both. We took it out on the others’ lips;
“Bite harder.” It didn’t matter who spoke when, those two words lived under that roof. Lust dripped down the textured walls like carmine curtains framing our stage of inverted vanity. Angry music blared out for days from beyond the room’s locked door as we taught each other how to self-encrypt our hearts onto the other’s soul—passing the flask back and forth while masking our true motives. When no unexplored inch remained, we bypassed our forced physical-separation by finding solace in the flowing rivers of our own sweat. Mixing it in slowly with a symphony that only played in minor keys. Sadness was everywhere. In the pillows thrown onto the floor from the night before, in the flipped cushions or ripped bed sheets. A violent attraction kept us coming back into the fog.
Eventually, the downward spiral leads to utter self-destruction and once the haze dissipates, I find myself suddenly standing in a rehab hallway outside the recreation room with my mom as we say our goodbyes. She gently puts her hand on my shoulder, still slumped from the war.
“Things will be okay,” she says, both eyes glazing over as we hug and separate ways before either allow ourselves the comfort of breaking down.
Dreaming of Weddings, Part 1
I used to walk by a small bridal shop on my way to weekly therapist visits. With skateboard in hand, I’d stare through the window at the custom pieces. A sight of renewed purity flowed down in off-white silks and satins. Beads of ivory instead of sweat. Lines of embroidered passion instead of permanent slits.
I’d imagine the clientele; ecstatic at the feelings they’d get on their final fitting day—an image of redemptive beauty reflecting back from all angles. She'd close her eyes and see the imperfect Prince Charming riding towards his bride, steel armor replaced by scarred arms, sword and shield by pen and paper.
Then; trust-falls back into a recoiled reality as she draws back the eyelid curtains and reaccepts objective truth. He is nowhere, she is non-existent; the shorelines dissolve back into the ash that rises up through the atmosphere like burned pieces of grey confetti. The best men all gather around the groom—anxious to see the ball and chain locked up from their front row seats. I’ve pretended to get down on one knee too many times throughout my life—nobody’s ever taken me seriously, not even myself.
My mom came into my room one morning where I sat on the edge of my bed, nearly shivering with nervous sweat.
“What’s wrong?,” she asked, full of concern. I began telling her about the dream I’d just woken up from of an image that’s haunted me ever since;
A beautiful wedding in a broken-down chapel; rays of sunlight still shining through its cracks in the rooftop, impaling the dense air with translucent touches of promised hope that pierce the fog in permanent halves. Beacons from high above all beaming prisms of rich color through the stained glass windows and onto walls half-sprawled with the bright vines of deep green emeralds.
She stands center-stage; framed perfection. A magnum opus wrapped in white threads of pure redemption. Untouched skin; restored to life and ever-pampered by real Seraphim who flew down from His side and saved the star-crossed lovers from their eventual suburban fate of celestial disappointment. I’d found true happiness at last through her eternal smile.
“Does anyone have any reason...,” the preacher utters the words I’d been dreading to hear as she peers through her peripheral in my general direction. My entire body freezes shut—disabled by well-deserved humility and a forced life of self-imposed silence. Through the veil’s intricate lace; a microscopic image of our entire universe and its timeline starts taking shape as it simultaneously begins unravelling at both ends, gaining exponential purpose within the glistening liquid of reflective teardrops being formed real time inside the bride’s outlined-eyes.
Then I wake up.
“I couldn’t move,” I whispered out to my mom through thick gasps of air. She started choking up, seeing the scene for herself.
“But it was just a dream, right?” asking with as much emotional investment as I had in the off-chance that she was right. Just a dream; like all the times I’ve been rushed to Emergency Rooms for OD’ing as angels would find my slumped body and refuse to let me die in such a pathetic way. Just a dream; like meeting my best friend, or that she ever existed outside my immediate self-centeredness at all. Just a dream; like the possibility that anything I ever did from the heart was truly real.
