dionysus (resub) — d4 / fin

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

how do I look?
convincingly human?

— Bakkhai, Euripides

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

february

born on Nysa, mountain of the island Amazon. son of Semele.

born before spring, eve of Anthesteria.

Dionysus Anthion.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

march

a sun rises. i smoke in the cold, damp air of march outside your house.

i watched the buds break from bare branches in the vernal fever, unfurling in your face, delirious with spring, as if you were drunk on morning dew and rosewater. something momentous happened when you saw her, and it came violently, like all beginnings.

no one else notices this, but isn't it so obvious?

you couldn't hide it even if you tried. there is a softness in you, heady and mortal. and there is a jealousy in me, resembling a god. it wouldn't be difficult, an affair so tender that a slip of the tongue could sever it.

the lights go off in your kitchen. there's the sound of a ship's horn out at sea, long and miserable, aching in my bones. i taste something terrible beneath the rich bitterness of moon-bitten smoke. you were with her, gentle, not made of hell for once.

but i know you, like you know me.

i want to tell her this –

i cannot tell anxiety from anger when i'm with you. i despise you with need, with desperation, my fury so horribly overwrought with every gesture of yours. and does she know how you can make a person feel so stupid, how you can make them feel endlessly lonely, how awful you are, how you're cold, you're merciless, bitingly shrewd?

i have known you for nine years. i have hated you for nearly as long, and i think we deserve each other. i change my face between intensity and flippantness, i drink too much, sleep too little, want everything and do nothing, burying all the lovers i have spoiled with my cruelty over the years. i have lied and cheated and destroyed myself. you will never be good for her. i have never cared if you were good for me.

i'm throwing pebbles at your window until you appear on the balcony, bright and burning in the moon. you and i have done this for so long. the air is heavy with memory. you lean on the railing, hair falling over your eyes.

stupid, i can see you mouth even in the dark.

a sun lights. and the flowers in my stomach follow you across the sky.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

i am pulling on my shirt, arm in each hole, button by button like a litany in the darkness. i have to leave, i tell myself, gathering my things strewn across the floor. i have to go, another pearlescent button slips into place, let me leave.

where are you going?

fuck.

the sky is still indigo outside, her eyes gleaming in the darkness, blankets draped over bare shoulders. with gentleness, her fingers twine with mine, thumb touching my wrist. i can only think of you, the knife.

home.

come back to bed.

two years ago, she and i had met at one of the career parties from an academy, the type you hated with all your gentle sensibilities. you preferred to dissect people in bars over twenty year old scotch, arguing over the books of dead writers, and when you protested the alleged prosaic house party, i'd say getting fucked by your silver spoon again? back then, only i could ever make you drop that sternness.

i shake her off. button by button, idly looking for fragments.

my desire for adoration in the absence of you is ruinous, i know. she pleads, and i laugh, now pulling on my sweater. why do i feel like i'm waterlogged, slogging through the sea in clothes – we had fun, didn't we? it was just supposed to be fun. i touch her cheek, hand slipping to her chin, thumb brushing her mouth. she stutters, lips parting, angry in faint pink.

you can't come and go like this.

suddenly this is unbearable. the niceties thin. i want to say – you got attached, that's your fault. i do not know if i mean her or myself. instead i let go, a certain severity in the sundering, and turn towards the door.

asshole, she spits.

yes, the worst, impatiently laughing. see you in two weeks. i shut the door. we always return to this.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

april

i have never learned temperance apparently. always inclined towards disaster, but drinking? i am uncontrollably talented. i cannot sleep. i cannot eat. let me have this.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

april thunders in, and i taste the pale pith of it, bitter with rain and ocean foam. the grass glistens with dew, starkly green in perfect lawns, and why did i think of you again when a boy cupped my cheek? must be something in the way he looked over his shoulder to say goodbye, slender kid with blue eyes, but he tasted like vodka under the crouching shadows, and you taste like a garden.

a crush is an obsession – crush my chest, crush the pale blueness between our fingers, crush the balcony where you leaned over to say my name, light spilling over you, the lilac bush, and the sweater you wore all winter, crush a tremulous thing inside me when you look at her, not me, and you really do kill me all the time –

crush my stupid fucking soul
with your impossible soul

i am eighteen tonight and i am eighteen violently. the people scream in pain, the people writhe in joy. funny how it looks the same from a distance, impressionist savagery – and listen, could you look at me please? could you look at me just once? because i look at you, and it feels like i'm peeled in your bare hands, peeled like a fucking orange, crushed by the way your tongue touches my name. i think of how you laugh at the stupidest things, how you burn like a demon too, how cold you are when you want to be, some citrus cruelty of yours, and i want all of it.

