Heart of the Sun

No no no, this can't be but please let it be, oh yes I won't mind, but for the love of god can it please stop distracting tormenting pleasing exciting me, for a little while at least?  That's why sleep good sleep is a distant memory and the measure of days is how much can be accomplished between flights of fanciful insecurities and transient lonely glories, images of loveliness behind the eyelids.  Afterimages dancing on the retinas like they said the glow of atom bombs could be seen through hands over closed eyes.

Not something that he believes but the idea of it makes sense, carries its own weight its own logic, because he knows, he knows like a wise old dog that has been beaten one too many times by someone he adored, he knows that white-hot intensity of heart-forged ecstasy that mutates into pain and back into love, a crazy sine wave ripping stitches through the soul...

All it takes is a glimpse, a trace or a full on field of view, seeing that cast of skin or color of eye, a waterfall of ravens down the back along with a voice to melt stones and iron, that's all. And it can happen anywhere, anytime, isn't that right? Honest-to-God, in a noisy crowded room, or the hushed stacks of a bookstore or holy smokes grabbing dinner in a hurry.  He hears his master's voice, or sees her hair curled over a shoulder, or those eyes, dear lord, those eyes, why do all dark eyes remind him of those Dark Eyes, the Dark Eyes, the ones at the heart of the Sun where temperatures rise to numbers that don't matter, and fusion occurs and there is no barrier between Ego and Love?  Why, why?

Because after the fusion comes the burnout, the ejection of soul on a plasma wavefront of exploded passion that sprays fragments of the man he became and no longer was, out into the supercold ecliptic, pushed on the solar wind of the Sun he held in his hands once, and lived and wants to live again but dammit, its happening entirely against his will.  All that can be done is to grasp frantically at gravity to stop stop stop the fall among the asteroids, wearing a Kuiper belt of shattered hopes and wants while the heart slowly cools to absolute zero...

He thrashes desperately, fearing superfluidity or worse, which would be no motion at all , god, no that wouldn't be fair, damnit damnit damnit not after knowing infinity and peace, knowing what it was to be revived from freezing in the interstellar black of a foundering soul.  That would be unfair, too unfair, even by the standards of a universe known for monumental unfairness, at least that is what he tells himself every time orbits intersect, suns grow nearer, him clinging to the idea that life was reborn in a frozen heart, and can be born again it can it can, it has to be and for the love of god take comfort in that the battered stone of his heart can still feel...