Aurora: A Correspondence

Aurora

Dear Madam:

Who is this falsest Dawn?
I ask you with hesitance
And great uncertainty,
For I know not what such revelation
Plots to store for us.
Alas, lacking this information,
I cannot continue in investigation,
Nor shall your private concerns
Be dissuaded from troubling you further.
Every conceivable, alternative
Avenue has been tested,
Yet down them I spot no avail.
You must be forthcoming,
Making available the entire truth.
At hand, the current evidence
Offers no stable proof
To persuade me that your present,
Uncomfortable juncture
Was not produced by self-vigilance,
Bestowed, graciously
By your once gentle hands.
They are as smooth as marble
And perhaps quite as cold.
My demands may seem, on the shallow,
Unreasonable, over-probing.
Regardless, I continue to press.
What belongs to that name?
A different woman?
A preferred companion
Or competitor?
Some mistaken identity,
Uttered most inopportunely,
Mayhap clasped by active passions?
I pondered your case intently,
All this while sifting absent-mindedly
Through uncountable records
That have become numbingly
Familiar by virtue of over-exposure;
A common phenomenon
Burdening modern senses,
And not only due to the inherent
Contradiction of this matter.
Your history, I am convinced
Is far from unique,
Although I detect something special,
One small statement unsaid,
One fact left unrecovered.
These are the details capable
Of delivering justice,
Tragically, they are amiss.
What do you believe can be
Determined from the analysis
Of a kiss?  Its blank residue
Lies dormant until the softer
Pads of emotion are tied
Up with the gesture--thoughts
Not always representing love.
I am truly bewildered, stumped,
Pressed like carbon into diamonds
For the sake of real patterns.
Would you not desire even a dimmest
Glimmer?  Throbbing wildly,
The stumbling panic gropes
Out for understanding,
But discovers naught except
Dark emptiness and the fleeting
Illusory contours belying
First light--another infidelity.
Let us call him Phosphorus,
True names prove unnecessary
To our endeavor.  He is undying,
Beautiful, entrancing forever,
Although rejected even as the symbol
Of love--the morning star,
Aurora's previous courtier.
He was displaced, temporarily.
Was his absence long enough to temper death,
Desperate enough to conspire
An orchestrated downfall?
Bring me back to Earth.
It is torturous for me
To imagine certain scenarios.
Observe how content Dusk
Now appears by her constant companion.
He led a double life;
Both faces false to existence
And confused with ingenuity.
What person could elect to betray
Someone so lovely, so beautifully
Captivating and sensuous
That she edged ever nearer to ecstasy?
The early misting grays
Promote confusion--similar in effect
To your haunting flaunt of mystery.
There are vast unknowns,
Few applicable motives and I
Have likewise fallen, helplessly,
Detached wholly from your life
In a severance so protracted that I
Could hardly recognize bare slivers
Pricking forth from Truth.
Was this goddess' avatar manifest
As ravenous as her burning mythology?
Was she crazed after wave of flame
Upon flame whipped her passions,
So frenzied by the radiance expulsed
From crimsoned suns?  Containment
Remains an answer, for we
Are holding her still, against
A fantastic will.  She is fierce,
This creature, a distension
Of lusting fervor itself and would snatch
Up the most committed lover into languid
Apathy for drollness and routine.
She advances him immortality only
Unto constant boredom until
He saturated, so cloyed and nauseous
Of Earthly wonder that he
Absconded, abandoning you for novelty.
Yet he found that nothing satisfies
A man perpetually without change.
Excruciating the commonly placed
Pleasures became as they pierced
His core--invaders replacing jubilance with age
And thrust degeneration, concealing
Interloping rage:  a transformation,
Which demanded its mortal wage.
This was ultimately fatal, for he
Denied reason and refused to request
Eternal happiness to accompany existence.
Lo, how did his body pay
As Day upon endless Day
Seeped betwixt his bones, consuming
Each scrap of flesh, digesting
All substance save for silence,
Which unechoes where contentment had leapt forth,
Then singing all the joys once carried
By a tenderness now lost forever
Beneath trembling stagnation.
Petrification and abnegation
Griped tightly about his spirit,
Surging through the gaping portal
Stretched far ope by decadence
And complacency.  Trust me,
That I have seen his final regret:
Each moment he reclined with you
Has levied its weight deeply
Upon his soul, so deep his being
Could not impeach the swirling
Passage of Godly time, forcing
More temporal woe atop his whirling clime.
He hurled across the heavens for one
Reminder of the peace you tendered
And requital from the ever scoring
Of our one retched star.  Do scars
Now etch gently through your cheeks,
Whilst you weep, praying for his
Safe descent from the majesty of the sky?
Never again shall he repair
By your side, at least not intact.
May closure parch your eyes.
In late morning, long past
His courting of Dawn, after
Night and Day had parted ways
And sorrow manufactured from pure
Heat beat on mortal forms,
A glimmer consumes southerly horizons.
Above Texas, in the thinning air,
Exceeding the height of clouds,
Peers a lurid gleam, a wondrous thing
Sent forth from fantastic distances.
Jealous, Day set this visitor alight,
Scorching as trajectories decayed.
Pulsing sparks, an explosion raining
Intricate mists of metallic sheen
Rumbles along pastoral countryside.
It is a different time
Than you might have expected,
A different place, though the laws
That govern universal space
Never swayed irrational Gods.
For them, this disjunction
Was barely noticeable, honesty
In their mistake.  What do deities
Care for their discard
At any rate?  He tumbles,
Entombed tightly about his ephemeral
Casket-chariot, condemned at last
By Aurora and cast down to her namesaked,
Almost anonymous southwestern township.
This is Dawn's lonely reward;
Imagine the journey and the spectacle,
Brighter than even Phaethon's destruction.
Farmers, Politicians, and Confidence Men
Locate the crash site adjacent
To quaint weathervane towers,
Unyielding cotton fields, and a well.
Fragments from his Admantium hull
Scattered around the point of impact--
A glittering, dirty-silver circle
Demarking his mundane grave.
Fate is cis-lunary.  Advanced exposure
And radiation damage disfigured
His soft tissues--punishment for hubris.
I have images.  Could you identify
The body?  Regrettably, the original
Copy has been lost.  Good townsfolk,
Cowed by their fear of Gods more
Than their terror of strangeness,
Gathered his ashes, hospitably,
And procured a decent Christian burial,
Although he was not a believer.
They demarked his plot with one lone,
Smooth stone, now as lost as his bones
To obscurity and entropy.
For such acts you are not suspect,
As those events appear to be beyond
Your knowledge, ability, or control.
However, I trust you have suspicions
That would clarify my situation.
Examine the aftermath and tell me
All that you remember.
His wreckage--spite from the divine--
Poisoned every speck of land it touched:
A convenience, as those bystanders
Had been out of auspicion for some while.
Their legacy was cursed and would
Have remained unremembered,
As I would have inevitably forgot
You into obscurity, except for
The mechanizations of a sole coincidence,
When Aurora's single worthwhile tale
Surfaced, drawing armies of restless
Investigators, full of pomp
And vindiction for the Truth.
Thus, I became obsessed,
Delirious with desire for your perspective.
However, your secrets remain mysteries
And challenge even studious outsiders.
I must be informed,
To complete your story,
To fulfill your love;
That is the reason for this letter,
Why I am writting beneath
Microscopic beads of glass
Impregnating my hotel ceiling.

One notation, in posterity,
For the sake of Lost Time,

Codename Kronos