Queenlash

(align:"==><==")+(box:"XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''//Queenlash// by Kaemi Velatet'' Spring Thing Festival 2021 Edition] --- //Queenlash// is an eliuma (interactive novel) about the life of Cleopatra VII, the last Queen of Egypt, told from the perspectives of eight women. You read this book by clicking hyperlinks that take you to new passages. [[Content Warning->qcw]]: Please read the content warning before starting. [[Begin->qstart1]]: Start the story. [[Table of Contents->qtoc]]: Select a chapter to read. [[Reference->qreference]]: Access additional reference material. [[Contact->qcontact1]]: Provide feedback.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter I: Arsinoe''] --- Immersion shush presence through which her face purls, eyes pearls, to my airless gasping, slow slush grasping, streaming hair haloes [[sisters->qsisters1]] shroudeds underswaying immanence phantasm chandelier psyches spilling indigo and ultramarine to the bluer than below flowing momentness in which meld we one needstress. In the water tears flood heat upon the wet. Desperate through the darkness reaching I for her, but is her body gone, touch going, growing beyond this my embodied, eyes slowing to the last blink lush blank blessing, serene her gaze stills winks me moonbeams on [[waves->qwaves]]. I want to believe the pressure decays, the whether strays, dries us stalks of the [[submersive->qsubmersive]] loss papyrus, but belief absents her priestess silence sibylline in which so many submergence emotions crystallize, her spectral through my electrical fraying to sparks chants charnel ancient agonizeds I cannot parse, cannot pulse I dreams, wists my gaps gap. I love you drowns. Want you, need you, cannot cease remembering you beyond our too few memories, flutter glimmers from me to the sea, the sea, I feel it in me, steaming lungs sieving so many suppressed screams to bathyplasmic bubbles ripples Berenice, [[Berenice->qberenice1]], the hole in my soul is your doorway, and there is no more light in me, solely the world filling me erased, evulsnerable unto void before you, she, I can feel, my jaw unhinges to swallow her head, her souldeath concusses suspires sustain desires with [[synthesin->qsynthesin]] sensations as her ether vapors whorl swarms me more, when never have I felt moreness, quintessence outside this sameness numbness, nerve loss lustrous in the pale moon glare shocks its numb chill sleights of the estrange [[turnquiet->qturnquiet]]. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Suspension against within the gleam irrepressible gloomshade dampening the shadowfount shale, dust that cannot be swept away is how [[she->qcleopatra1]] sees me besmirching her [[ceremony->qshakti]], as if anointing her petitioners with myrrh means nothing with my fidgety forced presence slunk as deep into the recesses as a royal can be, though she sulks through her motions as if only we were there, in my peripheral occlusion I am more poignantly present in her microhesitation, in that slightest of stumbles was the only [[love->qkiss1]] I could feel from her, the way I leeched her less than her perfections. Dual dreams of the [[precious->qprecious]] violence that slowly mutes us both.

Shivers in its own cold the river's swept dances, wavetips delphinium tongues sing shadows in lower hours. [[Ganymedes->qganymedes1]] bends into the bluebleed slowly, sleet, teasing [[bristle->qfirmly]] the ropes his fingertips its fire, I tingle with the sense instead, risen along the line from depths, always these depths. You can hear the night from within.

Quivers intensifying Berenice in me volt [[vitas->qvitas]] humming modulating to veins tuning, I, can I be sure she's in me? Voice from me an other always, why not in her deeper, our seething voice? Used to tell her apart from the nights we shared by the congealed mourning she wore as I worshiped blasphemed basked in begging her to hold me through this, caress me purpose in the falter fraught, forge me your visionary, are you listening, are you there, [[Berenice->qberenice2]]? Kiss my forehead like you used to when it all went dark, let me listen to your listening like I lived in it. Alone the horizon seems not to touch the reach the realm, only beside you did the world unfold. How deep into my heart must I drill to uncover your forever treasured there? Do not my tears tiara your rerisen? Why do you not clear them to your crystal kindness? I don't know how to. I don't know why to.

Felt beyond his aboveness his floating on forevers never quite to [[fully->qfully]] cohere in my clutching at his [[firmly->qfirmly]] and [[warmly->qwarmly]]. Like as the sphinx stares at where you are not before it, as you wish you were of its epochalize, that you might appear in blessed its eyes, its dream truth further than this spare, this sere, so arid...

Leaning into the canoe, shaped by it, beneath the surface unsubmerged, speaking stars to his softly nightscape expansive, exhale: "Such peace this blessed blackness, how can we come from a [[mother->qmother]] we so little resemble?" "Illusory this peace, as all peace, netjeret. Blink the river unimaginable, unmistakable. The river kills as many as necessary to teach us meaning in silence. Have you seen someone drown, netjeret? Into the water they go, life intense into the shifting crush, identities suffocated in their [[nature->qnature]] eternal. Violence trickles its stillness from flood to flood one breath." Ganymedes. "You make it sound beautiful." "Drowning is what beauty is. Perhaps we shall drown a slave for you." "Slaves will drown in me, [[Goddess->qgoddess1]] of the Nile." "Perhaps," in the catch. "Who can say what akhet will fertilize?"

Slashing into the not there but should be bloodrain I spill into Ganymedes' composure, his current of the Nile contiguous, swimming in his stillness, sputtering to his surface in a snotty glottal stop short of a sob. "I saw her, I saw her, [[she->qberenice1]] came to me, Ganymedes, you, in the Nile, I, I saw her, I don't, I could feel her in me, just like, eah, just like all those days before..." "Has she not always been there with you in all that is within you of those days before?" Ganymedes. How can he rhythm my cursed to feel. Inundated to his patient, patiently excavated. I nonreply. His nonreply unnerves me to: "Must we [[return->qreturn1]]," my crypt sigh. "Longer we're here, less sure I can..." "So why we must return," Ganymedes leans into the row, row, stern, leaning into the stern.

Dressed in abeyance upon the chance I presume. Posed to the seeker whether exists a [[sought->qnature]]. If I can make one from this mess. Worship wells saliva silk to bed my tongue through the nightmare [[no->qno1]]. Of all there is, is there, my palm traces through my clothes the glow, if [[she->qberenice1]], if.

Awaking on each arising less [[real->qsensepressures]], more [[afeel->qkiss1]], always [[aflame->qgoddess1]], am I even awakening. Is there of this of this yet no not yet to now? Deadening to a lathe, living towards, drilling deeper, destroying and revealing. Cold sheets wet slithery along your legs horripilation trickles, rain of the lain still for so long and still not warm, not rested, exhausted forced up to the rest you cannot take.

Gulfs in [[Mother->qmother]]'s aura silhouettes the [[girls->qgirls1]] I cannot fulfill, why maybe she ices my colapses. We in the room quells of reverb. Noncertainty of nonaggressive we plait to the placidity of the buried, if only I could be buried within her, if only loved...

Bittersweet [[sensepressures->qsensepressures]]. Inside dreams the pull to purpose floats in feverous vivids numb to the outside. How lovely, never to have to live the moment. Envious of sepulchers unvioleting the day tense, drawn symbols [[vaultseal->qvaultseal]] the second's needles, freeze marble absolute jective. Shunt slashed lonely in the heated languish nearness trembling the thought of the next, but then the pull back fraught with why won't you be where they need, who needs who where in you not there in your glare, why is it you need from me, worse, what is it I yearn from you? Into our [[kiss->qkiss1]] questioning how much is this breath a mistake. Does anyone taste this tongue, more and more distanced from its drone I seethe curses I cannot mean, do mean, insist I mean, any meaning, please, please... Khepri pushing the waste of the last to the first dawn, birth surges froth from inborn decays. Cavern ghouls lurching over lightless pools a moan, our maybe, this praying. [[Berenice->qberenice1]] in my straying a staying composes my complete edifice its artifice that glamors my presumptive, and I presume worlds. Consumed, her doll, my jolted her electrics a current that overruns all borders, subsumes all shapes, ensorcells my encircling her circlets these circuit whys exorcis luxorious. Her ghost gloams me hostess, [[goddess->qgoddess1]] twins.

Icy jittery shakes the canoe its nestles in the bank. My ankle an ankh in the rushes wishes these winds would carry me through the [[city->qcity]] gates kami, whoever the motion makes. Brushstroke steps glow calligraphies, unsaid paths unstable, to my knees I tumble, but lightly Ganymedes [[lifts->qend1]] from the mud me, maybe. "Each stain on your dress earns me a lash, Princess. Please watch your step." "Perhaps I should roll in the mud? Then the dress would only be one stain." "The palace lacks your humor." "They will weep to gain it."

Alexandria, dunes lyre, melody make me, collect my sighs amplified, shriek vibrato gnash survival in the onyx gleam I gyredream my misstep to outline, oblivion assumption. Heat haze snakes beneath the synaptic star glow, nowhere but color, into the vastness falling like a feeling syrups along the tongue slalom the mouth's slow loosening, imbue this inside with all the fogs, fevers, phantoms, cries, and lies of the outside. Earthdrinker above the planet spider dangles spindles sentinels. Wants inside every pore. Electric recognition in neon names' frames found in the vase shattering in the second forever. Nurturespeaker tongueweaves silk threads glimmering in the glade sunblades. Gentle mulls mosaic the figments a force, fortune. Sylph lies wing the whispers an amassing echo in the palace eaves under which I wait, simmer, soldier. The things she says about me hurt, because they're true. How true will I show her. [[Alexandria->qstart2]], find me.

His smiles mix mirth with melancholy gently tensely. Lightning smiles mine have taught to cherish his subtleties. I try to moderate the way my face breaks fierce, but smiles moderated severe the dissimulation, in such harsh slashed I [[Cleopatra->qcleopatra1]] with my demand to miss the [[Bastet->qgoddess1]] dances to silence the people her tongue might suppose to object, deliberately harsh my pouts to gash her victory as tasseled skirts swept empty arcs in grapefruit torchlight, but she pounce asides to Ptolemy grin satisfactions at how easy expectations were for her and not me, hound upon prey. Wishing she might choke on a tassel.

I want you to tear me apart so I cannot be repieced to resemble whom you [[assembled->qend1]] me. Listlessly in your airless depths unable to spasm to gasp. Terror she above me languid phantom grace. In visibly pinned by lightless pools. Accosts me she with a genial grimace torn from sunken syllables syrupy with perceive spines poisonous with judgments of laws [[abyssal->qshakti]]. "Why are you [[hiding->qprecious]] from me?" Snatching my scroll, inspecting it, incinerating it with a spark of her scarlet nails. "Why are you chasing me? Why won't you -" "Because you are my sister, Arsinoe, and I, I have to follow you!" "Why? Why?" "Because! Just simply because. It is who I am. I have followed our sister until she delved into her, the, but I can't, not another, I won't let you go, I won't let you [[break->qbreak]] like her, I'll, anything!"

Scythes these fans this dance swings in my gestures before the thousand eyes beholder demon, each move memorized materializing timeless, exertion incantations erasing the actual. Studies she my artful purpose so slyly pursed at its fragility, she could watch me succeed, she would watch me fail. Languid in her [[throne->qcleopatra1]] ruthless. Rhyme precisions immense the delicate accents of positions prescribed, performed, possessed. Hyacinth petal steps symmetrize the scythes arcs slay glyph purpose emergence of the flange eternal of say. Effusives controlled our ancestors assumed would, must please the gods. I let my [[limbs->qend1]].

"If we return now, netjeret, we can [[arrive->qarrive]] in the city before next nightfall." Ganymedes. "Why not another day, another century, other life?" "I advise you nothing. I inform you the world you may shape." "You advise me nothing, but you are kept on so short a leash as I." "No, I am free, but you are not, of her love." "I love that you lie to me. She wishes I would stay in the river until all is seas again. You see how she looks at me." "I dare not glance at a [[goddess->qgoddess1]]." "You look after me." "Yes, after, your shadows. I follow your trails as I must. I never look ahead out of fear of what I would find there." "Fear is all I look after, I have been granted no other purpose, no other reality than the terror of their realizing how I manifest, and we will manifest over what has crushed us."

Ganymedes bows and strides to the slaves barking. They scramble up my palanquin. I glance upwards at. Gravity sick sanity swollen. Being sucked to the center, sucking the center into me. All this [[pressure->qend1]] holds me together.

Felt in her touch alive, is it so strange how most we inhabit our bodies where they [[border->qkiss1]] another in a thrill and gentle, bridges of brushes that clutch our wellsprings to squeeze us tears and dizzy, smiles and misty, lush requires we grapevine glisten in gardens of our forever removal, winedrunk on alteriors internally eternal in which you dream to dive, survive as does she through the harsh and twain thickets, life pumping the longing through veins never amore in vain, lain beside [[her->qberenice1]] to rest, truth the arrest, cardiac we beat to sleep, the comfort we can cave there beneath the assault, sailing the need to assail in assaying assume magnificence mot mode to mettle, you and me sundered in this touchless moan I slipper timid across the gloaming growing intense, immense, in vermilion blade glints without you beneath it, shards recalled of the blade with you beneath it, looking up at [[her->qcleopatra1]] in angelic milk chocolate serenes, accepting death in the way I [[never->qno1]] will, not for you, not for you, beautifully who I wish I was.

