for Ash and Mira

Oh, best beloved!

I remember, as I remember all things, the day you carved my eyes from the rock, the clean crisp break between darkness and light, prised apart by the insistent tip of your chisel. I had felt you before then, the nearness of your hands, the pleasant heft of your hammer walking across my heavy weight of skin, but could only picture you by what I had known: darkness, heat, the slow grind of ages. But you, my love, were so much more than that, so antic, so fevered.

I drank you in, all of me, as you pulled the gloves from my fingers and freed my legs from the rock, eyes and skin. Your curled hair, your calloused hands, your engrained squint, my powder thick upon you. I remember the changing light. I remember you, asleep in the corner of the studio, tossing uneasily beneath a thin blanket as winter crept below the door. I would have gone to you then, stilled you, if I could.

Ah, my love, how wonderful it is to have a doting mother! Patient earth, gentle earth, who hears all prayers, who hides all sins! That final moment, my mouth fully curled, half-opened, your tools still against my cheek, when you lifted your eyes to mine, shy and hesitant, frozen now forever! Winter will not stoop so close above you now, nor hunger hollow your cheeks, no more than mine. How lucky we are, you and I, to spend all eternity thus, in rapturous contemplation, until time and weather wear us both to sand.