The Oculus Between Us
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Written: September 2nd, 2025, for Contest Sponsored By Rob Carmack
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You touched me with a selfish grace—
a twist of tenderness,
a lover’s rage wrapped in rubicund silk.
We were prolific in our undoing,
a clamor of glamor and grit,
gargling truth through voracious nights
while Asteria watched,
her eyes full of truthful stars.
I spat your name into the noosphere,
where dreams go to die or be reborn.
You were my doppelgänger ache,
my endogenous flame,
the replica of every archetype
I tried to reject.
We danced in the penumbra of joy,
each step a pastiche of pulchritude and pain.
You, emulous in your appetency,
me, entranced with the miraculous ache
of wanting more than the sum of us.
I tried to winnow wisdom
from the sage’s vade mecum,
but found only flapdoodle and nephrology—
diagnoses of hearts too full to beat clean.
We were consanguineous in our chaos,
a fulgent maelstrom of want and war.
You regaled me with your Icarian truths,
then shattered our quietude
with a jussive whisper.
I grokked your slipshod love,
your generous lies,
your sylphlike exits.
Now I sojourn in the aftermath,
a flaneur of our layered past,
resiling from the squalor of memory
with the pertinacity of a yokel
who believes even nonsense
can be fertile.
Joy becomes the reward—
not of peace,
but of surviving the twist,
the grabble,
the glamor,
the grief.
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