Purrs the latch her pawing it open to plume the black to silhouette scintillas. Boysenberry her voice bespeaks the [[nightmare->qshakti]]. "I was, Arsinoe, please, please tell me you can understand, I was shivering in a pavilion as the night leaked dew from the earth to mist the air watching wordless as gusts willed themselves in the gloom a murmur stable, a single whisper drone ceaseless slickening the sound of silence pregnant with who should I shape so? I had to, it begged me, but begged in a way that was a demand grander than I could suffocate sweating on top of it whipped with fistchoked screams suckglut gasping their collapsed and staring as its writhes relent quivers that shimmer through my sinews aftershocks never to stop as does you feel the second it does its heart, this killing you have born, child of your denial, wild of your desire, our motherless, isn't that the whisper, wasn't it, isn't it, Arsinoe, don't you believe me, isn't it [[her->qcleopatra1]] who is shaped from it, her face phased in its slow leg drag crawl skitter of hexaplegic spider revulsion bloom as I dawned on her in how she had always hated me, finally who she had feared when I would come screaming to her bed at night, finally me the anxiety I had scarred her, I, I was finally honest to her hate, and in seconds I saw her slip away, but she had been slipping away for years, hadn't she, the closer I tried to reach, the less she, the further she, the more I... oh, Arsinoe, what am I to do when I see her again in my sleepless and sweating?" "I, tears of Tephnis, I, I, ah, Berenice, please, don't, eahh, ahh, [[heuhhah->qwarmly]]..."

[[She->qberenice1]] stares into the campfire, thousands of facepaint patterns flicker fevers across her furtively pursed almost fierce to fanging through the lips to bare and hiss yet in her expertly ellipsed an intensely nigh ruthlessly blankness exquisite evinces shades the darkness swallows. [[She->qcleopatra1]] rests her face on her hand, rests her elbow on her knee, rests her foot on a log like she might leap up and dive into the campfire, blaze through phantasm, assail me, if only to reassure herself she is what most she fears. [[She->qturnquiet]] buries behind her knees her face nervously slyly conspicuously in the vague wish I don't wish fulfilled they might see the need for me to hide, my inability to sustain this beacon transience, would come over and sit sweet palm shade over my increasingly fetal, sulking protective against their prising for the pearl, embarrassed and frustrated to be torn open, how so desperately I wish I was.

Together goldwreathed in the palanquin we floated above brushstrokes cerulean pointillist brillianced by swans and porcelains matted into clay tanned to bruiser orange smoothness resilience, cloudly lacy of the dips and sways of the slaves. Heartbeat rapids of her having summoned me where never she had wanted me slowed slowly into bathing in her nearness, her immenseness, her magnificence, her... "Arsinoe, my ziziphus, haven't you seen the Mareotis in a summer sunset glazed to vessel as Ra sinks into the sea as peers into our seen the eye of Horus through which for the slightest and lightest sliver of a second you simmer witness Osiris and Isis, your mother, so why have you not sought me there? Why does my [[daughter->qmajesty1]] tell me you skulk with scholars to histories that do not know you? Shall I kill a few, so they might debate less intensely when you peep into their gymnasium? Why does my [[daughter->qbreak]] weep when she mentions you? Why have you not made yourself the rare refuge that prevents her endless akhet? You who I have made most free, you defy me to read so much, to laugh so little. Come, sit still like you insist against my will, let us gaze upon gods bleeding into our skins."

Sewing seven thousand actual corpse hands upon my own cadaver then thrashing in the town square bloodshrieking my throat to shreds asking what have these hands held that your hearts do not. Crawling out of your fear that colors will never again be as bright as you remember when you dream to ask you the directions to assemble my own ambient blendblare. His [[kisses->qkiss1]] taste cold like the wind that is calling. Explaining to the foreman the importance of keeping an accurate tally of the mass grave, as this is the cost most necessary to luxuriate. [[Her->qcleopatra1]] rebuking bemused grin when maybe I implied that all humanity yearns to be ceaselessly smashed and gashed by the [[gnashing->qshakti]] unending is why we should try using bonemeal for bread, that if we do not eat of lives we envy, we taste nothing. Experimenting on a prisoner the possibility of a human gestating pearls, piercing his every pore with extreme irritants so might he secrete, holding his hand as the oozes thicken, grabbing the globules from his corpse, weeping over them, stabbing them into me, dizzy, dizzy, internally at last [[precious->qprecious]], maybe, if she will wear me...

Within us worlds which we will not say, so fragile are they, so fleeting their feelings real. Should we force ourselves to shatter, which shard would tomorrow contain us? Which once will not be wrong when the knot gnarls, isn't wrongness the why what is shattered in our selves before others seeps glisten secrets? Quelled within containment, effacing the external beautified, internalizing esprit exquisitely invisible, unjudgeable, [[unmoored->qfirmly]] to any referent to fail it. Serenity of the renunciation: I will burn upon your pyre, but you cannot kill what you hate. Embracing within the cadaver [[shakti->qshakti]] of the pressed into it, dance crushing grapes to ooze most precious of wines, spirit of what is not here but within here.

Crafting an idol from flint so the heavens may burn as we do below, seethe infernally we bleed across reals to drink stardew from fictions, unseam cosmic constrictions to pure pain continuity rippling plasma constructures purple jasper nebulae of newly being being, bring us unto the blade edge so as one condemned we taste this life, this [[birthsurge->qend1]], demiurge into flesh.

Slidestepping down steps that each bear my name in the hollows which echo my passing infinitely distantly to wherever in the whirl we find ourselves cavernous swallows he of my saliva teeming pearls into his plosive chokes up at me like a surface he will never reach, is not who I am, cannot be, envy. I am hunched over a scroll trying to mutter him to moans. Better this way. Worse this way. What am I to say that makes [[me->qvaultseal]]? Tumbling down her arms to where she breathes I breathe to reduce this border, encounter [[her->qberenice1]] only in my point surrendered to her jaw, because I cannot quite reach her cheek, neither sufficiently sky nor summit to heighten her in [[precious->qprecious]] miniatures sublime, her every little motion carved by artisans who have debated the angels for centuries how the gods have failed this earth.

What about the [[library->qnature]] I love is it does not need me, will survive me. I am in it unnecessary, yet without me merely is it, is not in this, whatever I make of it. In a scroll there is the certainty of once [[bled->qwarmly]] to newly unstables, I harness in agonies their [[majesty->qmajesty1]] celestials, in darkness they are not in they forever shine, I cannot see but how they break into me. Tens of thousands of pinpricks through the shroud [[scintillate->qreturn1]] lives I will never.

Cherry Camilla lounges amidst stems torn to static as if [[slain->qpowerful]] handmaidens Queen Cleopatra VII swaddle the wreck a bed, plush plum plup of her lipstick lathering to bubblettes of saliva to gesture me through their [[bodies->qface1]] broken to spokes...

Broken of knowns Berenice leads me into her study where she proves to the mirrors how [[powerful->qpowerful]] is her look smashing a wintry ushabti over her [[face->qface1]], bleeding uncontrollably, shards in her smile...

Did I see her in the [[Nile->qcity]], who she saw me as, whom she refuses to see? Can I wonder in those waters more than a reflection imprisoning? Why must I return home if I cannot slake the soundless that draws away all I am anxious to touch? Why not dwell forever in the flowing of a river, the endless also, the endless not yet? What is there of hope to a husk such as this amiss amassal but that I love, am not loved, will not love, am buried beneath? How to [[fierce->qend1]] the day to veins?

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter II: Cleopatra''] --- Jade precious the cry, purity of some endless senseless aura, tasteless in the nerves numb statics porcelain jolts presides the crier [[amalgamator->qamalgamator]], vitreous [[watercolors->qwatercolors]]. Beneath the balcony sweats the crowd incense sour. Whipstrikes from here are heard as if thus the point of the whipstrikes. Milling dots ants. Wish I could pluck one up to examine in this symptom my unsettled, my nails could scratch the face off to mirror in the bone. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

"They will never finish the monument in [[time->qtime1]]," Ptolemy. "This is your [[double->qdouble]] speed? This is no speed at all, ages me to watch." "I quite agree, there is nothing timeless to the project," I file my faceflayers. "What does that mean?" "Nothing of course, how could anything mean not immediate to your sense?" "What?" "Yes, not who, never why, only this question, the what, for what, to [[what->qwhat1]] end."

"My father built an entire [[quarter->qquarter]] in a year. I saw him do it. Why must I crawl echoes of his successes?" Ptolemy. "Why does it matter? Where would you go but where already he has gone?" I unmutter. "You keep saying these things as if they mean anything! Why are you even here? Don't you have petitions to answer behind my back? Why don't you ever have anything nice to say?" "I bathe in the day's beauty, so I thank you for making it." "You're [[mocking->qmocking]] me." "I'm not mocking you, dearest," cobra winding behind him I strike the embrace tongue testing the breeze. "That's not quite the right word. You must relax, shh, my love, why do you stress the sleightest things? When you're angry, you assume everything against you." "Everything is against me. That's what it means to be [[pharaoh->qpharaoh1]], to daily crush the chaos." "As you say."

"What should I do, Cleopatra? I can't even stand on my own balcony without being frustrated. They insult me publicly by refusing to -" "They revere you, netjer," [[Pothinus->qpothinus]], "so carefully do they consider your every command. Their loving reverence leaves them loathe to part with the tasks with which you bless them." "Ah, and isn't your monument a testament to your wisdom and careful deliberation?" I. "You're mocking me! Both of you are, you're both lying to me. You know how I hate it when I am lied to." "Why would I need to lie to you?" Ptolemy breaks from me. The way his eyes jumble to anger from ununderstood emotions is a precious plaything. I reach out to curl his curls, but he leans into his [[spite->qspites]].

Some undefinable unright the brilliance rills like pupils black circles central in your vision slowly pulsating to a blindness you yearn for to hide you, seal you, nurture non you. Paneium a craggy splotch scarring the cityscape view, peering from its peak were so young when we, [[Berenice->qberenice3]] and supposedly me, argued whether the sea, me, supposedly, or the sands, she, windwoven, would be less likely the voyager to swallow, until slyly we agreed on trudging back to the temple to study. Where would we have preferred I assuaged her, anywhere [[else->qelse1]] will always only be [[also->qalso]], wean we on the roving wistful, each place another context to constrict you, corset pressing the world's waste for answers, none come, answers died long ago in the ebony milk now our neutral taste. What use would another place be? Clay cracked brutal against the bashing blue in any snow crown kingdom.

[[Nephthys->qnephthys]] forbids me forgotten [[Greece->qgreece1]] whispers the splashes when ply I the horizon. How can you be from where you are not? Bent racing the sands my [[tempest->qtempest]] my tongue sucking up the coarse to course it through these scraped clean veins, bleed me here skull of Alexander serves me Nile wine. City corpse incandescent, in my locks our lives glimmer my grandeur seal, hidden in which I lie locket hidden here, excavate the cavity exist grasp my roots, undress unearth me, whoever disbelieves my shade, I am place, I am placed. Am I here in my nowhere contained.

Ruler of the wayward sunbeam spilling over angles, gods invite me their [[sister->qnut]] where most am I an aspect, an abstract worthy of the terror of prayer. Is this in me an [[Egypt->qegypt1]] I ask the expanse. In my vastness dies the sound. Mountains my veil the distance in vanilla and majesty. Dunes horned my gales condemn me to my must. Such vanity, my worshipers, I the form they form, bronze idol of our beauty sphinxsmiled. Why should I not exult in my exquisites? I am publicly minded. I cherish myselves, my role unfurling their enacteds, so I sip grape juice from the palms of my admirers, [[severed->qsevered1]]. Isn't this what they wanted? Negligee of the hair of the freshly slain, bangles of teeth. I could die with no great trouble to me but their wails, precisely how they echo from buried alive embodied strive strife shrine of this way of wayward, wonder of our one we, my my. Call me Alexandria, I will reply its bodies.

"It is double speed, netjer," Pothinus. "If they seem not to your pace, perhaps the heat is too intense for the laborers. There is no shade in the south, so any faster and they collapse." "Do they collapse? Who ordered them so?" Ptolemy. "The sun [[rises->qrises]] by your pleasure, netjer, but what [[falls->qfalls]] is by its own accord."

Ptolemy [[frowns->qmocking]] a mouth so set to frowns it barely but for my intimacy registers. His jitters jumpstart, so I quell them with a kiss. "You are too enmeshed in the world, my love. So supreme a god ought to disdain how the humans progress your designs so long as they remain bound to your signs. Why do you not retire to an epitome? I'll send you some reciters, some tenemu, be soothed to your dynamic beyond the curves of day and night, between year and year, and in this endless will I meet you mutually [[sacred->qsacred1]]." "I don't know, it's hard to, you, you're always..." "Yes, I am [[always->qpharaoh1]], as are you, and we must together endure this curse."

As my memory of my father appears sunrise [[illustrious->qsacred1]] against the scrubland as if this image somehow means anything of his attempt to build upon the wild the disjunction which tilter twists most the thought is how curled against him [[Pothinus->qpothinus]] seems no younger, even as my body tingles energies forgotten, even as the sun seems rosier, pinkishly real, as opposed to the pallid fluxes we dull through through the migraines mounting more and more of me, whatever there is of, if there is. I sought to drink Father's industriousness, to enjamb so many scenes asnarl as does any recollection of him, but it seems I drank only that unnecessary antagonism, his insistence this flourishing must first lash the land for its repulsively featureless, as if in its prespeech [[hypostatizes->qhypostatizes]] the deserve he retaliates, how unforeign he finds his presence upon its howl quiescent.

Staring down at me in stone more [[his->qquarter]] than the body that mulched his taller than whoever addressed him to a hunched, neck bobbing in the breeze to free itself of its fruit, his face upon a sphinx mirrored a sphinx across the vestibule, my eyes seeming to gazesplit to return their bothing stare, longing the stone might soften as does his when I refuse to bow to intense initial, writ not with his capacity to more but these leers looming this effigy his power has marked totemic, and the shaved slave slug inching towards the emberous gate black smoke hushed with severe, luscious vulbing vibrant woolen puffclouds volcanic pasteled into the prevelance ambient of Isis pastels of poisons upon an altar cupping up an urn redolent deviporous with ashes of my mother's mother, emblem of the gift swift to be retaken, how heavens [[transit->qslip1]] these scars.

