The White Rose

Poseidon. Neptune. Lunar eclipse. To step off the platform and walk on the moon, see the Earth in black oblivion cast by the noon of the new world. To leap from the stone and bound upward, outward, find yourself spinning away from the globe and drifting into the void, weightless, in all directions freefall. In all reflections recall the first moment we met. The snake in the grass hidden from view. The beams of the sun backlighting you. The breath in my chest lost in shallow exhale. A blind man alone in the belly of a whale.

Your fingers on my skin, she said, caressing my soft, sloping breasts… gently circling each erect nipple like a small tornado until erupting in the wet sucking of your lips around my clit, moist bush, wet garden, ripe, rolling, green jungle, blue sky, gray surf, white rose in bloom.

And then, when the sweat has rained, and the tide has swollen like your hardness, I’ll grip you tight, wrapping my legs around you, pulling you close, and you will come inside me. But now, he said, we know this is a fantasy. And there is no silence in space to measure alongside the vastness of her reaction to that.

Oh god. The snake in the grass.

I am so sorry, he said, I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. That was, she said, the most insensitive, meanest thing you could have said. And she began to cry. I know, he said, I am so sorry. Days later: I forgive you, but it still hurts, you know? It hurts a lot. I just can’t believe you’d say that. Not you. I can’t even… imagine those words coming out of your mouth. I know it’s frustrating for you to have to wait, but… I was trying to vocalize what I was feeling. How much I wanted to be with you, to have you inside of me. And for you to have said that… I know, he said, I love you so much. I didn’t… I can’t… I don’t… I’m so sorry. Her: I know you’re sorry, and I forgive you. But just thinking about it… it makes me so upset, you know? But I know you leave tomorrow, and I don’t want things to be bad while you’re gone. Neither do I, he said. I love you. I love you too.

I have to go and get ready now, he said. And at 5:00am the next morning he went into the chamber of the noise, and in cadence with the boys moved across that plank into the giant machine. But beforehand: Would you like me to bring you back anything? The Great Dark Spot, maybe? No, she said, bring me a white rose. I’d like a white rose. He paused, that’ll be hard to find on Neptune. When I get back I’ll get you a white rose, okay? He kissed her gently on the lips, felt the soft light of the warm sun against his skin, cooled by the passing breeze from the cape. The unseen dragon. Lying in wait, the subtle hum of the greater mechanics, strings pulled, and so: one last kiss.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Ignition. Blast off!

Here the screaming vibrations of the manmade thing twisted and wrestled with themselves, roiling the clouds of the firey planetoid with the addition and subtraction of their own evaporation. Now the trembling of the shell, the shaking of the cockpit, the violently thrown crew strapped to their seats with prayers in their hearts and their hearts in their throats, the thundering of their chests a monument to all hope and fear, all joy and sorrow, all loss and gain, all childhood takeover of the accumulated numbness of adulthood.

Flames, the power of God at the will of man, focused at the ground with the sheer magnitude of anticipation its own explosion within the chests of those standing in awe across the bay.