The Windy City
Dozens of glow in the dark stars stuck to my ceiling with plaster as my mom and I arranged them together back before Middle School. At night I’d listen to the radio playing Top 40 love songs and stare at the face in the small glowing bits of hope up above my bed. I’d let myself go there, every time; the riverwalk, the lights shining off the dark lake waters, the gorgeous landscape I’d stamped onto my frontal lobe since first seeing it many years ago in my youth.
Flash-forward to many years later in my late twenties and Sinatra’s love ballads for the city played on repeat as the Amtrak train pulled into Union Station. The platform was paved with bricks of glory as I stepped off the metal stairs and into a new home. I climbed the concrete steps and found myself surrounded by gorgeous chaos, again in my element. People circulated around the land like coursing energy through expressways of veins—Chicago was wide awake.
It didn’t take long to fall back into old habits; chopping up white powder with friends inside girlfriends’ bathrooms, making moves toward more bad choices, and so on until the night would pause just long enough to sleep off its effects before restarting again. One random day the phone rang and immediately darkened my world without warning.
“They found something,” my mom said of her mammogram results while holding back emotion. Hodgkin’s lymphoma and an eventual battle totaling five different cancers ensued while I—her only child—was nowhere to be found. Sombre mornings came; quiet showers, semi-clean shirts for work, something to eat for lunch…, but chemo? No. I wasn’t thinking of her doctor appointments, but instead: my new shoes. Not the pills she’s taking to live, the one’s I’m doing to die. Not the thoughts that mattered, those that didn’t were the ones I’d consciously obsess over. Parties—every night. Escape—always. Drugs, strangers, alcohol, anger—all wrapped up tightly as my own little self-gifted box complete with a red velvet bow tied neatly on top.
Amidst the continuous static are still flashes of hope. Rest stops placed along my life’s highway to a destination that angels keep trying to steer me away from, as Virgil’s words ever-haunt the back of my mind; “the way to hell is easy.”
Each one of His disciples came holding a lesson to impart. The spark was lit as a new attraction’s lipstick left scarlet marks on our mutual-interest, passing it back and forth as we plotted out plans for future business. Sunsets splashed across the sky in waves of watercolors. Pastel pinks mixed with Easter oranges washed everything out in the city’s light-blue ceiling. I perched on my rooftop’s fire-escape, sitting on the cold metal steps while staring out at the skyline I’d come to call home. I blew out streams of thick smoke as thoughts of pure dread replaced any bits of comfort left. Time was running out to do anything worthwhile. The clock started ticking louder than ever before. Each step I’d take, another spot the second-hand moved—over and over until minutes were made into months in the blink of an eye too bloodshot with poison to realize it.
I inhaled—then I leapt towards the mist below, plunging into the deepest of seas, the deepest of dreams.
Beata Beatrix
The haze brings about bits and pieces of memories that don’t make sense. Chopped up frames of film I don’t remember shooting. Anger works in ways that’s hard to take into account. It threads itself into my daily existence with such a delicate touch that by the time its coursing through my body, I’m already breathing fire. I used to try meditation until I realized that it required active focusing upon nothingness. I used to be able to pray with so much more ease a long time ago too, but lately I feel like I’ve been picking apart my end of the line. The emotions used to drip out through my fingertips and onto the canvas below, smearing technicolour truths through optic brushes—a filmed masterpiece from beginning to end to new beginning.
Months of constant turmoil and persistent guilt came barreling toward my mom and I both, a ball of havoc in attempting to purge so many of the things that’ve haunted my life followed suit. The off-colour marks still on my wrists, the emptied fifths still stashed away in closets, the pictures of a once-romanticized era realized through saddened expressions and regretful moments. The hospitals, the medicines, exile, disease—it all interwove itself into a mess of misery in an attempt to find and rid myself of all the darkness that’s held such a permanent hold on my heart.
Time eventually ticks away, and so after the storm, a period of personal restoration is required. In order to beautify a place that’s been held under such a previous oppression, one must first create their own space of individualized-peace. Symbols of hope came through the images of potential happiness countering my puke stains and pill bottles all surrounded by a brilliant swirl of sleeplessness cast upon the outside world with zero concern and even less caution.