"So make it rise, I will it, I will it to rise!" Ptolemy. "So it does, mighty Pharaoh, so it does, as fully as our humble people can fulfill your immense spirit." Pothinus. "Who made them humble? Who allowed them such a vice? How can they be my people when so diseased?" "Our land is beset by so many troubles, netjer..." "Troubled I shall will it, rather than this, this feeling of never truly waking up, like I wander emaciated through, mazes, stranges you, you have set for me, haven't you, my queen? But I shall sweep them beneath me! Soon in the seas will our sailors read my mood," he storms away. "Watch him, won't you, [[Pothinus->qpothinus]]?" I yawn, exhausted from having been named into an idea. "Simply because his every move is watched doesn't mean I'm satisfied." "Your satisfaction is the purpose of my existence, netjeret." "Is it? No wonder I cannot sleep of late. Dismissed." He bows, retreats. I sling myself upon the balustrade, longing to like a leaf flit to feel the distal [[slip->qslip1]], but our bodies always overdrama, how can you mood a fall when it screams in plummets?

"Then mount their bodies up, use those a monument!" Ptolemy. I cannot help but laugh, the incisorknived flash of which first pleases then teases him, he seems to find his throat in its bite back to pout, so he staggers, wavers, scowls. "I order you to find a way to speed them up, [[Pothinus->qpothinus]]. Invent a quadruple time for them to sweat. Teach them the rhythm of my rage." "Rage, no, no, why should you rage? You must spare so [[sacred->qsacred1]] a thing. Start with ire, annoyance, maybe even aggressive disinterest, then let them agonize their way up your [[spires->qspires]], down your [[spikes->qspikes]], into your [[spites->qspites]]." I.

Idol wode to worship your concussive exstatic, inability to resume to them their stone stillness. Begging the sky to seam, begging the I to seem, causal causalgia gem of neuralgia nexals, raphides of revelation to reveil the revel vel velute ablution of ablation, numbly no feel, I see gods revealed briefly, briefly, before the abyss reseeps. Sleep beneath the precipice we cannot plummet from, our worship, devil abandon to suck divine veins from their fallen. Image frozen we [[zeuxis->qzeuxis]] the zazen static to slurp as if juicy, only to belove the enveiled, the reduced beyond touch, the image closure cloven. What we cannot see we see more real than desire. In so many temples I broken real eyed gods' prayers paravents: what they ask of us, what we ask of them. I have asked so much of them that I ask nothing of everyone.

Krieg die krise in the creases of your mental mapping, neural miswires sparking on steriles, azure electric emanation destabilizes the neuteral, lightnings zig zag to [[zeuxis->qzeuxis]] composites of the node gap, emergent lodestar sear seer in our missingness from completion, how we can be returned, reworked from clay primordial, annihilation of our errant telos to entelechial terror, production of the pure form no longer us. Gaze upon the other you must internalize to ken your hollow forever.

"Stop, Cleopatra, just, stop for once, you don't have to, eah, it is my rage, you've made it my rage, you always do this, you, you scorpion! I'll, I can't take this!" Ptolemy slaps open the sliding screen and hovers how little it rejects his [[violence->qhypostatizes]], as if he wonders where now may he go that it has not shattered before him. He [[disappears->qsacred1]] into the [[dark->qsacred1]] of the palace.

Not much of anyone is his magic trick, Ptolemy's eunuch. He knows what is inconvenient but is never inconvenient. He does what must be done but is never useful. He says what must be said but is never wise. He simply is there. I have often wondered how much I might learn of him, that I might be as [[Egypt->qemplacer]], there each day, each day as inhospitable.

"They don't go up my spires, that's the whole problem," he vexes, a taste to me lemon meringue, but he hesitates from my half dreamy lick, vexes nearly to key lime, then vanishes. Butterfly sigh. Honey drool I drape my paws to the [[belowness->qslip1]]. Jewelry box Alexandria glitters my gently. [[Pothinus->qpothinus]] bows to me, but my gaze lolls him short of his escape. "Find the pharaoh at least one other toy to build, will you? When he gets uneasy, he tries his hand at other things." "I am the lower echo of your mind, netjeret." "Ah, I love to hear my own voice. I dismiss you."

Ptolemy drips an acerbic he cannot quite wit, so instead he barks. "Ensure the monument finishes with the season, [[Pothinus->qpothinus]], or I'll hold you personally responsible. See what speed they invent when it's you who cares!" "Netjer, I of course will oversee -" "Save it, I'm not interested, I must go endure my [[magnificence->qsacred1]], or whatever it is you expect of me, Cleopatra." "Ah, but I don't expect anything of you," I mutter to his [[disappearance->qslip1]].

Yuga crucibles the descent of our less than to amendless spans we. Unsure of the shore we un. Wuwei decrescendo, our would we were we world we, unalien, nonfragment amunion. Simply to float [[emplacer->qemplacer]], embracer razor, that we might tear ourselves apart, free imprisoned ladens to their inexorable alone like we have borne.

What's a good way to tell you I find you equally repuslive and edible? Like I want to rip into your trachea and swallow the air wasted on you. Slurp you up a jello mistake. Is there a way to be attracted to someone only insofar as you hold them down and pierce their flesh until the life finally slips out? Or is there a good way to cherish how someone tastes when you swallow their skewered? I want to wear your ashes, because you were beautiful and too easy to bruise, too delicious, so insipid I had to eradicate your imprint. Anything of you that cannot be incorporated into me must be abluted with acids. I will drown you in acids. I like you, you're so wonderful, you're such an aesthetic that I must shred you and thread you into my necklace. I need to bash you [[free->qfree1]] of flesh you beast of basest impulses, you're not even truly alive, you are an instinct to the worse of a stimulus, you are the actual zero I have to destroy, have to destroy, if I'm not in its infinitely undefined, if I'm, but obviously I must wear my zero, splendor it, beautify it [[insignia->qcryogen]] of a goddess, asphyxia corpus defleshed mesh bodice of your never should be born.

Spend sufficient years in darkness, you emerge it, erase light, submerge with it. Knelt side by side with [[her->qberenice3]] a week for one prayer that Nephthys might enter us, fill us with the love we will know as shadows. Thurible of kyphi swallows us like the narrow throat of an hourglass. Pressurized to diamonds, our forced under, precious asunders. Syrupy blackgloss our pupils ultrawidened to ultraviolet drinking and reeling the resins of our pressed together clasped, our hands are clasped, our dreams elapse into a communal sigh outcry. I am beneath who. I am the wreath you forsake; I am all you repulse; I swim the lapseless I splinter into, struggle the surface, belowness endorphins to ecstatic suffocation, yes lasts to lapis. Nephthys, Nephthys, necropolis my desires. We change not tombs to palaces, they are already.

She was there when I was not. When beneath the worship raw I could not claw out she instilled in her perfection my percolation, could through dews see myself symbolic in her immaculate. She was strong when I could not feel my fingers, when I forgot my legs, when the sun became an idea. Watching her die to power. Glances both of panther and prey. She was so weak when I clutched her [[cryogen->qcryogen]], seemed so buried deep down nullified I could not tear out what must I bury, glace slurry of a voluptured voice, peering my ear into her silvery soaked to hear what might bubble us both [[free->qfree1]]. She was there when our [[mother->qegypt1]] was not.

Freedom is the body you are beaten into freely exercising your ineluctable. Identify your will with it. You cannot be free until you surrender completely to what is your will. Your will is within; you merely are with the in. Nothing you will will be your will. You are the superfluous flotsam lashed to your kernal. You cannot unwill the will that you will be. Die into your renunciation, you will be none; die into your enunciation, you will finally become your non. Your will is already decided when from the womb you emerge screaming as they [[separate->qseparate]] you from your mother. Abolish your mind, accept your designed, be free, be free, precious of zero.

Traders from the sea come to see the parasol I bend between us. Their bronze oozes between their teeth. They speak to me in Greek, I listen, reply to them in [[Egyptian->qemplacer]] they deep in their increasingly willing to buckle to bite the earth begging for it to stop hear as a difference of inescapable interpretation, pore piercing interpolation, so their cries bleed blend with dusts. Upon a page characters of such restraint, carved as if into cypress, muttered as if by a mollusk from whom emerges beauty in the nude. Reading voices I can hear would curse me could they feel how I tear their scrolls, burn them for warmth. How deep the honor they yearned from our carcasses is perhaps this very blot of ink, mere drips that can with teeth be excised, witnessing the bare fibers beneath, there where I am written. How they bend and wail before the wrath of their rapist bemuses my awed by how Horus seeps the fields, how Set arranges our destruction to koans. Who would enjoy an apocalypse of petty grievances? Shouldn't we shudder satisfied as cataclysm annihilates all we have ever known and loved as a divine brushstroke, violent color, matte texture of rubble?

Touch bleeds blue spirituals through the pattern until I dye their symmachy, scarabs scatter to unveil the black veil, through the lace I silent quivering progress to starry plashes slenderly swallowy immist the skin stark tattoos, ooze and gyre, tense and mire, luscious swept [[tempest->qtempest]] into arising from fundamental waters in a back splash hair lash streaming [[crystalline->qcryogen]] chandeltears to the silhouette whomever who tastes the skies of our souls destabilized, violin vibrato weeping ice, slitting the veins they floe, swimming in our catalyzed particulate nocturnals tremolo molten as douses in her deluge our immolt immolate compass, directions only of repulsion and heavier slagging us to frigid as bathe we mutually the brackish grayfell lethe, venom to lie until afresh the day denies us best, and we pine for her in the putrid and purling, blessed nightmother, Nut, who, to my approach, lifts her rod neither to strike nor summon, simply as raised, simply my tremulous towards a goddess fiercer into me than ever will be I. I wept.

Praying please, breeze, lead my sailboat astray to starry harbors hidden from my ways, shelter from the storm in shores whose secrets glitter deeper marines than this endless trackless. Squalls unquell the devotional vera. In the storm in the hold of a ship with the skeletons of our once skeleton crew crooning shanties from the harbors we'll never again see. Sea surges through the hull to help sing the chorus. Daylight drizzles through the drowning, warmth of depths we've [[shared->qseparate]] deeper than this abyss, bubbling oxygen lasts like trysts. Lightning looms through clunking tons of clattering metal severed to shards to the lightless a rain each equally thirsting the skykiss, sizzlespear of a sacred violence, in their amalgamated I mosaic selfsame storm, stormtwin venomerator prorated in violence a violence, stunned by the sublimity of toxtricity, irradiated swampcore at critical mass fizzling the thunder toxic, pandemic vector voltburster.

"This is where you are born, you are where you are born, bear it, where have you borne, bear it, bear it, whip yourself until you can bear it, this land birthed of you, with you, through you, of you..." Caresses my cheek my mother who slaps me. "Who are you?" "I am Egypt," muttered to the dirt. "No, you're not, you're not! What is the wisdom of Khepri?" "Beneath the sun we wither and fertilize." "No, you cannot, you will never, you are Egypt sterilized! You can never akhet those desperate for your violence." Her whip seems to moan how much it wishes I would grasp it, pull it, brutalize [[her->qemplacer]], but I cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot...

[[Alexandria->qend2]], stage, altar, mother as I have known her, other as I have known her, there as I have known her, ere I have known err scarred Alexandria, whom you must contain...

Strange, the picture, creation of phantasms. Who should we touch but their touch as it grows beyond them? Vanishcreates the artist the artwork ripping itself free of you. Plaster faces of the procession to phenomena ripple pond reflections your [[entrance->qend2]].

Noise smokes my scenes as a palanquin passes through their praise, buoyed up to me a brushstroke to wadjet my watching. Must the river flood this far? Such life thus given to these thirsty banks. Wavering reeds could I stride through giantess were I not poised too ease tense to move. "Can I not have a second to myself?" Ptolemy bursts to the balcony. "Why all this... oh, is that, has Arsinoe returned? Where does she go these nights? It's unseemly. It's not right. I must forbid her to leave again. She could be, anything could be..." "Do forbid her to leave, I should be glad to see her go." I. "Don't say that. How can you say that of your sister?" "I can say anything of my sister, she never listens." "Is this how you speak of me when I'm away? You're always so negative, I know you must. It's disgusting what you must say of me." "You know I would never speak of you when you're away." "Oh, I don't know. Nnm. I'm always terrified of Arsinoe when she comes back from these, these things. She says such strange, the way she looks..." "Steady your gaze on me, my love, and you will not [[fear->qstart3]] her looks."

Those with [[whom->qend2]] we should share the most evince our deepest gulfs. We are broken to abysses by our frayed ends to beginnings afar.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter III: Charmian''] --- Streets structures we suppress. Buildings we say our cities, articulation into architecture, anxious geologies between which riot the river lanes, veins from the gates to our sacred chambers, swallow people unpreyed pilgrims of its ingress centers. Cloaked rover of palace and nowhere bent through the streets preordained progressions we choose intersection after intersection. The city limits, yes, absolutely it does, but not at the edges, where rather the city learns what it must let go, as I go when, so tight in this chest, frigid incense burning inside my with held so long ago my mother in our last wound, fade to [[fugues->qfugues]], blacklight grottoes where grows our [[responsive->qdeathblood]] soul, casted into me she forbidden symbols in my terror chant purpling where she demands you go, know there are you most free. Collapsed into a [[cause->qcause]] embodying for whom I message absolutely sky. Omenbearer of my cannot infold. Jewel clasped when between palms am I jasper inset in serpent orbs to glare the gold its threat. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Through the blue morning [[mist->qghost1]] vellum light trails artery bulbing neon streetlights icy and lacy. [[Wending->qwending]] between gully frozen rains gushswamp our [[deathblood->qdeathblood]]. Through shadows a deeper not there. Winding around the knots in the stomach, awakening marketplace, or so we have been allowed to believe ourselves, morning beauty ruined by the dawning sense of purpose, but also cursed to purpose I cannot but commiserate.

