JB-FEVERS RUN DEEP

I still see it now, erratic waves crashing against stoic rocks-at the base. At the base we're all faced with waves, but me, I saw it, chipping away, softening the surfaces, slowly, surely, till it gave way, a mountain parted like the red sea, and all because of her.

She still hung around in shadows, edging her way across my corners, mocking me, with the same passion she was loving me, once.

The ribbons in her hair billowed when she was in the light, but in the light she was never with me, always a gaze way. In the light she smiled easily, bit her lower lip and turned away.

I'd call it stalking if it was anyone but me, but I just couldn't shake the fever. It ran, like electric bolts torturing me, jolting me from semblances of dreams. Volts and streaks of white, they formed crooked flags in my dead of night.

She reigned like the rains in their season. I remember one evening, beans fresh on the stove, I told her we could while away time, swore to Jove that it would not burn this time. Again I was wrong, her laughter rung in my ears for an eternity, her words were jittery, a lifetime of speech, when she held me I could no longer feel the watch on my wrist. Beans burnt and I wondered what sort of love is this? the sort that seals promises, and is too fervent to honour it.

The strange kind the preacher called it. The kind that had a man losing his purpose, pon a roof. Same man had a lion by the tooth, but facts so seldom mean a thing to the truth-he was weak! Weak at the knees like the rest of us, the sort of weakness that always gets the best of us, by playing on the worst, like a pun playing on the words-it was cheap. Bought us at a price that meant nothing to it, brought us to our lives and made us throw a punch into it, and why won't we do it? Be victimised by our own affections, the things that dominate our attention.

It's a garden you see. Flower beds cushioning the fall, roses overpowering the stink of it all. A garden if ever there was and a maze of thorns, stay away from the walls. It cuts you, you bleed, you cut it, and she bleeds. You're without enough root to stem the flow, in a vein she lets no needle go, and if there's a red streak of tears, it's all show and no tells. It's all wood and no bells, no space on the door frames for knuckles, just nails pon nails reinforcing its purpose.

"I don't want to talk about it." Stay away from the walls.

I loved.

By Jove I loved and by Jove I lost, but the consequence of what it cost caused a crevice to constitute the berth where once was, my heart.

Tattered, a bullet hole through a tat, bloodied picture of a man, I demanded this. Holding her wrist, loving it, loving the bracelet and its glint, loving it because I got it, I bought it, and she brought it, because she thought it looked good on her. And you never care for fashion, just the look of you on her.

I'd give two for her, heck I wouldn't fret an extinction level event just for a view of her, smiling, biting and not turning away.

One end of a day, she called, cold on her breath. She coughed when she spoke, and I remember clutching the phone, because I wanted to be there, but she told me not to come, the weather was for flu and the flu was for one. She told me not to come, her angelic voice ruffled at the edges-a spooked peacock of words I still saw beauty when she said this, saw beauty in her wreckage.

By jove I loved and by Jove I lost. A similar call, that morning, day breaking, light dawning, noise forming in the womb of the street, sun dispelling all the night had conceived, it was that moment between the cold and the heat, she called and I picked.

Hey babe

Hey.

You still coming over later?

Silence.

Babe you okay?

More silence. Then a no.

What's wrong?

You Justin. You're wrong.

What did I do?

Tope told me you have like a shrine of my pictures in your room.

Well I wouldn't call it a shrine but....

That's not normal Justin.

Okay. I guess I'll take it down.

I don't know anymore...

Know what?

I'm sorry.

For?

"Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma."- Victor Hugo

"He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity."- King Solomon