There he stood dressed in the trappings of natalitude, the gleam of his chest, shoulders, legs, and torso unburdened. The eddied trails of dark hair sharply defined as he remained stood, leaning forward and backward occasionally onto and off of the tips of his toes. Ligaments in his feet rose softly beneath the skin like piano wires and subtle indentations creased his thighs as he adjusted his hips over his stance. I took in his body as though carving it. The striations running parallel down his abdomen, the way the muscles there bunched or swayed as his shoulders tilted only the slightest amount. The naked valley of pale skin along his waist, the plunging grooves of his Adonis' belt, the taper of him, the clutched softness of his pudendum, the way that it lay. The flesh there dark and flush, as though dipped in wine.
His lips remained parted with only enough space for his breath to pass, his eyes intense. Pools of green—oak leaf, mint and grass. His pupils hovered near me and I found myself drawn into them until I noticed only the motion of their saccade. What was it like to share yourself as a vessel with others. Allowing oneself to be deconstructed. Reduced and remade as form, shape, color and sound. Parsed into long strokes on newsprint or thumbed and smoothed into clay.
What were god’s tools of life. His medium of creation. It is at times, when I am both witness and student to the coiled and bare mortal frames of man. Fidgeting and brave against their shame. I wonder if we are not simply a dense collection of sunlight. A sharply-skeined knit of unknowable order and complexity. We are woven dolls, lithe and flexing—bundled energy and capricious spirit. A kernel of curiosity and acuity placed within the furrow of our minds to furnish thought enough to pursue novelty, abstraction, surreality, war, leisure, and love in equal measure.
This begs the question, what am I? An observer? Yes, undoubtedly so. But why am I viewing this young man? 18? 19? I do not know. Why is he here? Where is here? An orchard perhaps? I look down in search of fallen apples splayed out in the shadow beneath rows of trees. I look for the green of grass at his feet. Verdant light bouncing softly against his calves. The soft blue of the sky touching over his nose and collarbones. I’m not sure I see anything at all. There is neither light or darkness here.
Then it changes. The man takes soft cautious steps across the top of a stone wall. The curves of the blue and red stones pressing into the arch of his feet with a dry sound. His pelvis locks, the length of his torso rises, the muscles of his stomach deepening towards his spine and thrusting the edge of his hipbone forward into sharp relief. His naval pinches closed and the column of his neck turns on its axis. His head tilting, locks of hair falling over his ears into new shape. The line from the back of his knee to the top of his buttock looks like a simplified spoon in profile. The arc of his glutes solid and limned in golden light.
The triangle of his elbow draws my gaze. The bone beneath so evident. The skin taut and pink. The creature’s steps grow more able and confident along the wall. Legs pump and swing. Muscles bunch in his thighs, the flesh sways with each impact as his feet strike the stones. His toes press off like hammer strikes as he bounds forward, the void static and immobile behind him. A wind, unfelt and unseen, flutters the bristles of his eyebrows and the vellum of his cheeks and the rims of his ears. His chest falls and rises. Sweat glistens along his arms. He is structural, his body in tow to his leg’s bursting speed. I wish to feel his pulse. I think about it instead.
Veins tunnel and wind beneath his skin, they branch and scion to the smallest of capillaries, every cell desperate for the oxygen of his blood. If I looked close enough would I be able to make out the sunlight. Folded endlessly into ribbons of gold and music? Or would there simply be the drudgery of atoms? Small machines locking and pressing against one another in a dense jungle that had a bottom and a top. Everything is just a box inside of another box. A pie crust which when removed offer only new vantage on the filling, sweet and scarlet, beneath.
If given an implement, like God’s own hand, would I be able to finely cut this man open, bloodless as clay, and squash and refine the peels elsewhere. Could I cut away all the waste of a man? Vestigial and wasted, and create something that redefines the beast of man? A leathery lash of tail? A barb at the heel? A new entry of human pleasure that reaches heights great enough to frighten and snatch away one’s breath. Would these be blessings or incommodities to overcome?
I stripe the man with all manner of modification. The clay of his limbs and back and skull slough and reform in my palms. I push life back into his lungs. More jaguar than man now. Hearing sharp as pins and the round sway of its back disposed to prowling low to the ground. The tail is thin as a whip. It dances in the air as he lunges forward. Claws slide free. Its body is an arrow poised. I interrupt the motion on a whim. The contraction of its dagger sharp pupil stills entirely. The jaguar is breathless as I observe what I wish. I marvel at the velvet darkness of the fur looking disheveled by fingers. It looks polished and smooth along its back and shaggy on the inside length of each limb. Happy with the details of my creation...My creation? Am I the god of this void? Is this who I am in this elsewhere? Not just an observer but a creator?
I feel no presence of body for myself. I feel no pain nor any itching here. A sanctum? Mine to roam and sculpt?
Happy with the details of my creation I snip away the tail and fold the clay back into a ball with my handless hands. I let the void choose its own form. An expanse of stars overhead. They glitter with enough light to see my clay be loosed from my handless hands in tendrils. Collecting into itself and forming a rough animal shape. It is not one I know and never one that either existed or has been dreamed up before. It is like a man but refined and cut more beautifully. There is a charge to its limbs, a kind of overcorrection from man that makes this creature look almost alien in its similarity. This creature is as though a circle inverted into something that is not a circle. It is the crescent of a moon and the swell along a river bank.
Perhaps I have dreamed for long enough now. Ivory hair falls in tresses along its back. Her back. It is as though a bird's wings were an animal all their own. Porcelain skin rises, toes small and heels collected together so that her feet together look like a spade. Her knees are shapely, her eyes are the same green as the man’s had been. The lips less understated. Her chest is smooth and rounded. The entirety of her is slender, and attractive and pleasing to witness. She is ample where needed, strong elsewhere. There is a comfort found in her form. Her ears are not like the man’s. Coiled softly like a long frond, tapered at the ends. Light glows easily through the thinness of their veil, crimson and softness.
What would this creature speak of given experience and life. Trepidation catches in my heart as the fingers of my handless hands reach for the line of her throat and the edge of her chin. I wish to brush against her cheek. I place my palm against her belly and press against it with deliberate slowness before removing my hand and listening for the bellow in her breast. There is a rush of air. A startle of life crossing her expression. I smile and watch as she leans back, her movements unsteady. Graceless without being ugly or cumbersome.
I taught her steadiness. I taught her to sit and to look. I taught her curiosity. I then built for her a waterfall and invited her to swim and lounge. The stars wheeled overhead the entire time. As she swam, I delighted at her animation. Her expressions. The soul in the shine of her eyes.
When she grew tired I laid her down and she closed her eyes. At that point I taught her the most important skill of all. With deftness and gentle prodding, I showed her what it was to dream. A blank canvas which she took to like wet to water. My muse.
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