Crowdfires [[ghost->qghost1]] the alley undulations to swerve this energy to its own summoning, breaker behemoth of pupils moths shaking the streets to flop me out null before the maw voracious, but I tumble dance the contrapuntal powers, urgency surrogate flashball wild glares immense, intense. There are many insides to your [[destination->qdestination]], choose which kills you least.

Libraries ought to tower, but they maze. Vault the ceiling as high as you wish, will you not shrink but wander. Rows of the bonebroken hunched reading and rocking stillness prayers. Stale smell of the dead beyond corpses. Amber candles muse crypt concatenates. In it so forever am I where the angles bend reality prism incense towards the ellipsis priests, strong wards in which the ancients seal wine of ancestral milk, presences insides they speak, they seek, they creak inside my cavities more hollow than the howl heard only in the deepest desert, so they say, the swaddled men who waver from the heatwaves more mirage than meaning, sailors also to this port, this delta where all arrives and melts away the difference, this place where, ludicrous, furious, [[Arsinoe->qarsinoe2]], neck nearly snapped so high does her spine rise, hides. [[Ganymedes->qganymedes2]] waits for what he now, almost expressionless, realizes is my arrival.

"Of course [[Arsinoe->qarsinoe1]] loves you," I had known to say. "You're all she has to love. That's why she needs time to deal with how also to [[hate->qdeathblood]] you." "She was born hating me, they both were, her and Berenice, my mother also, who saw a thing that must be made an Egypt. All who see me hate me, because they see the goddess unrepentant of our misery. That's why I trust her: she sees in me what she must [[destroy->qwending]]. How can you not love your sister?"

"So they [[seek->qseek]] the [[seeker->qseeker1]], and none discover," trickling below the rivermouth's roar Ganymedes rolls his shoulders as if to rise from bed.

"Why have you let her come here? How could you let her insult the palace so?" Smoky blend of ire and oak and knowing. "Let her come? You do not mean to imply I have any [[power->qwings]] over the goddess I serve." Ganymedes. "Don't be coy with me. I'm not someone you have to perform for." "I am serious, that's what's wrong with me. I have served Arsinoe long enough to know she takes advice like medicine: with screams and mostly not at all."

Noctilucently lovely preys [[she->qarsinoe3]] upon texts. Panther patient for who else might emerge. She turns not to meet me. I remember Arsinoe, as Cleopatra lounged upon a deck chair, grasping the railing, leaning so far forward as if to capsize us, eager with the oneiric power that knows it could, if it could. Instructed to tell her the story of the fall of [[Psamtik->qpsamtik]] III, but she let the wind sparkle my words to the day's brilliance, wishing only to know, from [[Ganymedes->qganymedes3]], whether you could read the mountains, if you traveled far enough, if you could understand the sentence your distance amasses. Leaning over these scrolls with the same restraint neither to fly nor fall, traveling worlds I will never follow, I wonder whether her distance amasses more than her home, the most sacred of fantasies.

"How dare she proceed her arrival to the library and not the palace! Has she made her return to demonstrate her intention to stay away? Does she wish to make explicit the pharaoh's desire for her to return home? She humiliates him, and my mistress especially." I. "She was summoned home, so you now find her here." Ganymedes. "You think you're clever." "Worse, I know I am." "You may be punished for this. If the palace takes this in anger, they must, this crass –" "Humanity's destiny is to endure the wake of gods. Our sufferings counterweight heaven to keep the cosmos from tearing apart to comedy, so I will suffer all wraths solemnly, that we may in dignity despair." "Nobody cares for your nonsense. Your animal mysticism infects the princess. Look at her, wrapped up in a scroll like a long dead tongue. I keep counseling the queen to kill you, but she cannot bear her sister's tears. If only you could be so thoughtful to spare hers." "Then it seems your mistress cares not for your nonsense, and you simply bide the outcome as I do. In that we understand each other." "You will never understand a thing about me. Shall I tell my goddess that you refuse your second [[summons->qfind1]]?" "Ask your goddess what she [[refuses->qsummons1]]." Ganymedes relaxes as Arsinoe rises behind him to glower at me with an intensity abstraction freed from the memories I thought we had made.

Ganymedes shrugs my welcome I spurn. "Some attendant are you, allowing your charge such [[rebellion->qseek]]! The pharoah and the queen await her presence in the palace. You must convince her to -" I. "I convince my goddess of nothing but [[who->qarsinoe3]] she is already." Ganymedes. "She merely slathers what you inculcate, and I will let my mistress know how I [[find->qfind1]] you."

You can see it in a girl like that, how she will learn the wrong lesson every time. Anything you say to her will be weaponized. How am I supposed to forbid her these journeys to the river if she will [[immure->qimmure]] the command, reissue it herself until immune? She'll acquiesce out of spite, until the slightest weakness in Cleopatra's resolve soughs, then immediately drill through, range in a freedom that then only exists as spite, as if she was still imprisoned in your command, defying it only as sardonic hypothetical. [[She->qarsinoe2]] will fight you upon any stage, because any encounter will be made a stage for her fight which may as well be against you as anyone, as the anyone she makes the queen.

Invisible, called me they, when I palmed the [[ruby->qruby]], and how strange, I thought, people gathering around you to call you invisible, how I feel receding faintly by jacinth candlelight. Floats beneath our eyelids carnation, this same twilight I tread breathless, sweat inside skull seeping, fleet sweeping through the streets sleet, sleight of those intimate with disappearance, into others I let myself rhyme to dance in a half step sound, soundless through these portals an encumbered with knowns. The palace is filled with her mellifluously orangy hazy and sweetly spicy cinnamon. Tentatively I creak the door. [[Cleopatra->qcleopatra3]] stands enraptured by a [[face->qface2]].

Embraced I can intimate her scars, fresh blood juices her nails' venom, but I dare not trample this forgetmenot, its scorpion sting. Little puddles dew the cloth draped sharp on my needle shoulders, in my coal voice I warm this oasis. "When I was younger, my queen, before you were born, my mother died, then my father shortly after, so I was sent to live with my uncle, whom your father trusted, the great merchant. He was a busy man, an excuse by which he justified his whole life, but he had an easy humor, he never made you wait on formalities, so quickly attuned I to his orbit's cadence, carved out caverns to bide unvulnerable, which my uncle, ever distant, did not disturb. I met him once a day, when he met me, when we met at dinner, and he would ask one or two questions, then I would ask one or two questions, then we would hunch silently and eat. I owed my life to this routine, so I bore how I wilted cheerfully. None of our slaves spoke much to me, nor did I manage to leave a house where my needs, what they were, how so little they were compared to what I needed, were met. We wasted years like this, unsure why we should even want to hold onto them, save for when I dreamed real a day to fever, and my uncle, gibbering expansive as if we both shared a plane, swept me to the market where he insisted manic I ask for a dozen things he could buy me, he raptured our whole house in whatever I had to guess would be my taste, and weighted askew under styles like [[strangers->qstrangers]] I sat as he told me the world, and my spirit with him soared to our intoxication, I drank up being fawned over, each glitter of his eyes seeded in me strong yearnings, the stale lights the windows dribbled seemed dawn pearls, and in the following weeks I chased breathless his receding into woven patterns that dress my maturity, this weathered edifice which I hoped would shelter your eden, but you are too much like me for me to protect. I'm sorry, for you, for me, between us. I am blessed with parallel strangulations suited to serve you in the sadness, not protect you from it. When my uncle lay dying, I [[nursed->qnursed]] him with the vacuous patience he had blanded me, but as his journey neared, hacking dried blood, red dirt of his far plateau, tunnel voice cavernous with slime, with the same [[vehemence->qvehemence1]] he had enchanted me one hour princess, he begged me, his dying wish, for me to call him father, hold his hand and say the word, once, just once he begged me, dire into his delirious between blood chunks he pleaded with me to call him father, and I, my queen, I refused, I refused him, watched each throe render him like my father as I held silence."

"My, my own, sister, own sister, again, Charmian, how can this happen again? I don't understand! If one sister betrays me, I can blame her, but if both betray me, then don't I deserve it, don't I? Excoriate my guilt, mercy tell me why I deserve it, and I do, I must, I must, or worse, all this pain is the vanity of chance. I tried so hard to love her, but she, she, I did everything I could think of to, to draw her out, discover how we, could, I tried to bond with her over books, isn't that what she loved, shared with her the Egyptian tales, [[Sinuhe->qsinuhe]] and Amenemhat, tried to live them with her wandering our gardens to sightsee our kingdom, inviting her to name the visions, contribute spires and statues where she saw them, but she never, even when she did, even when I could see her rhapsody into our moment's beauty, it would not be to be with me, her eyes would mist, she was, she gave all my love to letters. Why won't she love me? No, don't answer, I know why, it's because I'm too late to be family, we spent so little time as children, Berenice and I were closer in age, tortured to be [[queens->qqueens]], where she forever languidshed princess... but Berenice did it, didn't she? When Father and I fled to Rome, she, they somehow, and what's different, what did Berenice do that I didn't, why will she admit one sister but not two? But I tried, I tried, but she was too changed after that, I could never bridge the gap, even though I wanted nothing more than to be to her whatever my sister was, to heal her from Berenice's [[sickness->qnursed]], to nurture in Arsinoe anything but that venom, but she throws me away, they all want me gone, everyone, everyone, Charmian, and why should I blame them? I make myself gentle, they fear me; I make myself wise, they fear me; I make myself passionate, they fear me; I make myself seductive, they fear me; I make myself terrifying, at last they brave against me! They recognize who they always felt me when I loom. Why should they fear someone who cannot control energies enough to be loved? They cannot love me, I am lost from its domain. The moment I saw Berenice die, the same impossibility to sustain affecting to affection afflicted me as had her, when she stood over our mother's, when she, and how can Arsinoe choose her over me when she, but why should I care, love is only our animal clinging, and I cannot cling, my claws scratch. I am a monster, aren't I, and I'm so grateful, because only a monster survives what they put me through."

Fantasy consume me, shadows improve me, ennoble my quest. Bidden by a goddess to a goddess witness, rely must I upon magics of deeper materia, precoordinate dynames droven to us axial xenomenia, anguishly burdened of framed how we must home. Hieroglyphs notrikon swirl us selveless vir vivek until anaphoras we revessel amphorae hemophones, diffuses through my our we her and her saliva a droplet of Cleopatra's so might we meld to a goddess for as long as flesh might hold us. Summoning myself into projection, protend my mind inside [[Arsinoe->qsubmerges]], let me see from her, see my goddess only as her poisoned [[remembrances->qremembrances]]. Cleopatra, intercede through me, through me to your sister, as never you nor I will, I, we are, is, through the, I, I, dizzy, who am...

''Arsinoe'' Honeycomb cell in orbit am I around the wasp perversion whose power subsurface scattering ripple drips my speech dreams a syrup sucked into its hiss our kiss. Dredge blur murks the swarm in the mark of its arrayed as leaking coldness cancer turgid through our swollen remembrances, pollen particulates fuchsia and mauve pointillist against the sickening yellowish gauze, leprous torchlight. Panes [[enjamb->qenjamb]] perpendicular tense as a shatter postponed prepossessed to blend our bearings in the fizz of incorporateds hushing their forlorn calls to the expanse no longer, zero point portraits.

''Arsinoe'' Wolfish prowls my sidelong glances in the nowhere in the night where no one stirs. Ice insists the seconds in pores. I cannot catch the sound of my own heart beating over invisible sinews screaming but cello bellows slush in my ear submerges noises in a shush, drone, drone... doubts and all the abysses in which they echo, echo. Broken by the unassurance as it extends, quiver confusions [[oscillating->qenjamb]] widely, too wildly, for these bones to entomb. Merciless the hours catch us in our are nots until lifetimes have left us. Scarred by the unwillingness to protect this skin. In a blink wilting like how the mountains see the flowers. I should not have says everyone with a memory.

''Charmian'' Blasted out into my body I am gasping, my whole soul splinters to saliva. Nauseous and twirling, nearly vomiting. Can't focus right. Can't extradite. Not anyone but myself and sick. No, breathe, you can do this, because you must do this, there is no choice but for you to delve Arsinoe, your goddess commands you, grants you the [[power->qpower1]]...

''Arsinoe'' "He will not [[come->qapproach]] this night," Arsinoe mutters, I mutter, I mutter, I mutter... "Whether he comes or he comes not, I wait with you." "Maybe that's all I want," lean into Ganymedes' warmth, "not to be alone in myself as I fail to materialize." "That's not all you want." "Yes, I want [[ocean->qocean]] irises, I want clouds nails, how I wish I could sing the breeze. My whole soul hungers, isn't that what a soul is, your unfillable?" "I do not know what a soul is." "Perhaps no one should. Because the gods could not give us answers, in their grace they gave us questions." "I am thankful for your gift, netjeret." "Be thankful for migraines in the morning, then shall we know each other." "As you say, netjeret."

