Starfire

[He is dreaming. He asks you, do you want to walk? So his feet shuffle through the grass. It was the type of night with the lights for loving someone, and that someone had smaller hands. The hands curl: they join together, they buckle to your chest. Your eyes look downwards, not forward or at him. Or if you do, then they look when he looks downwards, not forward or at you. There’s a fever in him, a fire around them, it burns him to say these things. He hides the things that he would never say. He say them very quietly. He says,]

In the year 8 AD, a Roman poet named Ovid hijacked the Greek myth and called it Metamorphoses. Written in almost 12,000 lines and compiled in 15 books, this grand poem detailed the world’s creation up to the death and deification of Julius Caesar. But what differentiates Metamorphoses from previous epics is that this poem doesn’t serve any god nor hero—it reinterprets them. In fact, the reinterpretation became so popular that most of the Greek legends we know today are shaped by Metamorphoses. Ovid’s success in reinterpretation doesn’t just lie in his mastery of technique and language, but in the manipulation of such stories—about gods manipulating heroes—in order to serve a much larger, personal, yet invisible narrative—the narrative on love.

For love, according to Ovid, isn’t invented, but invents instead. It’s love that stirred the gods to invent the world; it’s love that tempted Semele to glance at Jove’s holiness and die from his godly glory; it’s love that caused Narcissus to drown; and it’s love that drove Orpheus to look at his own love, Eurydice, one more time—before his stare condemns her to the hell he wanted to save her from. Whatever the story, the invisible claim of Metamorphoses—and of Ovid, in effect—is this: that love is the strongest, most invisible force that exists.

By writing Metamorphoses, Ovid tells us that love, quite simply, is the metamorphosis. It is the fire capable of hijacking a narrative. It is the ability to change history and it is the rewrite of the soul. The Greek myth we know today is powerful, not because of what it once was, but how it continues to be: shaped by Ovid’s eyes, then by our own. So as love rewrote the Greek myth, so does love rewrite one’s life. So hold still, dear. You have rewritten my life, so I must add a piece. I must inject a narrative. I am looking at you—
[He is looking at you.]

I am inventing something.

In the beginning, it was said, Let there be light. And it was love. Nothing was the only thing until Someone decided there to be worth loving Something. It was a mere twinkle. It crackled through the heavens, it lit up the stars. It ordered the planets and placed us third closest to the sun. Love made earth its home despite all the best choices, because the God who sculpted skies and titan planets spent more of His time arranging the flowers.

And there was once a tale of Prometheus in defiance—nabbing fire from napping gods—delivering it to men: to mold, to burn, and to light. Some say that the same fire that Prometheus stole, now used to smith weapons and flicker lights, was the same twinkle from the beginning that crackled through the skies. Afterwards, he didn’t live anymore—not in the sense we do now, bound by shackles and his liver gouged out. But Prometheus lived. In perspective of his eternity, when he spoke

Mankind shall have fire,
as he was holding that spark

He lived—in that moment, he truly lived.

A long, long time ago, at a time most alive, you caught me staring at you with a glimmer in my eyes: a light which now jumps to yours. I smile and you blush. Your eyes return to the grass we were walking on, but you’ve caught a feeling. Nothing was the only thing until we both felt something. Some say this is the same feeling when Adam embraced Eve—feeling his missing rib become her own, he blushed as she smiled. Both feel a fire lit aflame. Though once part but now apart from him, she embraced him like they’ve made a room in each other—she holds him together.
[You are holding him together.]

I understand now what it meant, for Dante to walk through Hell. Having heard that his love had died, Dante plucked from his memories Beatrice yet still alive. He wrote of her as how he saw her—as beautiful as sunrise. So that’s how we honor her. Though dead, she’ll live forever. And if meeting her again meant going through and out of bottommost Hell, then gladly would he confront Morningstar, gladly would he go through it all again.

We walk that hot night and I think, lips are but a flower sideways and yours are on fire, waiting to be unparched. I think of how there’s a star in your heart and if I touch it, we’ll both become undone. I want to hold your fire with my lips. I want to carry your heart. I want you to walk with me, into the dark and until Calvary. I try to say these things. There is nothing to be said. It is, after all, only the beginning—metamorphosis on the brink of living. This is an introduction to a long forever, you and I starting a fire that never falters.

[My starfire, my fire.]

Inventions last forever.

Once upon a time, a metamorphosis began in Halsted’s heart. He saw his wife’s hands chapped and red, so he grieved for awhile until he invented. He made simple little things called rubber gloves: simple little things to hold and protect the hands of his love. In our eyes, the invention of rubber gloves were a breakthrough in medicinal history. But in Halsted’s eyes, they were just a means to tell her that he loved her.

We, in all kinds of love, are pulled to invention—destruction, recreation, transformation. We deify by prose, we break down through abstraction. We create obvious things, invisible things. And at the very end, when our lips have dried and our hands have failed, we will treasure up all these things and ponder each other in our hearts. And at the end, when all we have are memories—

I will invent memories with you. It’s the very least I could do.

[She asks, do we go back? He says no, but he tells her yes. They walk back to their respective minds, albeit their feet weighing themselves down on the grass. The sky is night, but it is very bright. He lends out a hand and pulls it back in. She watches his eyes avoid hers. He glances time to time. There’s a fever in her, a fire around them, it burns her to say these things. She hides the things that she would never say. She says them very quietly. She says,]