An immediate shift within the earth’s core; flipping the switch on polar opposite poles when she appears in my dreams as someone I have yet to meet, taking center-stage; both brims ink-filled while adorned in Vivianne Westwood accessories with added revolver clip as liquified rose petals drip down halls of scarlet throughout a timelessly-armored heart. Her attitude; priceless—the posture; prayer, as her poet approaches his muse from beyond the background’s shadows.
Unmoved Movers
Back to living in a box. Back to wishing it was different. I hear the call through the airwaves out beyond the clouds in the distance;
Find me…
I see thunderstorms outside my studio window as lightning cracks across the sky. I crash on my bed letting chemicals rewire all parts of my mind as my frontal-lobe explores further. Outside there is so much life—inside there is only grey ash. I walk her streets at night in ever-search of self-gifted curses, like always. The city becomes my church—an industrialized nature with permanent smoke gliding across its surface. Her curls cascade down in flowing rivers of taxi cabs and speeding hearses. Her lips part the ocean and its coastline before swallowing my body’s inner-pulp. My bride’s alive in the electric wires powering our cement sanctuary with trillion-watt bulbs. Through the commotion and constant multi-dimensional regression of self—I rehear the promise;
Find me…
It flies through the fog like an emotional homing missile. Deep within a dark stare, an inner-spirit slowly points towards me as her eyes whisper, “that’s mine.”
Above an autumn-rainfall’s freshly soaked asphalt shine the peaks of high-rise rooftops projecting an outline of shapes I’ve never seen before—eclipsing the laws of mathematics; divine geometry. She’ll appear like a siren in the seas of forgotten memories; Mnemosyne, reawakened. Throughout the moment, a portrait of future potential by way of rising phoenixes wrapped in Oak Street leather jackets.
Sparks fly off the rails as L-trains thunder down their tracks toward the Loop. Three-inch heels keep perfect time of our tapered lives through rhythmic-clicks off alleyway-bricks below her stilettoed metronomes. Louder with each step; power sounds of an elegant season surround us in stereo, ever-guided by the speakers’ bass-driven beats.
We enter our dimly-lit kingdoms and take the two tallest thrones with pulled-patent cushions, like always. Lights of fire-glowing lava branch off in strange sporadic angles through their glass-shaped cages; all restoring life to the smallest parts of the darkly-painted walls with such class-made patience. She sits while looking the room over and silently reads its vibe.
She is both saint and sinner at once.
She lounges on the Venetian sofa with book on world architecture in hand as steaming Earl Grey sifts out of her vintage Malcolm McLaren-inspired porcelain cup. Diamond-shelf indica wades through the air as its clouds slowly rise from the self-wrapped amber tip balancing in-between her poised fingers.
She is draped in a see-through sundress paired with peep-toe lavender pumps and oversized straw hat or dancing underneath neon green lights pulsing out in strobes of sweat before soaking off the night amidst bubbles and jets with only the darkest of scarlet petals scattered across her wet surface-level. She is what gives the scene its colour, like always.
Time refreshes its frames. Time refreshes everything.
That’s when I first hear it; the language. She speaks in her native tongue and I reflexively look up to answer in my own, but am unable to. Like I already know their shapes and flow with their rhythms but a last-second crossed-wire scrambles the words as they come out completely different.
Far preceding genealogies and all original lines, before the branches of long-descended-ties—there sits The Unmoved Mover; breathing purpose into everything with such glorious life—putting pieces in play throughout corridor’ed time. Beyond symbols and accent marks, passed tense participles and cognates—there is a familiarity present, rooted in future emotion reaching backward, realigning the phrases as it sees fit; an unmoved mover.
Dreaming of Weddings, Part 2
Some dreams I actively seek out in hopes that their hauntings are ever-abstractive and self-implanted deep within the maze of crossed-wire encryptions that maybe—they might just be real. My chemically-altered lifelong-coma comes with an imagination that remains in a constant state of flux throughout the mixed-media thought-tunnels running on only the highest, if not sharpest—of dreamy frequencies.