"In the time when everything turns, in the time when the Persians became perfect, in the time when Egypt savored its tenth death, in the time when what has been coming comes, in the time of tears, in the final count of years, reigned Psamtik III, Pharaoh of Earth Arising and Earth Descending, Lord of the Time Between. Our kingdom never to fade until Seshet's ledger can bear names no more sunk beneath the seal of the Persians. Our armies rose to defend our land, died to fertilize it. Our heroes quested against the conquerors, were granted their valors. Our priests begged Wepwawet to discover a path to refuge, were answered by Osiris. Our pharaoh rode out with the finest of the dawn, rode back an eventide. Our nation was taken, our cities rewritten, our beliefs syncretized. Akhet washed us away, and from a wanderer's womb glistened nude Cambryses, son of Set, son of Cyrus, son of Cassandane the mother of Atossa the wife of Darius to whom was born Xerxes, feasters of the harvest of the third fruits, pharaohs of a new virility. Oh, om the time when the Babylonians fell to dust, in the time when the Assyrians fell to dust, in the time when the Cimmerians fell to dust, in the time when the Libyans fell to dust, in the time when the Kushites fell to dust, was the time when Egypt was sprouted from fresh soil. Winterbearded Psamtik III watched his city desecrated, saw his people massacred. Cruel as befits victors, Cambryses paraded before Psamtik his kin desecrated. First marched before the wailers Psamtik's daughter, dressed as a slave among slaves, for whom Psamtik wept, yet still he stood before Cambryses. Second marched before the wailers his son, the first of the condemned, for whom Psamtik wept, yet still he stood before Cambryses. Third marched before the wailers a spearmate of his youth, debased to a husk with less than a day's sun within him, and there, before this friend who had with him tasted youth's honeys, Psamtik finally perceived the venom of Renenutet, finally perceived that that which on which you are nursed is that which to which you will be condemned, and so violently wept he that he fell to his knees in disgrace. Cambryses laughed and ordered the prisoner to be abandoned there among peasants, declaring the fallen are blessed to be left as they are. Frantic to birth himself afresh to a different mother, Psamtik slaughtered a cow, begged Hesat to fill his veins, but she forsook him, and the last of his dynasty died. And so it is said, die into your dignity through each [[erasure->qganymedes3]]."

Off into the wanderous we wilt, as once, recalled in clotted knot beads baubling down my cheeks, chin, puddling in my clavicle, had I relented to the heat in the parade, so wearied of staring, sweat gelling membranes leggings, salival parallels eddying the epiglottis to chokes as crowds undulated flange endless sine wave glare blush rust rainbows, statuesque filmy of from a distance a princess chipping perspiration flakes pooling on the floor skinseams in which myself a mirror seen seethes horizontal flickers translated to vertical sense a vertigo of so much melted until in a hard snap to if it must be reality I [[shocked->qdissolve1]] open to Cleopatra's wry concern peering from miles above as a handmaiden nurtured me shockingly cool water. In this worn waiting trellised the reverse sensation up my loathing an intensifying, darknesses no longer scanned but presenced. Emotive suspension vibrates this tension accord until an [[approach->qapproach]] narrows me to huntress silky before the kill.

"Why do you hesitate to approach?" I smooth the will to weep with hypersurface cheer. "Are you expecting a trap?" "Ah, netjeret, we are bred to expect everything." Pothinus. [[Ptolemy->qptolemy1]] runs up from behind him and embraces me, and I do, a little bit, let myself run [[teary->qteary]]. Tilting to his lean jarred free of spine.

"Why do you do this to me, Arsinoe? Why do you make me sneak to a rendezvous as if I should be ashamed to greet my sister? Why must everyone [[drench->qwhat]] me in shadows?" "Where else would you find me, Ptolemy? I want you to be safe in my domain, so I rescue you here." "You mean..." "What could anyone mean? Is it for them to say? Is this the chance that chandeliered so many numbness [[nightscales->qfreefall]]? In the asynchronous roll of our unpunctuated apparitions all our practice slips through our fingers like powder. Never quite knowing how our music will be divided by the hollow soundings. Never the dancer a balance but motions not yet in the sequence a clatter, [[strengths->qsafe]] winking out like stars to our always."

"Are you okay? Arsinoe, what's –" "Ptolemy, listen to me, hold me, just, I saw her, can't you see her here, I summoned Berenice, swallowed her, you can tell, can't you, you can feel her in me? We're going to be whole again. We can excise the ebbscensse. Don't you feel broken? Don't you feel wrong?" "What are you saying?" "Muscles straining for what increasingly seems like work motion by motion more incompletable... do you remember when we would chase each other through the halls? Yet here I cannot come to you, and you are confused to come to me. We used to pretend ourselves in temples, in closets, in fields, but now we fear we cannot pretend this darkness our palace, ah, I can hardly breathe, I'm sinking, the ground gives way, and I wish I could bliss in the [[freefall->qfreefall]], it doesn't matter if it matters if it meant in the meaningless, if we can our paradise forever in the fugue..." "Arsinoe, you're scaring me." "I'm so scared, Ptolemy, look at me, Ptolemy, feel my skin, isn't it just like hers? Doesn't my kiss exact Berenice? We're together again, and you can be too, we can be a family again. Don't you love us?" "I, of course I, [[what->qwhat]]?" "Then why would you ever flinch from me? Shh. It's okay. I'm here. Isn't that what this is, us being here?"

"You, you never explain yourself, you always come back from these journeys so, so, you say the most inexplicable, like you've, changed..." Ptolemy. "Our nature is to change, even when we don't want them to, they become where we must rediscover, snakes molt skins when the cannot be contained in their dead new nakedness chances to embody our hidden sanctities, Nehebkau binding the will with the endure." "Arsinoe, I'm scared." "Yes, that's the right way to say it, let us be scared together." "I don't understand, I don't understand!" "Yes, yes!" "You, your wandering the deserts, then making me steal to you in secret –" "Our secrets steal us, drained we into our cannot admits." "All this strangeness you show me, and then I turn next to [[Cleopatra->qcleopatra2]], who, who!" "Don't say that name, shh! There's only [[Berenice->qsmile1]] and I. We don't need her. We'll destroy her."

Ptolemy startles from a shadow. "No, it's, ah! Uh, I thought, ah, thought I would turn to see her standing... do you know I awoke one night to see her at the foot of my bed floating several feet above? I asked her what she was doing, and she leaned over me, but without leaving where she was, like her torso detached to lean over and kiss my cheek, completely wordless she, it's like, how can I explain it, she stared into my soul, through it as if nothing had been there, then her body reconnected and descended, she strode into the sconcelight, gawping night, and I, I, and another time, she had painted her eyelids brutal crimson, so whenever she blinked an artery burst, I thought I was imagining it, but later that night I saw them piling a mound of tallowy, jaundiced slaves, ah, it looked like their, their arteries had..." "Ptolemy, focus on me, it's okay, you're [[safe->qsafe]], kiss me, we're whole again, don't you taste both of us?" "What does that mean! What are you even saying? I can never trust you to make sense, but then Cle, she, she makes even less sense..." "No, she makes more sense, she has a sense of everything, that's what makes her sensuous, sinuous, encircling, she's always encircling us, we cannot touch anything without her being there, it's a [[prison->qprison]], she has imprisoned us, Ptolemy, we have to free ourselves from the lies touch tells, lies, all of it lies, any dream not us in this ruin..."

"I don't like this fear, whatever it is, I can't turn anywhere without her [[overloading->qchaoskin]] my being. Arsinoe, you can't keep leaving us, I'm terrified to be alone with her, I need you there, I, I want you, there." Ptolemy. "I want to be there, want it, I want you to want me there until I am, Ptolemy, want me into that reality, please, how so desperately I yearn to finally, somewhere, be there... listen, this sickness, this inability to breathe, is her heart, this void. Her cynical superiority occludes everything not already within her beautiful, I can't take it, I'm dying in my own grove where nothing grows... why do we allow ourselves this sickness? Do we not wish to strive a day which can melt to any night we create? Isn't that life? If it isn't, then so long have I not been living, I cannot know. Within my bones I tense with their learning to break, my youth slips from tasteless zenith to the long fragility. Look at these scrolls, look at all of them. Where are they, these dreamers? Mausoleums drain to us the waves shores. Thales leaves us an architecture, but wandering ghost halls my antiecho quells the immersion, puddle ripples the dripping away, washed clean of primordial baths, I cannot face it, increasingly I refuse to. You ask me why I run, because you won't listen to yourself say it, that's how I know you ask me out of an envy that trundles into your loneliness enigmatic nightmare, which we should share, we can flourish ensnare her, how she unneaths our frieze, overpaints our null assumptives, our attempts despite... do you not feel this in you? Feel me, feel this in me, Ptolemy, feel it in your heart." "I don't... what are you [[suggesting->qsuggesting]]?"

"I'm suggesting we, you make me queen, and we exile Cleopatra." "You, can't you keep your voice [[down->qdown]]? There's, she has..." "Let her hear! Listen to yourself, noble Pharaoh, afraid to have your thunder heard. Before Anubis shall you shrink? The scales will weigh you denser the smaller you become. Why do you acquiesce your [[terror->qchaoskin]]? All that must exist in Egypt exists within the safety of your cartouche. Dawn, Amun Ra, atop your fertile figmentation. Grant us our air, nurse us our seas. Erg crest in whom we pile our grains. Unveil our vistas, why not frolic in our farlands wine? Composed before you is the need of my love, where I am wanting. Why fear more than what we can be here? Within this bond lies all we must protect. Flames consume the earth, but you can consume me infernal, inferal, fetal." "But, I might –" "You might, and you must, your might." "Netjer, please, we must pause to consider all –" Pothinus. A glare frosts his tongue. Instilling craving in my warmth appeal. Briefly these two faces flicker side by [[smile->qsmile1]]. Juxtaposed drawn intensity as I inch eclipse.

Bravery, believes Anaximander, is the assumption of the ordered self against apeiron, but where does one stitch into self our bodies, unfold what is within in the progression without, we are without until the world is without us, immersed in apeiron we float boundless in the void alike vacants, the more am I filled, the more I am filled, determinated desecrated of whatever once phantom purity, drowned in the clash of orders greater unto [[chaoskin->qchaoskin]] emerge I bloodsoaked snarling to the wan moon wavering whose visage in pooling erratica glows dune primrose arisen from this city an explosive totem, nihil symbol zeugma antidrawn of anew submersion, imperfect paints mar my flesh our unwritten frays. Glimmers in the shard porcelain fangs of the pouncing serval bravery. Bravery is the coiled cobra rising. Whenever we recognize cosmic brutality and meld into its raging are we brave.

"These [[barbs->qsmile1]] in your heart," my palms quiver his heartbeats faster, "can be harps plucked to song. We can be something else, we can find that else out together." "Arsinoe, ah... how can I allow her to do this to me, to us? And yet, how can I know, how can I trust that you won't, her, become the same as her? Sometimes I fear your lurking the same as hers. If I follow you, toss aside solid earth to believe in you, then you, you must promise me, promise not to be bewildering, promise that we can be at peace in an understanding, that I won't have to chase you across your riddle gnarls." "No! You can't ask this of me, ask nothing of me but me, us, your sisters two, your wives as one. I choose to be the wildering, cannot be [[encaged->qdown]], no longer, please, not without deposition to pure image, uninflected reflection. I, how I wish I could be... and how can I give you what I do not understand? Why must we promise each other an understanding? Can we not share our uncertainties? Isn't that more honest? Wouldn't we understand each other so much more?"

I stab into his anxiety and slather on the bled paints. "Do not reduce me, Ptolemy, embrace me, mire me mesmerizing, [[dissolve->qdissolve1]] this caress our puzzle amounting. Do you know why our soothsayers writhe to the invisibles agony? Because ourselves before predestiny gives us gods in a flourish of violence. Mortally borne our figment of celestial anguishes harrowed deep beneath the woundsprings of time, so our corporeal condemnation unseals our unit of suffered course, but as gods we zephyr temple our excess [[transposition->qtransposition]] royal, division into difference objectal we noumenate edicts unspeakable, how we hate her, her in us, over us, unspeakabling, my skin crawls her atop me, can't you feel her here in our afraid in the dark, frozen to the touch, whispering when the winds are our mother? We have her killed, can kill as much as we need to feel life, now that I am all of us, in me pulses the yearn to heart. She glooms between us elusive absence, in my dreams she resides, so no more are they my dreams, why, why do we allow her queen of goddesses, when two grander are these palms which, in their previous embodied doom, drove out this pall, cleansed us to palpable, to our intentional tempest where persist we empathasis, join us into our unanione. Why bide her tyranny of your each sense when you could savor the glamor of our tyranny of your sensations? Maybe you don't love me, maybe I am not enough to deserve love, but as long as there lies a yet, I can still have the chance to entrance the pose, become whom we are looking for. When we admire a masterpiece, do we ask if the lovers kiss authentically? No, because behind the image they exist eternally beyond the pose, their position signifies the unspoken story. Forever deeper they recede from how they impose upon the view a vow. Artistry entangles the scene with its summitry, in this precise point all that lies beneath summated, yet intangibly, irrevocably, a moment congealed from its presence to final contact spanning into the cerulean dissolve, trust this point that ventures you to no further, new surface, even if we are false, marooned in the depths symbols we will surpass genuine."

Hesitates he to admit, so from inside his tied throat I hum how Berenice sings in my soul, until from his mouth he mutters what I make him, I engrace him, bury his burdened in my purge purity, opal stare wild to Pothinus as I lick Ptolemy's hair, dribble [[consecration->qdissolve1]]. Ptolemy weeps into me Cleopatra, but I rock him until he cannot speak the name, until he speaks my name, speaks my name, rhythm him to summon, thirsting I might [[appear->qtransposition]].

