Flowers in Hiroshima (06/23/10)

I always have to start the same way. I sit. I stare. I make little compromises with the moments. When my heart is full I speak. When I'm with you I always forget that I am 20 feet tall and that my voice can be oppressive; but how do I explain that the mass of being housing those words is just a cluster navigating the pull of the thing inside me, something I've hidden away and whose gravity I stand to, a stable anchor and the loneliest prison by turns? It is so small, but dense beyond the weight of my own life to ever mitigate it completely; for better or worse it defines me. I told you that if I dared to touch it, my world would change forever. And of the many scenarios it is not obliteration, but desolation that I fear, that there will be nothing to reflect colours and that in a barren apathy I will preside over the graves of the tears and the laughter. But there are flowers in Hiroshima.

From White Darker Than White

We walk and we talk. We walk away and are drawn back again, orbitting the space we share. We vibrate and we echo over the shapes we pass. We walk down the street together, spending words thriftlessly, but there is the comforting stillness of the earth itself rooted to us. We alight upon a hill and sit, steeping in silence, and my new senses open to track the rush of soft orange light as it floods the rooftops, slides liquid under the stars and returns to wash and enfold us. At night the universe is unbounded, undelineated, and infinite; by its graces I cloak myself with it and clumsily map other people's dreams. But with you I get my own, and even with the fiery brand of the sun inscribing and defining everything, I find solace in the beautiful shadows we have secreted away. But I owe you what's yours, and if that could mean standing aside, there will be flowers in Hiroshima.

by Jordan Baylon