He exists in their shadows.
He even looks like them, like the perfect alchemy of gold and silver – like the best of everything they had to offer once. It’s a lie, though, and he knows it. He has never meant anything to either of them. He was eclipsed by the tragedy of their love. He was dwarfed by the gigantism of all that they once were. He exists, but no one remembers. He exists, but no one thinks twice.
They were earthquakes, and he was only a shockwave.
They were earthquakes, and the shore was quiet by the time his tide rolled over the sand.
He doesn’t mind. He never has. He’s found ways of escaping that others cannot, impossible ways. The reality of life left them broken, but it cannot break him. He doesn’t need reality. He doesn’t need the truth of living. In him exists a magic that cradles his body and erases his history. He is gold. He is silver. He is a perfect alchemy.
He is their son, but they’ve never remembered.
He exists in their shadows, flitting between the gaps in time and space.
‘Are you real?’ His mother asked his mother, and he was there. He saw the mix of pain and fury and regret that looked like constellations in their eyes, but only for a second. He flitted into existence in half the time it took each of them to catch their breath before he was gone.
He exists in their shadows.
He is rarely whole, but today he is. Today he flickers into existence on the edge of the meadow that harbors his history. Today he stands among the tall grass, between the hazel brush that his mothers once came to know one another in. Today he is the perfect alchemy of the both of them.
Today he is whole.
elektrum
i am and always will be the optimist