''Charmian'' Gold eviscera guide leads through the lozenge lanes to path proven this as I go amiss. Dizzy stutters slurred spluttered drains my brain to gutters, pierced sac leaking in the street, broom me up and away, sludge through air a semiseeming to fly, raincloud claustrophobia bludgeoning down to somewhere new, lunge torn slug splupples slime, my own, again in my own... Migraine batters my blasted rent raw. Pulse like a pounding. Struggling to outside of. Incursion, recursion, reversion to [[fomented->qend3]]. Cough to closed lips, swallow. Crawling through the me crawling through streets. Shards ajar my left wrist out into the vial of Cleopatra's blood that drinks, reshapes, and reseals itself. The goddess has left me; I must find her.

''Charmian'' Positional marker of where not. Clawing at a map to unearth your location, but you are unearth. Coordinates to a nowhere you some to one, parenthetical enclosure of movements frozen forever, farness designating a locality, isn't that home, the zero by which you are removal, undo self unto self, homewardly foreign, the body marked by its wayward according to matrices immovable, for they are movement, inscrutable, for they are the imputable, unundoable, for they are accrual, supplementary retroactives present in any past. Movement diagramming all the instances of your passing, passing your not theres but in this transitory. Places you find yourself solely because you can measure your have not and will not collated beneath this pierced. Humiliated to a point, as if all you are are points, as if this is the point, isn't it so measured? You've been traced, triangulated, you are the traces that must be pinned, mapped, scrutinized, traversal transversals slashing your towards violence, caged between planes infinite beyond your irruptive. Graphing moderator tabulating your radial violations, your refusal to be centered, your [[terminus->qend3]]. Zero in terminal interminably mere so.

Arsinoe sets fire to my sentences and dances in their flames. "In my mouth inclines the phrases of summits strangers saw within me centuries ago. Inside their lives an ember, cinders self occlusion to the accumulate, an into you I believe read when I unroll a scroll and the words emerge from gone, sink into the blankness, their fragile transit swift before us like years, years, twenty three of these years have I shared our relinquish, into their gray awaits I go to secrets, convergence language embalmed in sobs scorches grave legions moonlight illuminates in my grove skull. Do you see here what [[Heraclitus->qheraclitus]] writes, wisdom of the thousands morphs to the grooves of each new tongue phoenix phantoms, or here, hear it seep like the body's oils into crushed lanterns far below the earth, what [[Callimachus->qcallimachus]] whispers in this sepulcher: arises the ghosts reapers of their generations the generative complete. Take it, you messenger, wrap yourself in the books of the dead so you might find me how I am." Ripping the volume to long strips she dresses me in her composition. I stumble back, but my feet admit defeat, bathed in her amassing shadow ennobled austere and miasmic. "Tell my lord I long to [[find->qsummons1]] him in the places where might he be worthy."

"How did you find me?" Arsinoe swirls cyclone of scrolls pulled to shrieks unraveling near to shredding, shredding. "How many more [[wings->qwings]] must we add to this temple before your ilk falls short of me?" "I, forgive me, netjeret, but a mere creature such as I..."

"Goddess of the flow of life and death, do you refuse the summons of the goddess of the living death?" I. "I have met her, the goddess of living death, in the Nile. I will worship her there, here, in every altar not profaned by foreign idols. You may scamper to your Roman calque, see whether she will worship or war. Perhaps she will merely return home, as must you, shall you wish another day to age your corpse." "Yes, your majesty, of course, Princess, your word is my command," I bow, stepping back without unbowing until the darkness unnows me, and through decades of [[regret->qend3]] I go.

Warmother twins gods to slaves, whichever shall feast upon the other. Heavier the cost you claim grander. Joy is a zero sum game. Consume exhaustible mercies, you centipede whipping around to unburrow a cricket, piercing in with toxicognaths and slurping slowly as the unable to squirm or scream thing dies, it becomes now a thing to which, in the absence of squirm or scream, arises merely the ineluctable choice to die, will not quite yet die, hours and hours more of quaffing tubules still aflush, memories now food, torn body of an it no more. Gods gave us thrones so we might create reasons for all the inevitable death. Without a monarch to worship, you are still subjected, now no longer to anything, only the absence; without a thing, you are as much not it. If you cannot eat a king, dying for him upon the chaos and hate that preexists, then you may as well die upon the chaos and hate that preexists. No greater allure coaxes the coarseness to lyrical abandon than watching a body bleed out into your compulseory. You will never step in the same skin twice; you will never step twice, sans new skins. You have to kill, you have to love to kill, is the only way to love. Do you not already feel it inside you, your bitters as envies, your joys as focaling, your schadenfreude loculus, paradise of pentups undammed to alterior damnations, vessel of sunkens, viper in the rushes of the [[summons->qsummons1]]? The way you hate them is the way you love anyone you can collate to a them they will hate: who will be loved, who is going to die? Openmawed awaits the blood god sateless, faceless, whose shall it be?

Who before you do you weep? No remains, none remain. Gone both the grief and its gone. Before you is stone as unfeeling. Before you a marker of what cannot be located. Nothing corresponds to the tears you hallow upon this hollow tomb. This sign is empty. You can call to the nine winds, beg the frozen and the burning, search the deeps their secrets, but nothing of nothing nears you now in this inscription upon no surface, barrier between all [[summons->qsummons1]].

Stormcloud sodden we traverse the mars. Queen Cleopatra VII clasps my hand as I lead her through hidden hallways. We are going to escape, survive, because the most beautiful [[killing->qstart4]] has yet to fruit, its juice yet to be bled. Into the underworld we go, strangers forever, to find who will be beaten to kin kindling our frozen of hearts.

Without turning from the face that faces us addresses me Cleopatra. "In one of her nameless Nefertiti, this bust of an ancient queen. They say she is not my ancestor, that Egypt with the ages changes, lineage and labyrinth. They say my ancestry is Greek; what Greeks we are, dressed in the Egyptian fashion, speaking the Egyptian tongue, worshiping Egyptian gods, including ourselves. To the naive I give the chains of mothers and fathers whose names the breeze forgets, but for me an ancestry of experience I share with this Nefertiti, this butterfly jaw, this cataract peer, these serpent lips, this kinship recursion eternal in which we live align. My scholar told me she was the pharaoh's sisterwife but when I swallowed half his brain drooled out that perhaps she was from some exotic elsewhere power. Ah, how can she not be my mother when she is my past? They say she molted from her husband's cocoon into her own pharaoh, first herself, then chromatically male, lady of all men, holy of forms. How they must have radiated ellipsis sunshine on the enigma cleromancers! I study, stutter before their beauty, unsure our weakening suns grant me her luxury of skin, whether I shall sashay on skulls in so much grace. They tell me too this Nefertiti had a younger sister who bore the next pharaoh: isn't this what you have come to tell me? Isn't this our inheritance, this incarnagetion? What language would we speak but this Egyptian, these tears?" "Your sister inherits the language of the Greeks and their violence." "Does she? You ought to have brought me my sister's tongue, so I could examine why it sounds so different from mine. Charmian, my friend, I trust you: hurt me." "They conspire to exile you to Syria, my queen." "Syria? Is that truly the furthest her books recall? What a waste were these millennia of wars if our maps extend so little. Perhaps they refuse Kush for fear I should flood their memories, and they should fear it, but how dare they refuse me the sands, I desert blossom, color of these climes. Am I not to die in alienation at last native? I, such... ah, Charmian, why must we not be a painted image, perpetual dance? Why all these discrete motions, emotions smoke of our pyres? My mother broke every inch of me not this place: I can leave here only broken." Gently she wavers towards me half jasper in the gem torchlace a twenty carat tear. She trembles. I [[catch->qcatch]] her [[collapse->qcollapse]].

Before her mural she stands, witness of how she is pieced together, so she might predict how again will she be torn to [[pieces->qcollapse]]. Created in honor of her return from the Luxor temples and tombs, her almonds cyanide resinous ardent against the viewer hazelnut mysteries. Harsh and wise, murderously pious, is how perhaps she felt she had to see herself. Does she still? How can she not not? Does she want anything of the gaze but its return? To where would she follow it? What is ready within her for this time to strike? Turns she to me venomous brimming, collapses she to her knees.

Romans, the world's jesters, thence why they slaughter and destroy, they have the cosmic humor, tell the most ridiculous joke, that opportunity makes the thief, as if thieving is an act in response to an object, a desire that finds a hole. To them the world of things and how much they cost, to each exchange the mockery of a transaction. Theft is in our innate. Within the very possibility of a being another lies the inescapable need to thieve. All life is built on theft, of sunlight, of others, of ourselves. Theft is an [[idolatry->qface2]] of differance. I stole the ruby of a [[goddess->qcleopatra3]] simply because, in order to accept the purpose of my life beneath her divinity, I had to steal it for myself. I serve her with every day given to me; I must drink from her anything I have to give to every day forced upon me. I am a perfect attendant, because I will never let her go.

//Queenlash// can be dense and confusing. To assist readers on their journey through the eliuma, some reference material is provided. Click [[here->qfrontcover]] to return. [[Plot Summary->qplotsummary]]: Explanations of what happens in each chapter. [[Character Summary->qcharactersummary]]: A list that details the relationships between all the major characters. [[FAQ->qfaq]]: Some responses to frequently asked questions. [[Primer->qprimer]]: A primer intended to help readers parse this kind of writing.

