Everything

Fi.
An original written by Alexandra.

The Lady of Shalott (1862)
Walter Crane

I am afraid any concept of time, space or reality
has withered. It has all diminished to look, feel
and sound the same. It is both all and nothing.
It is all. All of everything. All of nothing.

Around my blistered, salt-tinged fingers, I so urgently
wrap the threads that remain of you. If even I must
embroider you to my being, I shall do so. The memory
of my journey’s embarkment to you tends to flicker
occasionally, and the visions of it are opaquing.
You are disintegrating right before my very eyes.
You are sea mist.

I think I am screaming, but I realise there is not even
one decibel of noise. How can everything feel like it is
nothing? Ah, I am seeing it now: I am now starting to see
the way you saw me.

When the dusk swallows the day whole, I am floating
on my back under a frigidly cold blanket of stars.
Even though the day returns, I keenly await the
night, for since you disappeared, I only have the
stars for company.

I suppose even when the day comes and the sun
is scorching the decks and setting my skin ablaze,
I still feel it to be dark.
It is all dark. It is all.

Infrequently, a breeze comes, modestly reminding
me that there is direction and movement. It gives
me hope, for I feel I have been stationary for an eternity.
The wind whistles past me in a high-pitched delight, as
if she is telling me the secrets she had heard throughout
the night. Or perhaps, it is a message from you?
Delusion on open waters is dangerous and the liquor of
the fool. It has claimed even the most courageous of men.
You being amongst them.

My love, it has been years now. Are you lost? Are you
even here? All this blue of the water looks the same
and I aggressively resent it. That, and the pitch black
of night dotted with glistening traces of starry white and
silver, is all I have become. It has consumed me entirely.

I am nothing now but the water that rules this earth
and the sky that holds it in its hand. I am all of it,
but I am nothing myself. In searching the seven seas
for you, I am slowly being stripped completely, stripped
down to nothing. Therefore, I can become everything.

Why then, my love, could I not have been so for you?

Death of Sappho (1881)
Miguel Carbonell Selva