the air smells like honey. i lie in the yard. the sun is blue light below the horizon, faint moon. someone pulls me up by the collar, go home go home he says, cleaning up the bottles and cups, his arms are rattling, my parents, fuck, they're home early.

i gasp cold air, mid spring, lungs shaking, ah alive again.

let me say something about rebirth,

i remember how i saw you in the garden, eyes bathed in sunlight, looking at a hummingbird in the colour of a gasoline stain. listen, just look at my hands, my body, i'm painted just like a bird too babe. i think i'd like to be reborn if you'd look at me like that.

let me say something about resurrection,

how you pulled me from the sea. how i was born twice in flame. i think i might break from the life you crushed into my chest. and have you noticed how it's suffering and dying and a struggle to be believed? this new god! of an earth that was in darkness for centuries before the first believer? i can't stop thinking about you. there must be something wrong with me. have you noticed how it's always burning and breaking and never soft, how it's being shot, bitten, sick, that all people talk of desire like they talk of venom, wound, and a fire? and it's so like you. set a thing on fire because you're bored, set a thing on fire because you have nothing to do. you're fucking infernal, you're hell itself.

the light shatters. i'm staring at the faint translucence of my body, splattered across the pavement. why is it i think of you? my chest hurts. why is it my heart plummets, and i'm screaming on the asphalt. how did i end up here? a keeper comes out of the car, walks towards me, fuck you fuck you, i'm invincible – heart plummets how it plummets when you see the blood on the floor, lies how a dead animal lies on the road. you can't take your eyes off a fucking disaster, but then it's gone, it's wearing gore, it lives in you, still eviscerated on the way home, bone and the memory. i wake up in the hospital.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

tw: suicide

how filthy can a person get? god, was i always like this? or was i not gentle enough, all those times i tried to crawl out of my life. ah, was i supposed to be more tender then? the way i cried myself raw, the way i cut myself loose? funny how it almost killed me, trying to stay alive. which should be more painful, which should be more terrifying? the slit or the scar. why is healing so ugly. uglier than even the wound. am i better yet? my hands are the colour of a bloodstain now. i lie here for days and do nothing. am i better yet? outside, i hear of a murder, some horribly sordid thing – i think, yes i could be worse. yes, at least i am better than that, i have tried to kill no one but me. yes yes yes. is this what it means to be better?

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

home again. the covers are very heavy. let me sleep.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

may

you've been busy since your father died.

fucked up, isn't it? how death is strangely bureaucratic. mourning is a long process, terribly dull. you file feelings someplace between the paperwork, division of assets, planning for the funeral. you sound tired on the phone. i haven't seen you in awhile.

i say something stupid, you finally laugh, and there's that roguish humour of yours. the phone hums. i can see the way your mouth turns like a fern leaf away from flame. i'll be right over. the line goes dead. we sit in the garden and reminisce, remember when we were still boys? you'd say, as if we are so much older. now the lines of your mouth become so hard, it's nearly cruel. and you? where were you?

look at the twenty stitches on my arm, the hospital food was so disgusting, they put me in the craziest room, did you know they found me on the side of the road? a keeper nearly ran me over. i went home and wore the covers for three weeks. i'm sorry i was asleep for so long.

the sun is soft in the evening. your eyes are amber, cheeks dappled with gold flecks of light. i turn away, i'm good, i'm good, laugh a little, sighing cheap ribbons of smoke, i broke my arm falling from a tree, isn't that stupid? i've been so horribly busy, i'm sorry. you don't press on. when did we become people who tell each other nothing?

let's go for a drink, okay, and we drink monstrously. i'm watching you, and you're watching the clock, eyes glinting in the light, somewhere between wicked and beautiful, and it's strange how i never know which one it is with you. i think i was supposed to tell you i've been trying to quit. i think i tried.

we stumble home, half past three, your arm draped over my shoulder, pulling me onto the pavement. ah fuck, heavy bastard, i laugh, but your chin is resting on my chest and i lie there helplessly, carefully, fracturing. you don't get up. we watch the window lights come on and off, the sound of the ocean far, far away.

i almost forgot, and your voice sounds small in the stillness.

i remember.

all the times we've gone down this street in the summers, and how you looked, burning in the light, the shape of your body in the shadows. your silhouette is blinding, haloed in the dark. you remember the summer we were fifteen?

we were drunk on sun and wine. do you remember how i said dance with me, a joke. and you said of course, the punchline. we waltzed clumsily down the road, our friends howling as i spun you and dipped you to be funny, almost falling over because my head was light from the heat. you grabbed me by the shirt and kissed me, in jest. i couldn't sleep that night. you never played fair.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

tw: purging

on resurrection again,

you called me when your father died, i remember it was very late, the microwave blinked at me somewhere between the realms of two and three a.m., your voice was shaking. you asked me if i was busy, and i said no, i'll be right over.

