Alone with You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

That I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed.

I am more addicted to the thought of your name on my tongue than I am to any other form of vice. The thought of having you is more dangerous than any cocktail of drugs, the idea of belonging to you endlessly destructive.

She is in all of his spaces and all of his thoughts. He contemplates formulas and degrees of rationality and they all turn into her. He thinks about time, which has only recently begun, or at least now feels different. He thinks: The Babylonians were wrong; time is made of her.

Jesus, he thinks, something is wrong with us, we are unwell, no one has ever felt any of this without destruction. Empires have fallen like this, he thinks, but it only makes him want her more, makes him look at his hands and think, My god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding her. What a waste, and then he says aloud, JesusfuckingChrist what have you done to me? And she says, Kiss me. He kisses her, thinks, Go on, ruin me. Wreck me, please. She kisses him back and she does.

If this is what it is to burn, he thought, then I will be worth more as scattered ash than any of my unscathed pieces.