Secret Vespers

I want a return to childhood, I want to be like turritopsis nutricula, the jellyfish you showed me, tiny and nacreous. I want to live forever, grow mature then revert to innocence, neither die nor stagnate, be able to erase and rediscover my form, my sexual fantasies, my world.

You must know I still visit that tunnel under the aquarium, with its view from under the fish and its deep blue light. Most people come during feeding, they want the agitation, the water filled with bubbles, but I come to be alone, to see the animals swim in quiet circles. This is how we really live, always returning, always waiting. Waiting, like you and I the day we met, rigid, watching the smooth movement of fish, only a meter apart.

In your office you showed me fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago. Some of those species live now. Some of them are extinct, your favorite among them. Nature is like that, you told me, sometimes the most wondrous creatures are lost.

I tried to kiss you and you moved your mouth away. You opened your collar and said, “No, here.” You arced your neck, slid your whole back against the wall, pressed up from your toes.

You told me we all die, even the immortal medusae are vulnerable. You have no idea how often I think about that.

I want us to make something that will never last. I want to break onto a rooftop with a shovel and leave a picture in the snow. Only a few executives in the buildings still taller will see it; they will wonder about it, and by next snowfall it will be gone.

I want five seconds in slow motion, the camera on your laughter, steam-breathing, in so much detail I can trace the paths the snowflakes fall.

I confess I am terrified of couples who count their anniversaries in knick-knacks and photo album chapters. An instant can last forever and an eternity can flash by in an instant.

I want to write a message for you in the sand, knowing the tide will wash the beach smooth and you might never see it. Uncertainty is delicious. I want to call a perfect stranger and tell him that I love you, that I am bursting to tell you so. I will ask this stranger not to give me advice. Maybe then this need will leave me.

You know, I could never live so little, but I am jealous of the insects who fly for just one day, mate and die.

Photographers take thousands of pictures to keep just one. I want to spend a day with you, build it up to a look, a touch, a sound I will never forget, and never see you again.