Sublimation is the change from solid to gas, while at no point becoming a liquid.
Church bells, down the street, ring surprisingly clear. She is startled, and breaks the kiss mid-thought. Looking up at her, you bite your lip, and smile. She grins a smokey, half-mouthed grin and pulls you closer. In the kitchen, bits of conversation weave in between the hands cupping your hair; feeling your back; running up your thigh. You can feel colors in her kiss, and light breaks over a window you thought was shut long ago. Her mouth over yours; you smile.
As sun dances behind eyelids, your thoughts slip. Her muffled laugh does not drive you away, but envelops you. Of course she is laughing. She laughs because of the Mountain. Because of the great, great sun which sinks behind a jagged outline. She laughs at the calls of the wild, shrieking through brambles and trees; sticking with thorns when it reaches ears. She laughs, and you know it is the smell of the Brook as it trickles through moss.
As sun dances behind eyelids, your thoughts slip. Her muffled laugh does not drive you away, but envelops you. Of course she is laughing. She laughs because of the Mountain. Because of the great, great sun which sinks behind a jagged outline. She laughs at the calls of the wild, shrieking through brambles and trees; sticking with thorns when it reaches ears. She laughs, and you know it is the smell of the Brook as it trickles through moss.
The window is open.
She laughs, and it is contagious. You are both laughing. You laugh till your gut begs you to stop. You laugh till voices grow quiet behind walls, wondering why they don’t know what is so hilarious. The joke is there is nothing funny. The joke is that you are ready to cry. The joke is that you are kissing her, and you don’t know why you haven’t before. The punchline is in her eyes, in the tangles of her hair (smelling like smoke, softer than you expected), and in the fact that inside the dining room of a strange, sad acquaintance; behind a screen on the first floor, shut off from booze and beer and fireworks, you have seen the Mountain let light fall on your Window.
There is a golden sun.
When the laughter evaporates, like dissecting chemicals off a Bunsen burner, (test tube, baby) there is nothing left but a poignant silence, in which you know there is nothing left to do but hold each other. And you don’t.
She stands in front of you, close. Her eyes are raw from laughter and smolder. Hands drift between connecting, and staying put. She puts hers away in her pocket, frightened. And here, this, this is where you know she had seen that Golden Sun. It was her the whole time.
“so, hey...” She laughs.
“We should probably-” a gesture towards a closed door. You try not to frown.
“Yeah. Probably.” Snuff of a candle. Suns don’t scream when they die, only suffer quietly in a sad blaze. Inside you are raging, but you merely touch her hand; you won’t again. Accident, Accident, Accident; a mantra that rolls over your soul like a hummer over roadkill.
Desires are murdered with words like “probably.”
She twirls round before you grow courage to move, still giggling, dragging the spirit from the room with her. She motions to you, “follow,” then she is gone. As if in a vacuum you stew in unoccupied space for awhile. Molecules act differently when unobserved; molecules become waves; vice versa. This must be true; you feel yours vibrating apart. Soul is gone; sun is dead; physically speaking (e=mc2) you’re simply breaking down in the complete and sudden absence of pressure, gravity or observer. She leaves, and the room chokes. You follow; wafting not walking.
Sublimation is the change from solid to gas, while at no point becoming a liquid.
Is there poetry in denial?
Probably not.
But there is a certain, destitute sort of comfort. Change of phase, not change of matter.
