The Infinite Starr

You have dreamed of him before.

You never remember his face.

Only the sensation of being followed through places you have never visited while awake.

Sometimes there is snow beneath your bare feet. Sometimes black water. Once, an orchard appeared beneath a violet moon, every tree heavy with fruit you somehow knew you were forbidden to touch.

He is always somewhere behind you.

You always wake before turning around.

For years, you believed the dream concerned a man.

That was the first deception.

There have been many.

The world is exceptionally talented at impersonating the sacred.

It places beautiful things before starving souls and waits for them to kneel.

You have knelt more than once.

Before lovers. Before ambition. Before money. Before the exquisite possibility of finally being chosen by someone you had already decided was worthy of choosing you.

Each altar promised the same unnamed thing.

Come closer.

Almost.

Perhaps this time.

You never questioned why fulfillment continually required another person to hand it to you.

You simply kept entering the marketplace.

That is where the chosen become lost.

Not in darkness.

In abundance.

There are thousands of beautiful distractions available to anyone desperate enough to escape themselves.

The world will gladly provide a face for your longing.

It will give your hunger a name and convince you to chase it.

Sometimes it sends someone magnificent.

Someone whose presence rearranges the temperature of the room.

You recognize them immediately, although you have never met.

Your pulse changes.

Something ancient inside you rises.

You call this chemistry because the alternative would sound insane.

You believe you have found them.

The missing one.

The person carrying whatever strange substance your soul has been starving for.

So you move toward them.

And somewhere beneath your consciousness, another presence watches.

She has been watching for centuries.

You have dreamed of her too, although her disguises are better.

She appears in mirrors when you are not quite looking at yourself. She is the woman standing at the edge of the water. The hand disappearing around a corner. The voice that interrupts an otherwise reasonable decision with a single inexplicable refusal.

You rarely listen.

She does not speak loudly enough for the world you have chosen.

The world prefers him.

The part of you that advances.

He is magnificent when necessary.

He can build something from ruins and call it Tuesday. He can walk through catastrophe without allowing his hands to shake until nobody is watching. He understands protection, appetite, direction, possession and the primitive mathematics of survival.

You have mistaken him for your entire nature because he has saved your life so many times.

He has also nearly destroyed it.

Not intentionally.

A starving god becomes dangerous.

So does a forgotten goddess.

That is what nobody tells you about carrying both.

Before they become sacred, they become monstrous.

He begins conquering things that were never enemies.

She begins searching for herself in people incapable of holding her.

He mistakes control for safety.

She mistakes surrender for love.

He builds kingdoms because he cannot rest.

She enters beautiful disasters because she cannot remember her own divinity.

And you, carrying them both, wonder why your life occasionally feels like being dragged between two horses running toward different horizons.

You blame circumstances.

You blame childhood.

You blame lovers.

You blame timing.

You blame yourself.

Occasionally you blame God, although you are not entirely convinced anyone by that name is listening.

Still, the dreams continue.

The man behind you.

The woman near the water.

Neither ever appearing together.

Until one night, something changes.

You are standing again beneath the violet moon.

The orchard has returned.

This time the fruit has rotted on the branches.

Gold jewelry hangs from several trees. Coins glitter among the roots. Love letters have been nailed to trunks. Photographs move gently in the night wind, faces of people you once believed you could not live without.

There are keys.

Titles.

Promises.

Names you wanted attached to yours.

Every object represents something you once believed would complete the sentence of your existence.

You understand this without being told.

At the center of the orchard stands a table.

There are two chairs.

One is occupied.

By her.

You recognize her immediately.

Not her face.

Her grief.

It enters your body like memory.

She looks exhausted.

Not fragile.

There is something terrifying about her beauty because it has nothing to do with being looked at.

She has been waiting so long that waiting itself has become part of her.

You want to approach her.

Then you hear footsteps behind you.

The familiar ones.

The man from every dream.

For the first time, you turn.

He is not beautiful.

He is scarred.

His hands are filthy.

There is dried blood beneath his fingernails and an old wound crossing his chest. He looks like someone who has spent several lifetimes fighting his way toward something without knowing what it was.

Then he sees her.

And stops.

Neither speaks.

You understand before they do.

Every battle he fought was an attempt to reach her.

Every person she begged to love her was an attempt to find him.

Neither had been searching for another human being.

They had been searching for each other through you.

The realization is almost unbearable.

Because suddenly you understand the cruelty of the outer game.

It kept giving him enemies.

It kept giving her lovers.

It kept him occupied with conquest and kept her occupied with longing.

As long as one was fighting and the other was searching, neither would notice the locked chamber between them.

That chamber was you.

You look again at the orchard.

The money.

The promises.

The photographs.

The glittering evidence of everything you once pursued.

None of it was evil.

That would have made the game too easy.

It was simply convincing.

Convincing enough to keep you looking outward.

The man finally walks toward the table.

The woman does not rise.

There is no dramatic embrace.

No celestial music.

No declaration of eternal love.

He pulls out the empty chair.

He sits across from her.

For the first time in all your dreaming, both remain still.

The moon above them begins to disappear.

Darkness moves slowly across its surface until the orchard is illuminated by only a thin silver crescent.

You wait for something extraordinary to happen.

Nothing does.

Then you notice the trees.

The rotten fruit is falling.

One by one.

Softly.

Without anyone touching it.

The photographs loosen from their nails.

The jewelry slips from the branches.

The letters scatter across the ground until the wind carries them beyond the orchard.

Everything you once believed you needed begins releasing itself from the landscape.

You feel no urge to retrieve any of it.

That frightens you more than losing it ever did.

Across the table, the two strangers continue staring at one another.

You finally understand why paradise could not have come earlier.

You would have tried to possess it.

You would have turned it into another prize.

Another person.

Another achievement.

Another beautiful object hanging from a dying tree.

So the veil had remained.

Not because you were being punished.

Because you were still susceptible to counterfeits.

The eclipse reaches totality.

For several seconds, there is no moon.

No orchard.

No man.

No woman.

Only consciousness suspended inside absolute darkness.

Then something whispers from somewhere that has no direction.

You have heard the voice before.

In dreams.

In warnings.

In desire.

In every inexplicable moment when you knew something before you had any earthly reason to know it.

This time, you understand the words.

The two became one. 

The moon begins returning.

The table is empty.

Both chairs remain.

You wake with tears on your face and dirt beneath your fingernails.

On the nightstand beside you rests a piece of black fruit.

And for the first time in your life, you are not hungry.