Here are some answers to frequently asked questions. Click [[here->qreference]] to return. ''Q. This is what you call a video game? It sucks!'' A. This is intended as a new form of book rather than as a video game. You cannot lose, and you certainly cannot win. There are no play conditions: you simply choose a path through a text. Interactive fiction is pretty recent in the grand scale of literary history, and //Queenlash// is an attempt to participate in the development of this new form of the interactive novel, or, as I vote to name it, "eliuma", from the Greek for "to enfold", a predecessor of the Latin "volumen", or volume (as in book). I believe "eliuma" will be better suited to describe this branch of literature than "interactive fiction" will be. As an eliuma, //Queenlash// is a way of reinvestigating the idea of the "passage", a linear progression through a text which the reader must choose from a totality that is impossible to transliterate to linearity. The value of this new form is the emergent idioprogradia combinatorics that this nonlinearity provides, in which the reader, rather than simply reading a story, traces thematic resonances as if traveling a leyline through a process of dowsing one's own enmeshment by selecting which branches to pursue. The reader becomes fragmented through the text, and their attempts to collate their shards is a direct participation in the soulshatter that an eliuma seeks to capture. If none of that makes any sense, that's because philosophy has melted my brain. ''Q. Your prose style is absolute nonsense, it's the complete manifestation of everything that is wrong with literature, it's purple prose taken to a parodic extreme. You're a pretentious scoundrel who has no idea how to tell a good story.'' A. Some day I intend to write a book about my beliefs regarding the aesthetics and spirituality of literature. That book will explain my viewpoint and why I consider my writing valid. In the interim, we will just have to agree to disagree. ''Q. Ahaha you're gonna write a little aesthetics thesis are you? Honestly that's so pathetic, you're such a little runt, I want to smash your brow in. It's genuinely so embarassing for you that you thought publishing this garbage was a good idea.'' A. I guess. ''Q. Your unintelligible garbage is a waste of time. You are a waste of time. You should not have been born.'' A. Life is how you choose and cannot choose to waste your time. You may choose whether or not to waste your time here, but for me, it was as if I could not not choose this. ''Q. You don't get it, your writing is like actually linguistically invalid, it's just a series of words randomly generated, it has no intrinsic meaning, it's literally just your puerile ego masquerading over a hot pile of nothing.'' A. //Queenlash// can be a little difficult to read, but I have never quite understood why the difficulty to immediately understand something on your first experience of it is such an anxiety for people these days. I, for one, have been deeply edified by all the books I have read which were difficult and which I can't say I came close to fully understanding. This book is intended for people like me who find meaning and fulfillment in persisting through ambiguities (using "negative capability", as Keats called it) to discover resonances buried beneath the surface of any specific denotative thought. However, I have included some reference material like a character list and plot summaries to help orient readers' journeys through the text. I hope that helps a bit with the difficulty. ''Q. That's a stupid answer. You're awful. You're a manipulative psychopath who gets off on abusing the reader by gaslighting them into loving you for being smart or whatever, when in reality you don't deserve love, nothing you have done has ever deserved love, you're a loser loner creep who needs to shut the hell up and go away.'' A. I'm sorry. ''Q. You are repulsive and full of sin.'' A. I am repulsive and full of sin. ''Q. This book is an immoral abomination, and all decent people have an ethical obligation to expunge every last stain of your degenerate filth.'' A. This eliuma is more amoral than immoral, in that it is not particularly concerned with making an ethical claim. It seeks instead to capture a fraught and generative network of tensions that I believe represents an important intersection between the world as I feel it and the world as I see it. The characters constituent of that network act in a number of ways that are intended to represent the functions of that network. To what extent any of their actions or beliefs might be judged as moral or immoral is, in a sense, beside the point, and more pointedly, for you to decide. ''Q. Your so called 'eliuma', which is a rat term invented by a rat mind, has so many problematic themes that I don't even know where to start. I don't know why a creep like you gets off by being edgy, but you need to slink back into the shadows that I hope will soon smother you. The fact that you are not ashamed of this poison you blurble all over innocent readers speaks volumes about how disgusting you are.'' A. Well, I am actually a bit ashamed, but I wanted to create a serious artwork that deals bravely and honestly with the themes present in and interpolated into the source material. I loathe facile, superficial sanitizations that lifelessly ensure that a reader is never made to feel uncomfortable in any way whatsoever. Art should have the capacity to be terrifying, to deal with a number of difficult subjects in unsettling ways. I refuse to infantilize the reader by constantly holding their hand and ensuring them that I'm "on their side" somehow. Although I will, from politeness, abstain from naming names, I have read books sourced from classical material that seemed overwhelmingly obsessed with ensuring that the characters with which a reader is intended to identify are mostly blameless vessels of pity and sympathy while all the things about a Bronze Age mythology that would rankle a modern reader are safely externalized on bad no good evil villains. I did not desire to create such a work. The fact is that, whatever Cleopatra can mean to us, whatever phantasmies we can carve out of the chaos at the ends of the Ptolemaic Dynasty and the Roman Republic, must be bracketed within a reckoning with the many uncomfortable themes inherent to it, like slavery, incest, power abuse, suicide, and mass murder. It is for you to decide whether this project accomplishes anything of sufficient value to excuse its existence. ''Q. Your book is so riddled with content warnings that it should be obvious that you are a monster festering in the worst places of human possibility.'' A. A variety of uncomfortable things occur within the text, but I feel like a book such as this one juts up against the peculiarities of a content warning system, in which a content warning could reasonably list an associative miasma of every negative experience, yet that doesn't really convey the experience of actually reading //Queenlash//, which for the most part is densely lyrical and philosophical, and whose imagery is as likely to be abstract as visceral, and yet when somebody opens up this eliuma to encounter a phalanx of warnings about all sorts of awful content, they will come away with a very different impression of the book than the one I think somebody who just clicked on it and read it would have, and what I'm afraid of is that these negative presuppositions will bleed into the text, people will encounter each passage from a position of having been primed to see it as a confrontational abomination of transgressive cruelties, and in some ways that exact negative projection is counterproductive to the entire pathos of the eliuma, which cares deeply about humanizing and contextualizing these women without shying away from their decadence of transgressive cruelties. I want to create meaningful art that addresses experiences in a serious way, but the process of trying to explain myself through content warnings makes me wish I had just written a thousand pretty descriptions of a sunset. Still, I refuse to sanitize humanity so that it can be safely commodified into some anodyne narrative that unwrites itself. ''Q. What a depraved gremlin you are, trying to make people pity you for being a criminal. You must own up to your crimes. You are repulsive and are guilty of what you've done and your attempts to redirect that to some puerile pityplay about your feelings is a classic abuser tactic. Like any cruel and disgusting cretin of your ilk, you can only empathize with yourself, and you refuse to own up to the seriousness and the sinfulness of what you have done.'' A. I'm sorry. I accept the guilt of this creation entirely and without recourse. I am sorry to you, reader, for any negative experience I have caused, I am guilty of causing it, my hubris and self delusion have convinced me that I was more than the negativity this book creates for you. I will answer for my crimes. ''Q. Your book is transphobic garbage.'' A. The themes of gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia that pervade the book reflect many things that I have personally felt. The formulations of those themes, and in particular the caustic catharsis of Octavian's rant, are not meant to be taken literally as expressions of some kind of "truth" of the characters (or of myself, for that matter), nor should they be read as univeralizing concepts which should be applied to anyone. They are rather artistic evocations of the way those feelings can be experienced. //Queenlash// is a possibility space which gravitates the flow of precepts to a specific axial orientation rather than some presumptive universal correspondence concomitance. ''Q. Your book is racist/orientalist garbage.'' A. The book does engage a bit with the cultural iconography of Cleopatra, particularly the tradition of Cleopatra in paintings. I hope this book responds to those traditions in ways that are thoughtful and humanizing. If not, then I accept your critiques. ''Q. Your book is fascist propaganda.'' A. It does examine some of the complex ideas around why the abstract aesthetics of monarchies are so strangely attractive to us, but I can't imagine someone in good faith believing that this book in any way argues that aristocratic power structures are good and healthy, let alone some kind of fascism. Well actually I can, I can imagine anyone doing anything in good faith, thus the terror of faith. ''Q. You're ludicrously ignorant, nothing of what you write is even close to historically accurate, and honestly the sheer disdain that you show towards your subject material is indicative of cultural appropriation.'' A. I respect historians and have done scholarly work of my own (don't take the rant against the reader's historical objections literally), but this eliuma isn't about making some substantiated claim about the historical Cleopatra but is rather about exploring the kinds of questions and tensions in the Cleopatra story that made it feel so real and fertile to me. As for cultural appropriation, I don't know who gets to have the perpetual copyright to a story as multicultural as Cleopatra's, especially given that those cultures are so unfathomably distant from their contemporary namesakes, but I hope this work evinces the reverence and care I put into bringing her world to life, even as a nightmarish nonliteral version of that world. ''Q. You sound so pompous and insufferable, I would love to watch someone repeatedly punch you in your sour little face.'' A. Please punch me free of jaw, how I long to be punched free of jaw. ''Q. Your little pamphlet is a screed against men. You are a misandrist. You are a hateful and spiteful goblin. You're a bigot.'' A. The book does minimize the historical importance of its men in order to make room for its narrators, but I don't think a bit of humor and skepticism about people like Caesar is undue. As for the characters' occasional negative remarks about men, well, sometimes the characters feel that way. As always, things characters say should not be taken as a representation of my own views. ''Q. Oh yes, always the things your so called 'characters' say, as if you didn't write their lines for them. That's a real neat excuse you've found for dodging the culpability of your cruelties. We can never blame you, is that it, you can do whatever you want, but no, it's these fictional figments of your imagination that are to blame?'' A. You can absolutely criticize me for the story, the characters, the themes, anything, but it takes a certain amount of engagement with the work as an interconnected whole. You can't rip out some random element and say that it is a literal expression of my beliefs. That's not how fiction works. ''Q. You are anti-Roman though, your bias for the Greeks is obvious.'' A. Greece is a shared cultural ancestor between the Egyptian elite and the Roman elite, so naturally many characters in the book have opinions on the ways in which a Mediterranean and Hellenistic culture is changing into a Latin culture. However, it's wrong to think of these cultures as necessarily opposed; Greek myths as rewritten by the Roman poet Ovid are a major influence on this book. Rather, the characters' attempts to articulate the cultural legacy of the Greeks remains bound up in questions of power and ethnic conflict. That is, when the characters argue about Greece, they're often using it as a platform to argue about other things. ''Q. You are a disgusting pervert, and your twisted incest fantasies are beyond gross.'' A. The circumstances of incest referenced in this book are historical. If anything, I have muted their importance. The Ptolemaic Dynasty, and other Hellenistic dynasties, regularly intermarried. Also, while it probably wasn't true that Octavian and Caesar engaged sexually, that was nevertheless a contemporary rumor promulgated (probably maliciously) by Mark Antony. The feelings and ideas I have depicted through Octavian made those rumors a useful narrative vessel for the themes I hoped to explore. If you were made uncomfortable by these references, I understand, and I apologize. ''Q. You have no right to write any of this, your book is a sin against the world, and no amount of apologizing can ever undo the damage you have done.'' A. I accept your hatred. I deserve it insofar as I deserve it. I have sought to make something of value out of myself, but if I have failed, if there is nothing in these passages worth the transgression of writing this book, then I submit to your judgment. I deserve no mercy, and I am prepared to meet the hells carved for me. ''Q. I honestly hope you die. You are a maggot.'' A. You don't really need to hope that I'll die, it's inevitable that I will.

"And what even is it they want? You look at them looking at you clearly disappointed as if they were, like, what were they expecting! It's infuriating, why shouldn't I boil my contradisappointment into sheer ire. It's like why not violence when that's how they. Berenice, it's, and that's the only reason I ever came close to [[forgiving->qforgiving]] her, is that I knew she felt exactly that like no one else could. She had it worse than me, because she knew the only reason I was raised alongside her, why I was with her in all the temples, was so that, whenever that inability to appear became too pronounced, it would become actual, I would be the body that didn't. That's why, oh Charmian, I never did resent the times she would see me with such pronounced disgust, I mean of course I did, I rankled the resentment for weeks, but why shouldn't I also come to her opinion, even to in the mirror see myself with that very same suspicion? No wonder Arsinoe sees me that way too, they all do, and it was only my tantrum insistence on naivety that made me see Arsinoe as anything other than the body that would, would, but eah, what's the point Charmian, this infinite digression of referents? If there's no actual body that finally arrives, then why the perpetual vigil? Or maybe thus the totality purpose of humankind, the awaiting for the final arrival, after which might we finally all with a sigh of relief disperse, recursion to base elementals to try again, perpetual anxiety machine of the cosmos..."

Wearied by wars won and lords lost Sinuhe sunk into the sandstone and wept to Osiris, before my soul is swallowed into your great unending and uncaused, bless me but briefly some once of what my sacred sweat has earned, let my final sighs witness my homeland in the missingness in which I belong to it. Two herons alighted upon his fademuted and carried great killer of men Sinuhe, duelist and devil and dutiful, to shores by his cataracts forgotten. Marveled at such a sign the priests who petitioned in terror and in rapture god of the glorious amputations Pharaoh Amenemhat, first and blessed of his name, who had had brought to him this man, this corpse, this pious compiler of corpses, Sinuhe whose enamel knuckles still gripped this life by its throat, but whose fangs had been torn upon veins too many, then said the pharaoh to this prodigal illustrious of his enemies: for every limb of mine you have lorn, I will grant you one measure to your tomb, so that at last may the pile of grievances be put to [[rest->qforgiving]]. Mothers, fathers, and orphans came in the thousands to testify the account, widows and widowers, soldiers and those who had been stripped of any other cause all came in the thousands to testify the majesty of this Sinuhe, sin you he, master of men as made, nullifier amplifier, anguish lucifier, until the clouds covered the deeds from the earth, and eruption rupture Osiris swallowed this electrum Sinuhe into his great unending and uncaused.

"One thing, my queen, we can simmer unified is how alienating is the style. Desired for how you appear contextualized, hegemonic expressions reproducing themselves across bodies, contagion presentating symptomal torsions of our expressively also. If you'll allow me to say it, netjeret." "Speak not to me of what I allow." "As is your wish. The worst thing about being the subject of consumption is how totally indifferent you remain to the attachment imputed between you and the objects you implicitly recognize as arbitrary but which are the necessary tethers that amalgamate your comprision and so you thirst the identification in them that will never truly arrive, and my uncle, he, wasn't he commanding me to identify myself in a domain that he could register as within his power? I cared for neither the cinnamon nor the saffron scarves, I would have been burdened with neither prior, but there is his, and it was, it was so overwhelming, the unstated reward, I love you, let me shower you in tokens of my affection, but only insofar as this saffron, this cinnamon, are the terms of my affection, as if it hadn't always been! As if that wasn't what it was like living in his house all those years, his smug contempt that he provided me a roof! And I have dignity, I am a daughter of House Ptahmos, a most blessed house which has frice times tendered the shadows of sun goddesses, and you contempt me my jewels! I never felt so happy as when I watched him die into the terms of my love. Justice never occurs, but we can fever it in delicious [[grudges->qforgiving]]."

"I remember, netjeret, once I was with my father and uncle at their stalls upon the docks upon a day when both registered the return of ships, and they got into it in the way men so often feel compelled, bantered whose haul would prove better, more illustrious, any word they drank off the urge; to my uncle, goods from Crete acquired at victorious prices; to my father, luxuries from Tuscany, prestigious in style. Their arguing grow more enchanted and ludicrous until they hit upon a lovely novelty, they decided the greater haul would be the one that most impressed me, and I have to tell you, my goddess, the purpose of my existence, I have never felt more humiliated, more empty, more meaningless, than I did then as they plied their appeals to me, to which goods I would submit and be counted. I sometimes cannot sleep at night, so clearly can I see my father's face, so clearly his face as almost no other memory affords me, mocking horror as I muttered my uncle's name. I did not cry then, because I will never cry, because it is not for one such as I to cry, but you, my perfect queen, my cause and grace, goddess of my whole soul, please, cry these tears for both of us, for me, who could not [[prevent->qforgiving]] yours."

"What's most frustrating, Charmian, is that I wanted not to force her to feel anything, I wanted simply to be open to her openness, we could float amorphous into anything mutually made of us, we had borderless potential, and instead it's merely this again, this inexorable hounding my every touch to trembling back, how could it have happened, how did I, did I mess it up, or? Because Berenice saw me only as she was forced to, how she clawed against my pressuring, I wanted Arsinoe to discover how she could see me that I never would see in myself, and yet she too sees me as a pressure, she too claws... I didn't need her to love me, I don't love myself, love is violence greater than hate, but I just, it's almost like I'm disappointed, that I was [[expecting->qexpecting]] something new from her, and instead it's..." "She is Berenice, not your dream of Arsinoe." "Is that it? It sounds almost cruel when you phrase it, I appreciate it, I nearly slipped into self pity there. Yes, perhaps it was merely that I yearned to murder Arsinoe also, and instead she's merely Berenice again. Perhaps this whole melee is a powerplay nullity, asserting myself queen against another doppelganger, and really I only loathe their shadows of myself, there is no Egypt but me, and I must learn to hate each one of myself, so I can slaughter us as the gods deem necessary." "You have to be willing to kill whatever Arsinoe appears of you." "Yes, you're right, of course you're right, and that's what I love so much about you, Charmian, is how effortless your wisdom is. I spent my entire youth desperately a scholar of Egyptian wisdoms, you attend temples only on holy ceremonies, yet so often I am in need of your advice, it's rather humiliating honestly, I would enviously drink your mashed carcass did I not love you exactly as you are." "I endeavor to make myself exactly as you love, netjeret." "Yes, ahaha, it sounds so cruel when you say it, you are my [[blade->qend3]], aren't you? Yes, sorry, I will wipe my tears."