and the truth is, i was drunk out of my mind, stumbled home, stumbled to the phone, my hand didn't even feel like mine when i first picked up. when you said goodbye, i made myself throw up in the bathroom, three times – choking on the burn, shoving fingers down my throat, asking myself come on come on, be sober, be fucking sober, just enough to crawl down the stairs, out the door, into the street.

i made myself a coffee. i drank it. i broke the mug. i left the pieces in the sink. i smoked two cigarettes on the way there. my hand was bleeding, i shoved it in my pocket. i showed up on your doorstep and stayed with you all night.

i think i was barely alive, but you called and so i came.

i think i might do anything for you and that scares me. i think you might be the only good thing i'll ever have and that scares me. i think i might be entirely repulsive and you might not know it yet. you looked at me then, and i felt strangely immortal in my loathsomeness, surprised by my own ability to survive. i want you to want me like i want you. and i mean i want you to look at me, lost, gone, dying on a bathroom floor, and live again.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

june

the vineyard sheds its flowers. the grapes look like little jewels. i feel strange. i lie in bed and shiver in my room like i've caught a sickness. i do not know how to tell you. you ask to see me on the phone, and i can only say i am not well, i am not well.

the cast comes off my arm. mended, the doctor says.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

july

born on Nysa, my mother dies. the sky split with light, rare thunderstorm of February.

i grew knowing no father.

eight years, mothered by the sea.

we watched the ship spit dark plumes of smoke into the sky like a flag waving in the wind. he came for his son like this, as if going to war, boarding me like cargo back to mainland. i remember the dull teal of smoke, the metallic tones of the fish market, heat of the concrete. i despised it, as i despised him.

i don't hate my father anymore. he was just never much of a father. i think he did not know what to do with me, half boy, half memory who was always coming and going, neither there nor here. all my childhood was spent alone in the gardens while he was away in the cool, metal organs of the distilleries. i'd see him once a week at the dinner table, less after i grew older.

some people are not good fathers. some people are not good sons. i am not what he wanted. he should have not had me.

a splinter of light cuts from the doorway. the windows are sealed shut these days. would i have been someone different if i'd stayed? raised in the eastern mountains, hidden from eyes, returned to the world of men. there was no room for a son.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

father gave me a house – an act of affection, you'd think. curiously, he turned it into something like disgust. i was sixteen. uncontrollable, i heard him sigh on the phone, like his mother.

in sickness, i lived in the summer cottage at the cliffs over the waters, then in the house he bought in my name, close to the vineyards in the countryside.

he should have left me on the island. i should have grown up believing that he'd abandoned me. then i could hate him fully, truly, accepting his singular act of cruelty years later with the wisdom gifted in adulthood. some people are not meant to be fathers, i can forgive him for this.

but my sister is eight years old and has never known not to love him. back on the mainland, he had a new wife. i did not know this until i met her.

and here is a thing i will never forgive him for;

my father might have wanted me once, a long time ago, before he knew who i was.

mid-july, i am calm again. i am not crying. the medicine is working in a funny way. he looks relieved when Ino reports to him of my sedated state.

i wonder if i am ever myself. if i will ever be without this. what is a product of what? who shaped who?

my things are packed primly into the suitcase i came with, waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs in the morning. i return to the city in the afternoon, as if nothing had happened.

the house is empty. my sister is gone with her mother until the evening. my father calls my name. are you hungry? he asks. tired from the journey?

he never meets my eyes.

home again.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

august

born on Nysa, mountain of the island Amazon. son of Semele.

born from lightning, from fire, from rain.

Dionysus Bromios.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

i met someone, you admit. it comes grainy over the phone, quieted to a whisper.

it's odd. your voice sounds like you, like i could know you fully by your cadence, by your tone alone. your volume lowers, and you have the phone cupped with both hands, leaning against the counter with one elbow. i can see how your brow creases when you fall silent. i can see you pressing your fingers to your temples a moment before you speak.

you tell me who it is.

i stare at the flowers on the wallpaper, trying to say something interesting, entertaining with the words of someone still alive. you and i have done this for so long. you kill me, and i dream of your ruin, dead where i can have you.

i could laugh right now. i could throw the phone against the wall.

you knew.

the cord tangles between my fingers, drawn taut as i pull.

ha. you're arrogant, you know? you're not as sly as you think.

but you don't quip back. there's a stretch of silence, and somehow i know what your relief sounds like too.

for fuck's sake. i guess you are my best friend.

numbly, a lung crushes into pulp. you peel me back from the scar along my arm. i laugh.

tell me about her.