I gently slide the tip of my finger across the soft edges of her ankles where sole and topside separate for an entire night and not think twice about going any further. I pin her up against the wall by softly biting pierced-earlobes as jeans ease over paralleled-hips in slowed motions before falling to the floor beneath our bare feet below.
I am both sinner and saint at once.
I feel the cold metal zippers of her open leather jacket repeatedly smack against my chest; the only piece of clothing on either of our bodies as we out-best the breaking of each others’ backs from the Kama Sutraesque-movements upon the same chair for the past hour. Amidst the room; a sensual intuition that turns our two genetic buildups into counter-reactive towers of sexual energy impatiently waits to rip-through by megaphone-amplified moans we’d make certain that the world itself can feel with a diamond’s worth of clarity—and shine.
Dream-wave expanding;
Two souls of the same sign—watching all sides as we hear billions of beautiful gunshots blaze through the night sky marking the start of our week-long royal-wedding event—it’s official. Her finely stitched bulletproof vest of silken-threaded wires reflects back a past through mastered alchemy of the very Sun’s satin-flowing fire; an ever-beauty bleaching out darkness. Her wreath whispers beginnings of the long-awaited fulfillment under regal soils of a promise stemmed from paralleled lineages; a potential ever-reaching its markets. Ancestral aims refined through Cupid’s love-arrows, guided by heavenly eagles soaring high above in multi-sphered flashes of future ascendence as she nears Her Most Holy Alter & I Mine.
“The bride has arrived!” voices out the gathered loved ones through bouts of loud cheering and commenced celebration as the first gleaming pieces of a mile-long motorcade rolls down in leisured convertible movements accented by thumping sounds of pounding subs coming from out the dozens of duffle bag-sized trunks. Cherry paint-drops sprinkle the ground in Pollock-channeled brushstrokes like the melting lollipops of a humid-conquered Houston Summer from the swerving procession of Princes and Princesses, Kings and Queens—all sitting atop freshly-coated four-wheeled floats leaving behind mid-air energy-streams telling the cryptic tales of rival meetings between ivory and burgundy castles through in-rhythm waves set to the chopped and screwed remixes of underground trap music. Each backseat—a temporary council of familial aristocracy. Everything; primped and proper. Nothing left to falter. Festivities thrown in the name of revolutionary suicide-pacts by permanent-spotlight stealing martyrdom.
The centerpiece is pulled by pure-bred quarter horses. The chariot slowly slides into view. She is not an image of mere perfection nor solely radiates the inner-strength of beatific love; no—the bride is beyond Beatrice. A backdrop of bright blue and red bursts merged through golden lava-filled fireworks light up the dark sky behind the dual-airing dynasties accepting their celestial roles, taking up eternal thrones; setting the stage to a sacred joining of ancient bloodlines with unresolved mysteries that remain in play as the plot continues to thicken; forever searching for the exact point in our shared dreaming that put into motion the metaphoric split-off and the exact point that it’d re-found itself further down below watching its shapes realign in real time into the symbols of an ever-monarch’s permanent shine; like always. River; remerged.
Then I wake up.
Epilogue
Back in the present, my mom laid on her uncomfortable hospital bed, waiting for the moment I’d finally walk into the room and surprise her with flowers and chocolate. Instead; I was wheeled into the E.R. on the bottom-floor as security handcuffed my wrists to the stretcher’s metal handles, prepping to pump my stomach clean. I knew she was asleep seven levels above me as beeps from both I.V. machines kept perfect time of our lives half-spent sifting through the bleak corridors of institutionalized anguish. I finally got my wish of walking down spotlight-lit streets with the reigning Queen by way of the sprawled hospital; a monitor displaying heart-rate served as scepter held by her side as she wheeled it down waxy floors through short baby steps of inspiring strength.
“Why does he want me so bad?,” I once asked her.
“Because you’ve always given yourself up to him so easily,” my mom said before slowly rising from her chair and walking off with newly-sparked strength. “Pray about it,” she said, slowly disappearing from my visual line of sight only to begin reappearing through all other spatial estimates of my life in search of the best possible spiritual route.
It’s poetry.