Alone With You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

all those mirror-shards of lives unlived.

Sometimes Aldo thought a fall was precisely what he was waiting for.

“Not bees?” “Not bees,” he said, and handed her the blunt. “Bees are for you.” She smiled at him, accepting it. “Thanks,” she said, as if he’d told her she was pretty. “You’re welcome,” he said as if he had.

It’s him lying next to you, legs tangled with yours, only to know he’ll be a specter in your thoughts by next month, next week, ten minutes from now.

His hands on you, that can be preserved, it can be painted, it can be committed to the canvas of your imagination, and it can stay in the vaults of your private longings, your little reveries, your twisted dreams.

If you could open only one part of me for your consumption, for your delectation, for the whims of your carnivorous mind, which part would you wish to see?

I’ve changed my entire shape for having fit within the enormity of his thoughts, and now the only words I know are lines and color.

“ether was what they called the air in the realm of the gods. A shining, fluid substance.”

She hungered for them, the unremarkable crumbs of him.

you and I, we are so different, aren’t we, and yet we are more like each other than the rest of the world is like us,