Is this a rejection of me, or a rejection of yourself?
My voice near your ear, or yours near mine, which one can't you bear?
Are you rejecting the chance to see how the sun does nothing magical to me, only unflatters my
pale skin, refusing to make me a goddess in the dusk light, leaving me just a woman who holds
too many silences of her own, but would never swallow yours?
Or is it your own skin you're rejecting; flushed, marked and sweating, not some black-and-
white myth, but flesh, blood and scent in technicolor, no shadow between us?
Hear, for once and for all: you are not photogenic. You are beautiful.
Your soul, yes, bright as a star in a blackened sea-sky. Something to admire from a cliff,
impossible to hold.
Your mind, as seismic and inescapable as that very star falling to earth, exploding into a million
pieces.
But you misunderstand me. I do not wish to catch hold of any of these, nor to stop the fall.
Yet, there’s your face. Your body, too.
Not a star. Not stardust. Not a phantom, you are not a dead man walking ruins.
Your skin could do what no star can; it could glow and let itself be held. It is something earthly
and alive that calls to all of me.
You don't believe me.
Or you don't believe in yourself.
Tell me, is that the same thing?
