((these pages are written on family letterhead, folded and then shoved into the leatherbound journal Dorian uses))
It has been a long time since I fought a duel. A proper one. It has been far too long since I had a chance to swing a sword. Roesler has provided me with a chance to do so. I suppose I should be grateful to him for that. I have taken joy in practicing in the mornings before opening the shop.
These recent days have been paradisial. She is everything. Being with her is all. I would like to forsake everything else, really and live in her arms. Only she would grow bored. She has her eyes on the stars. I should think of something to surprise her with.
Jan. 1943
***
But first I have questions to ask of her. She said to me, without words, before she mingled constellations and glowing kelp: "Not the spaces we know, but between them. They walk supreme and primal, something dimension and unseeable."
It came to me again on the verge of sleep the night she... transcended and slipped the bonds of her mortal coil before my eyes. Last night. This is not new to her. [How could she ever need ((struck through)] I must ask her if what it was she said and what it means. I think those were the words but the voice... It sounded and did not sound like her.
She is a goddess. She knows the divine by name, she wades into their realms and ever returns more like them. On the other hand, as her faint and obvious shadow, well, I suppose I cannot begrudge her calling me a bumblebee. I did take clumsily to the air after finding the bliss of our souls and bodies joined again, only together. Just us. Nothing else. It was almost alarming as I began to rise and the blanket slipped but I snatched it along with me only--my spirit was so light, my joy so great, that my floating mind took my body with it. She said to me, she knew before I did, that she thought I would likely sprout golden wings if the magic ever changed me as it did her. She must have foreseen it.
I should figure out how to use this... Gift of her faith. There are not feathers as such, I did try to touch them, to pluck one, but they are more like a half-real feeling. Substantial only as a cold mist, or tissue under water. It is easier to just learn by doing, she said. Perhaps in the forest, or over the water after rowing out of sight of prying eyes I might try. At night? Afterall, I have been gliding along outside the nest for some time now. Now to be clever, careful and creative as she said. I wish i could speak it as well as Lawrence:
No, now I wish the sunshine would stop, and the whiteshining houses, and the gay red flowers on the balconies and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed out between two valves of darkness; the darkness falling, the darkness rising, with muffled sound obliterating everything.
I wish that whatever props up the walls of light would fall, and darkness would come hurling heavily down, and it would be thick blackdark for ever.
Not sleep, which is grey with dreams, nor death, which quivers with birth, but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable.
What is sleep?
It goes over me, like a shadow over a hill, but it does not alter me, nor help me.
And death would ache still, I am sure; it would be lambent, uneasy.
I wish it would be completely dark everywhere, inside me, and out, heavily dark utterly.
Feb. 1943
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reference: https://internetpoem.com/d-h-lawrence-david-herbert-richards/and-oh-that-the-man-i-am-might-cease-to-poem/