Iggy Oddity

Light Flies

 

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Distantly, a future where a portal rests - an insight into memory. The walkway, like the opening of a wound, semitransparent, into the body of the past. Time is a shifting organic thing: incomprehensible yet still alive. Time is the ultimate mover, and it has claimed you, as its own. What has my mind buried in its grief? 

 

Bygone, the woman I loved, the sky a vivid blue that no longer sets, horizon death-forward, a glimmer of an apparition. I walk towards the portal, recalling your wake. Ghostly, in my mind’s eye: hands folded over each other devoid of animation. The imagery distorts; an unbalanced signal collapsing into a singular point. Consciousness liquidates in the light, a prism, every side a reflection. 

 

As I journey through, eruptions, atom by atom, possess me. Surroundings melt downstream, the edges rounded with sun sparks. My thoughts form and disperse, some water flow, coldness, a kind of death. 

 

*

 

Within the stillness is the impression of your voice. I wake to the motion of the waves, simultaneously calm and violent. The friction against my eardrum, unified with my discomfort. Outline of a body, shadowing the brightness. Your image sparks against the sky, undeniable. Oh, burning! Similar to the fire of the pilgrimage I made to get here. Here we are in our togetherness. Transfiguration, body by body, how we have been separated by time.

 

I remember the moment after our embrace; you would go to your house on the shore, myself traveling back through the woods. 

 

"I cannot stay. I must go back now; you should as well." Your voice seems to be coming and leaving from everywhere, characterized by many points of departure.

 

Our relationship is confined to liminality, to that between the dead and possible. Until now, I had not known both states could overlap. After our embrace, I would not see you again, alive. Yet, here you are. Someone tangible, human, radiating.

 

"I would like you to stay, just a moment," I say, in search of your eyes, but you have already turned away, disappearing from my view. 

 

*

 

Home. How strange to see the house I occupy in my current time, outlined in the same darkness. I have the sensation of history repeating. The anxiety of this knowledge creates the illusion of bee stings. Linen sheets are suffocating my body, drenched in perspiration. The memory is amorphous, changing shape. I attempt to recollect what would occur. Nothing. The contours of the room instead focus amid the nightfall.

 

A luminescence above my bed, similar to the mouth of the portal, aglow. The gaping light is made of some liquid substance, resulting in an emulsion. I feel dewdrops on my skin. As they land, white shocks emit from them, lasting only a moment.

 

"You are willing a change of reality," the voice of my beloved reverberated throughout the austere walls. My own mind, widening: a sharp pain enters there. I hold my head in my hands, reliving the fire.

 

You speak again, voice growing more sinister. "You must not change things that are beyond your understanding." The light continues to land, radiating. "Memory is an ephemeral thing. Only death is lasting.”

 

*

 

I am waiting for the time of day when the light runs shadows out. Late afternoon, you arrive. I wish to ask you about the preceding night. The density of your voice, the vibrant liquid light is still potent, haunting. 

 

"How did you sleep?" You say. 

 

"I slept, I dreamt," I answer. I feel my heart become a fearful, violent bird, beating, thing of survival. As I look down at my trembling hands, they appear like an animal in the throes of death. 

 

"And what did you dream of?" you say, smiling, unknowing.  

 

"Nothing. I dreamt nothing." I respond, hoping you cannot trace my nervousness. That which I longed to say feels insignificant. 

 

“Surely, you do not mean that. How can one dream of such an absence?” 

 

As you speak, the space beneath me engulfs what once was, like the waves. The walls are shimmering, melding into the floor and sky. Light with no source, deriving from everything.

 

"Did you know there's some infestation?" You say calmly. "There are these flies, attracted to light - deadly so. They love what is destined to kill them." 

 

"Light flies," I repeat. Your laughter scatters like the song of insects.

 

*

 

The next time I encounter you, the surroundings are gleaming, moon-spun. Shadows cover the trail to your house like a cosmic hand. We tread through the woodland, yet your pace quickens: you start to run.

 

"It's a mere playful game," you say, laughing. My heart rate grows rapidly, turbulently like a river. Your body and voice are afar. 

 

"Please," I call out, "Do not run so."

 

The only thing that discerns you from the night is that you are moving; pulling apart the static from space. Fluid, motion-blurred like some bird circling its prey, the wings drenched in the liquid indigo and dark purple sky. Finally, I seek out where you are. A clearing where the density of trees and foliage ends, the cliff razors downward. 

 

"When I was a child, I thought I was immune to the lessons of gravity." You say, smiling.

 

Towards me: two imprints of yourself, one a mirror image, only blue, holographic. Both of you arrive, in my view, your ghostly self offering a hand. 

 

"I would learn that no one is immune, not even the dead. Similarly, no one is immune to time, not yet, not now" You say, your voices ring together.

 

"Isn't this what you want?" The edges of you caressing me, splitting into a blue wildfire. "Isn't this what you want? This is why you are here." I am chasing after you, time burning in its chariot, cyclical in nature. In my mind's eye, harmonizing bodies, more beautiful than they are.

 

"This never happened." You whisper. "This was not meant to happen.”

 

Our hands meet. I am a translator of fire. Light attaches itself to the host, traveling faster than the body. Ash where my form once was, the ground disturbed as if by some meteorite, the space torn from itself. 

 

The crater leads elsewhere and your mirror selves walk through. Below, the waves sound, in search of the shoreline; eroding the very thing they love within the era of their search. 

 

Iggy Oddity is a nonbinary musician, poet, and digital artist. In 2017, they founded Cinema in Paradise, a magazine dedicated to celebrating the legacy of film throughout time. Their debut music album, Desired Particle is currently streaming on all platforms.

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