Chandelier Façade

You are the bottomless sea.

Vast and endless, you conceal worlds upon worlds within you. Everyone who sees you is overwhelmed, simultaneously frightened of what lurks beneath the surface and yet too fascinated to not step forward, to not get their feet wet in your infinite waters.

…You’re beautiful.

Light scatters across your skin like living glass, patches of white glimmer over your currents like liquid gold. You steal everyone’s breath away. One way or another, you leave us all gasping for air.

…You’re terrifying.

Beneath that mesmerizing plane of prismatic crystal, you are an ocean of darkness. There is no warmth, no trace of light inside of you, and everyone who falls into you is lost. You lure them in with the siren song of your dazzling, glistening waves, your hypnotic ebb and flow, and when they sink into your sea you hardly even notice. They are each just one of many, insignificant specs in your vast world of blackness, and with their final spark of warmth flickers and dies in your tides, you claim them as your own. They all become the bottomless sea. I know this, I know—

And yet I dive in anyway.

I climb over perilous cliffs to approach your shores, I trudge barefoot across jagged rocks to answer your call. You sing of water and life, and I am thirsty, so thirsty. I breathe in the scent of you and want to weep. With bloodied feet and spell-bound eyes, I come.

…You’re intoxicating.

I sigh with every crashing wave, I smile with every crushing surge. You wrap your frigid fingers around my still-warm wrists, and I know this, I know—

I will drown in you.

You trail your glacial lips across my shoulders, my collarbone, my neck. Your breath is a cool breeze against the shell of my ear. I shiver. The cold consumes my outside, but my stomach pools with the warmth of insatiable want.

“There it is,” you murmur. Your words are soft; smooth sand slipping through my fingers.

“…There it is.”

I’m pulled deeper into your sea.

Over my feet and above my ankles, rising, rising, ice up to my knees. I press my quivering lips to your chest and I taste salt on my tongue. It’s debilitating. It’s delicious. It’s indescribably addictive. It clings to my teeth and leaves me thirstier than ever before, brine on the back of my barren throat. I drag my tongue across your skin, and it is water but it is not life. I will die from this desire which you never slake. It is a craving that only grows and grows and grows, and when I whimper for more, you provide.

“Yes,” you breathe, another cold gust of wind to shake my soul. My heart flutters and ignites into hungry flames.

“Yes…”

Up to my stomach, now. My body is going numb, but I hardly notice, so lost am I in the sight of your chandelier façade. Your aroma clouds my mind, the enthralling scent of the ocean and the air, and there is nothing else, only you, only this.

Your eyes are seaglass, endless pools that are brimming with secrets. I want to know your darkness. I want this, I want.

“The sea is deep and black,” you say, and the water is up to my chest. You lap at my heart with a gentle, cold caress.

“It will devour you.”

You say it not as though it is a warning, but a prayer. You whisper the words with reverence. Drowning is intimate; death, a blessing.

Up to my neck, now. Wintry waters surround me. Your arms wrap around my waist, and the heat that burns at my core is draining into your currents. You sigh, drinking in my very being.

The salt burns in my throat and there is nothing else, only you, only this.

“Tell me I’m different,” I gasp. Your waves are splashing at my cheeks, and soon, I will have no voice with which to speak. My fire is flickering, but I need to know.

You smile, and it is diamonds in the sunlight, it is a chandelier façade. Even before I go under, I am breathless.

“…You’re not.”

And yet I dive in, anyway.

…

I am the bottomless sea.