Dullita (for Salvador Dali)

I will be your Dullita

Sift like smoke through the bolted doors of your subconscious
You won’t even know I’m there
Till you feel my cool fingers creeping over your thoughts
When you think your mind is wondering in nothingness
A silver caress to shine through your dull and quiet moments

Soon your reveries will be swallowed whole by my silken silhouette
You will ache for the knowledge
That will paint my features on those shadows
Forget that there was a time when you did not need to know me

You will search for me in every dimly lit doorway
Every phantom will stop your heart
Until you turn and find it not me
Then your heart will beg not to start again

Your need to know me will be a smooth and solid gold weight
Pressing down at the center of your chest
Suffocating you in its brilliant and heavy beauty
But that suffocation will be divine
Because you will not want to breathe again until you know me

And when you finally find me
You will realize that the jewels of anguish you had been hoarding are worthless
That there is nothing more radiantly painful
Than realizing that reality is infinitely more exquisite than what you dreamt

In that light my silhouette will melt into curves you can learn.
And you discover new shadows in sublime crevices
Dip your tongue into pools of shaded beauty
Praying that destiny would have you drown here

You drink yourself full with knowledge of me
And intoxicated allow that part of you that threads your flesh
Into harmony with the universe to unravel at my feet

When I am gone loneliness perverts the passage of time
As you attempt to dull the ache of moments
Stretched and strained beyond tolerance

You pick up the brush
Stare at the canvas
Carefully spill paint onto your palette
And will yourself to create
Create some magic, some miracle
Some small moment in time where you can hide
And not have to feel your flesh burn with the need for my touch
Your fingers tremble to glide down the sweat-wet skin of my back

You put down the brush
Stare at the canvas
Porous white expanding and engulfing you
The blank sphere of your existence without me
And you will hate me

And when you see me again, a cool dusk moonbeam radiating into your space
Your eyes shadowed crevices from lack of sleep
You will know then that you must destroy me
So you pull me to you tightly, crushing me in an embrace
That is more dangerous than need yet more desperate than hate

Your fingers will mold bruises into my back
And your kiss will be like a moonless night,
Powerful and suffocating
We will collapse to floor
You will feel my breath slow to stillness beneath your grasp

You will feel also the lingering tenderness of my embrace
As my fingers play on your spine
And you will cry

I will be your Dullita

And you will know me.