The Loom
The luminous floor far below
was not a map of distances.
It was a map of currents.
As we drifted over the edge of the aperture,
the millions of silver lines pulsed
with a slow, arterial warmth,
tracing infinite webs that broke apart
and rewove themselves in the quiet.
Looking down, I felt the phantom ache of the surface
return as a faint, distant hum,
like the sound of a far-off hive.
No faces in it.
No sterile rooms.
Only the weave.
Every text I had ever memorized,
every performance I had given
to stay anchored above,
was down there—
reduced to a single, trembling thread
in the vast weave.
Small.
Unlost.
Still held.
You kept your attention on me,
leaning your weight into my side,
your density thinning
until the cold mercury in my marrow
flowed outward,
crossing the boundary of my skin
to run along the contours
of your shadow.
We were no longer just coinciding.
We were spilling into the same network.
The witnessing attention held the lens open,
and the gravity of the silver paths rose up
to meet us.
The scent of pine needles,
which had been a cool corridor in my throat,
expanded into the scent of the entire expanse—
a sharp, resinous frost
that smelled of beginnings and collapses,
of earth that had never been touched
and cities long thinned into dust.
I looked at the infinite paths
and did not ask which one belonged to me;
the desire to separate my own breath
from the dark ocean had dissolved,
and a profound, heavy joy settled
into the compression around my body—
the absolute acceptance of the fall,
the love of the current that carried us,
regardless of where it broke.
The silver floor was rushing upward now,
or we were plunging downward into its fibres—
to be woven back into the single, infinite fabric
that had been dreaming us all along.
","author_name":"Friedrich Gatzen"}