Work Text:
Words always come last for you, slowly, your brain distilling the universe first into feeling, then into colour, then finally into language. You never start with the words.You remember feeling off-balance the first time you saw another graffiti artist begin a piece with the curve of a c, the slash of a z--you always start with flames, or the colour green, or the idea of revolution, or the memory of the last time you cried, or something beautiful you see when you close your eyes.
His lips feel softer than you expected. Everything feels softer, gentler, the music infusing the tips of your toes and fingers in honey.
There are words for this. But they haven’t come to you quite yet.
The thing about aliens is, they aren’t expected to understand Earth customs. They are allowed to stare, wide-eyed, in awe--the price they pay is the looks they get on the street in return. You know this. You count on this, because the world is half breathtaking, half terrifying, and you have decided to feel it all.
Right now, you are feeling it all.
You want to tell Thor about Rumi the poet, now that you’ve told him about Rumi the alien. Your favourite Rumi poem is about change, you think. Maybe it’s about love, or maybe God--you can never tell, you think, with Rumi. You can hear your dad’s voice, reciting it:
Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
One time you did a subway car called that: Become the Sky. It started out in your head with sunset colours, and then your father’s voice, and then the poem, sketched out in the first sketchpad you took really seriously. You waited an hour and a half to see the train go by the morning after you finished it, then raced to school afterwards, the buttons on your jacket flapping. This is like that morning, but better.
The thing about aliens is, sometimes they float, maybe, just levitate clear off the ground like gravity doesn’t quite apply. You know you are floating now.
You’ve heard the different words that you could use for this moment, this feeling, this place--the boys and the not-boys and the boy whose lips are pressed up against your own. You’ve heard the various weights the words carry, friendly and angry, raunchy and sad, violent and proud and hateful and confused and happy. You know the words, and someday soon you'll have to sort through them and pick your own. The one you choose will mean something important, like your mother’s hands rubbing oil into your hair, like the moment you chose a tag for yourself, like the rattle of the subway when you ride it back home. You will say the words, maybe, although you’re not sure of that yet, and some people will be furious, and some will be awkward, and some will smile. There is so much to do.
The song changes. The hook dips syrupy and low in your body, and you feel your desire rising with the violins, your lips finding his again with the rush of the chorus. If you were to paint this, it would start with his hand on the small of your back, and the sparkling eyelashes of the person moving on stage, and the pulsing, beating heart of the dancefloor.
The words would come last.