On Vulnerability

Okotoks, Canada, June 2009

Remember you were always most beautiful when vulnerable. And I don’t just say it for the green eyes, like once upon a time in a little attic with a little French lamp. Neither do I say it for the veil or for the Yellow Flowered Dress, who ended up impregnating all of my life with yellow. Neither do I say it for the rope marks on your wrists, or for the decadent afternoon chasing us all the way into your room. I say it because you were simply more beautiful and powerful when you wore your debility so blatantly. When you could paint the whole room of scarlet and silver with just a twitch of your weakest finger. There, given, surrendered to nothing but the tide of my meager mood, which you thought so mighty. When I was both a child and your master… There, given, with three thorns and a little drop of poison…

I am lost. I am lost, yet I am still vulnerable. I wonder if you are too or if the idle has taken command of you. I hear many have taken pleasure in your erratic search; you go dropping gifts like breadcrumbs, and then you sit on your window scrubbing tongue-strokes from your skin with a silver sponge, and you look outside, into the mirage of some garden of some Eden. And you moisten your lips obsessively as your flesh turns to stone. And you coil around the comfort of vanity and pride. Remember you? So beautiful when vulnerable, and so vulnerable the way I remember you…