Out of her voice dies the pathos, silted to unsaid. Transcendent serenity of buried ununearthable. Softens and hardens her mien. Whatever happens now will be accepted, loved, slaughtered. Simply accept the inevitable as inevitable and in the beautifying placidity simply forgive, give and forbid. Queen Cleopatra VII gleams [[strategems->qend3]] in a headdress halo radiant of mercies.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter IV: Arsinoe''] --- Aleatory shore, what waits before. In violet midi, indigo ornament, in descent majestic I, [[diadem->qdiadem1]] bobbing above my cascade curls, betwixt lacquer ebony Sekhmet statues. Atop an inverse pyramid plinth perches a Nefertem vase arises from which the waterlily. Along the wall crawls a russet chaise longue beneath a fresco of nude dancers long braided, moues feline. In the breeze papyrus the bows of these slaves, strange in me they trickle, sallow copse under a sickle moon blurs white the wider darkness, were the floor to fall would they hold still would hold me still. I am this place in its chaos [[disdevelops->qdisdevelops]], avatar iridescence sophisticatalepsy. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Elegantly gloved if not outside the gravity loved gestures the liminence elevation atrocitress of the etch architecture forth from an echt archway tunneling through tension passage normative to eche darkness strides Ganymedes, pillow crimson he holds on which rests the head of, ah, what was it, the name, never the matter, could kill so many more were it cute, but destabilizer they immanence so I blithe: "Is this the warrior of the [[north->qroman1]]?" "So it is, netjeret." "Ah, [[conqueror->qconqueror]] of capitols, the situation comes to a head; so much ruin to sate these creases and dribbles of stubble. The thousand ships this Agamemnon marshaled docks in my touch, Helen of the ploy, no, Iphigenia bloodscented on the banks of the Styx scythegrinned. Tell me, Ganymedes, this is the, the, ah, I seem to have forgotten..."

"Pompey, my queen." Ganymedes. "Ah, do say that again: the title, not that name." "My queen." "Oh, dulcet, warmth. I feel so... do you know, as I yawned into the morning heat, they brought me nineteen dresses, asked who I was this day? How was I supposed to answer! I don't know that I did, they must have chosen for me." "I'm happy for you, netjeret." "You know, I am too, for once? I actually felt it this morning, happiness, openendedness [[enclosure->qshen]]. I sobbed into a dish of kiwi, I think they called it, but for her, too, how she must have felt it... [[Berenice->qberenice4]] used to tell me she witnessed in her life a single sunrise oozing from Mother's wound, and I, when they asked me that, I, I felt like I was in her skin, not her in me, or, or that there was no more difference, I, I can't explain it..." "You need not." "Yes, yes, you're so right, I must –" "Your majesty, about the [[Roman->qroman1]]..." Pothinus. "What? Oh, yes, there's that, I suppose."

"This is the Pompey who orchestrated the traitor's [[invasion->qinvasion1]]?" I. "Yes, they restored your father's right to a client kingdom." "Your insolence grows dangerous, Ganymedes!" Pothinus. "You cannot speak of a pharaoh in this way. You would be executed on the spot were you not..." "Were I not," Ganymedes winks at me. Around embrace Ganymedes I roll reach [[clamber->qclamber]] up his back, dangling arms an amaranth scarf.

Sapphire third eye over gold filgree with candleflame diamonds they had offered me, and I laughed, refused, demanded blackthorn intertwisted scowling carmine bulbs, imperative they know their queen, then drooped against the bureau frowning back a sob, muttered mousy perhaps simply baroque pearls loose over ivory ajoure. The handmaidens led in [[Ganymedes->qdisdevelops]] who knelt next to me, sighed I upon his knee everything I didn't want us to have to go through the motions of saying.

"Your reverence, this is, this really is not proper for a queen," Pothinus. "You must, you are no longer the younger princess, you must please play the queen. These games, surely you understand, are beneath your dignity as –" "Explaining to you how I play the queen is beneath my dignity, Pothinus." "Yes ah, your majesty, of course, your majesty." I slip down to a croise devant, exaggerated arch, then peer into Pompey's [[vacants->qvacants]]. "Where might my [[dignity->qdignity]] be besides my beneath? When my father fled to Rome, he took Cleopatra with him, and I wondered, so many nights I wondered, why he did not take me too, until I realized, this proved a great comfort, that neither of my parents had known I existed, I crawled unnoticed from my mother's excesses, and excessive have I become, two in one. They must have made great Romans, those two, to return as a legion. How could so glum a head have gotten it into it to replace the vital fountain of Egypt dignified by millennia death? I wish she was here to see her savior, the father of her rule, so I could glean from her aghast what it felt like to have one. Neither to neither daughter nor sister to her but her she annulled can I finally be someone she cannot diminish isolate, our queen, am I not your queen?" "You are most nobly our queen, netjeret." Pothinus. "You are who you have always been, netjeret." Ganymedes. "Yes, I, have always been..."

Inside the second the pulse thrum jars, music assembles colossus emotive in how moments' corpses collide, songs emanate in the hollows cleft by harmony scraping disharmonies, abandoned in a cell drips the cellar dank a stale tune, awash in another touch more really you radiates just as much a tune, dust encyclicals of leyline arcs condemning wanderer thirsters to bask in the brutal possible, never the noise but the rush, the fear, the scream, riot choir my brutal and bizarre so I need never need more than alone, this home, whether it kills me or no, regret or relief are retrospective judgments drawn from the seething drone, this now, this regardless of how nor why nor every little lie I have slept inside, all the needing in chills needling in callous drawn out, out, into this grasp, these my seres miseres could choke any ignorance not to see a queen in the flourish assumption of stage to transluce invincibly cataclysm, can I not, not even without, without Cleopatra watching can I be, can be this, paralyzing stare locks no longer this placement, douse sight in my riptide draft tenuous upon the progression, can it really, outward into what awaits beyond my ken, proclaimed by my capacity the must assume in the maybe could upon any sign structure not these ghosts, the unnecessary kept in dust citadels on shelves too high to taste the clamor and create, incidence incantate I claimant insistence in the structure of reference in which subsistence and persistence both knot on the tongue oaths to bind us tremulous projections enundation, enamel spirals infinity of the surface, emanations elevated to planes beyond source. How could anything be beneath my dignity when my dignity is whatever of myself wrested from the ether to the violence muse? Why should I be wrong to be flippant when I am flippant, who could dare begrudge me a moment to pose cute, yes it's stupid, it's the same stupidity we froth as a heart attack takes us, that's why I need it, need to believe it me, so I can die alive. Cuteness as a self conscious for others amidst the butchery being, objectified innocence sealant of slaughter, whom can be cherished of vice. Crack in the clouds the thunder they expect as if gods exist to intercede, idols are the automatons we demand, they want to pray to me so I might be forced to listen to their endless wish and woe, might dignify their projections upon my imposing, cinematic occlusion of innate blankness, plasmatic surface on which the infrangible other dances, suggestive giantess to them the quill in which to sign their is mine inside my testament they tell, but precisely this is mine: my desire, my [[dramatics->qvacants]], I will cleave from their bones a pasts breakage satisfied, will suck from their blood a lush, proboscis squirm searching through the wherehouse for the biggest bloodsac to drink our anemia from, my ambrosia, and I shall be adored of the gore, will wear their skins to masquerade sins myself polychromatic polyvalence. Find me undignified, you wretch, I am sindignity, I have always been this, only I have never been able to be this, and in being this will I, I will, will I find out what I am to be and be.

Ptolemy, lifting his robes to mimic a run, stumbles down the steps. "Arsinoe, the [[Romans->qromans1]] are sending a boat ashore! They will be here any minute. Advise me. I am unsure about all this. I wonder if we have made a –" "Prepare Pompey to meet his lover. Show this new conqueror how Egypt honors its dead. Scrape out his eyes and replace them with dates. Fill his mouth with pitch, then drizzle molten gold to accent the absence tongue. Add a khepresh, so the next world will know we send them a king, and also what fills his head need not be seen naked." "But how can we be sure they won't revile us this present?" Ptolemy. "Maybe they will, so be it. Gifts exist for the joy of [[presentation->qpresentation]]." "You mean you're not sure? Then why, why did you, why suggest we [[kill->qkill1]] him in the first place?" "Because I needed to clear my head, and he seemed good [[practice->qpractice]]," I wink and tap his temple.

"Be [[serious->qterrified]], Arsinoe!" "Ptolemy, my love, this is the man who imposed the imposter upon us, who killed our sister, her husband, your predecessor. What else should we have done but welcome his arrival with open arms?"

Ptolemy flounces free of me. "But this, the Roman –" "The Roman! Who cares about Romans? Roman, Roman, Roman, you sound like the person they told me your father was. Is that who you are? Shall we embalm you, return you to your tomb? Abyssal stomach Rome, insatiable hungers rove they gravel ghouls slackjawed viscerastained feasting the world's grains, they slather here for our wheat and the corpses of those who swallowed our wheat before them. Roman will swallow Roman, then into Rome will their sordid tumble, plastered on a little more of the world's graying colors. Why they occupy the center of the world: we are all heavens above it tumbling inexorably to their foul zero. Any Romans which fly from their grave are demons whose lust outstrips the sucking, so they must be fattened on our dying to surfeit, sleep, roll back to Rome: thus this old Pompey, this new Caesar. Come, I will show you your [[Roman->qend4]]."

"Arsinoe, don't be like this, you said this wouldn't happen, that you wouldn't be like this. I turn to you for comfort, yet you inspire further fear!" "Yes, further fear, the fear that furthers you along in our love, our making. This is the promised land fertilized by the blood of the firstborn. I paint you in [[jaggeds->qend4]], I dream you aflame. Trust your terror where haunts your real. The fear this [[Roman->qromans1]] gives you, dross, mere nerves, unacquiesce of the earth, but the fear I kiss you flares our malice opus, substance selving, amputation of your branches to fall into your absolute, our origin, your originality. Keep this fear on your face forever, and I will learn to recognize you. We can grow to know one another, wherever we may become."

Ptolemy hesitates as I approach him, which causes me to hesitate, which unnerves him to feel compelled to approach, which hesitates me away, and there we stand waiting for. Ganymedes interrupts. Kneels before Ptolemy, presenting upon a burgundy pillow a faience bowl with his face and mine, Pharaoh and Queen. Ptolemy peers into its smoothly surreal, confused disjoinder of objective reality. "Arsinoe, this is..." "Do you love it, my love, our wedding gift to the Temple of Isis? I've arranged a ceremony tomorrow for us to present it next to the bowl of our mother and father, within the bowl of Berenice and Archelaus. We'll appear together in matching gold chainmail dresses hovering over vermeil basques, crowned with peridot upon nacre tiaras and a flow of ringlets. Ganymedes has it all planned, don't you, my [[shen->qshen]]?" "Your desire is destiny, netjeret." "Yes, destiny, what we shall drink of it! Dews are called upon us by our thirst for open skies. Can you taste it?" Into Ptolemy a kiss, we [[interrain->qromans1]].

"But we have to do something, Arsinoe, please, show me that you care, show me that you're with me on this, that you have a plan." "Of course I'm with you, Ptolemy, aren't we here together? Come, I'll show you our [[resolve->qresolve1]], how we [[resolve->qresolve2]]. Pothinus, you scarab, why are you still here? Go, attend to our guest!" "Your command moves through us, your majesty." Pothinus snaps at the slave who carries the head. Exeunt. "We don't, to dress the head, or whatever it is you're, you, ahh! The Roman is already rowing ashore, he may already be in the city, we haven't time for goldsmiths! What are you thinking? How can we –" Ptolemy. "Son of Amun Ra, you decide the hour. Our desires forge the links that count up Egypts, the Roman climbs causal contours to our radiating eternality. Why do you not sweep centuries before him to see if he can endure to a meeting so monumental? Wavebreaker pyramids will gauge how far this storm prophesies, let him consult pharaohs in our eons tongue. After lifetimes pool outcry echoes surging his dying voice to our apex dais let his faint there meet the head of his presumed rival, then dissipate summer violence on our sandstone palettes. Teach him, mighty Pharaoh, where he dares land, to drive him [[terrified->qterrified]] to his Roman lake."

Carried by some determination external and intrinsic to my will I statesly ascend the steps, flurry through the great hall to the portico overlooking the square, assume a seat hastened for me. Ptolemy alongside slouches. At the base of the promenade, Rome: armor pulses strides when not bathed blinding white in sea winks, armorclad nakedness, armor for the morde more, of the ever insular outcriers armor, white starry with gold armor over a carmine tunic, armor advancing, caligae counting the one, two, three, and four, twenty twenties all abreast in sync in stride, deepspawn antipathy to any glittering surface growling the march, the Latin, I remember it, the sound, not the sense, never the sense in such a siege. The market reached, a detachment; the husk mills in the buzz, the head crests towards us. Perhaps I shall claim this to him, how their heads just offer themselves unto us. Gold so deeply fortified the sun glowers coral dribbles down a barrel chestplate. Egress reciprocates jolt the needling yaw stretch to shift our distance to tone, under his shadow a swamp, pulled tar strings gawp the ooze of our then, jitter parallax auroral our decadent counternegates. If this is the me you need. The years of being told nothing, expectations less, malicious, the pallid miens when they carried me out wine pacified, the drenched crag cry of the tern when the worldbland refuses rains, steps' echoes in the mute shock of midnight, creeping anxiety when sat away from the door expecting, at any second, even now as the thought clatters, this second, seized, drill fingers skittering into the sides, palmed screech endless dry ice in the polar noon stagnant, the shush shimmer of a ceased dance, all those uselessly intricate curtsies between every possible rank and reason, swallowing a dry throat. Swallowing a dry throat. Who are you to... the horns, too many different horns blowing, does this... His look at me admits my alone, so I yawn my cavernous to howl but only so the silence. So much for our everythings. "Hail, Queen of Egypt!" To my thus called I cannot but bless him with what shall we share our sole smile, razor fangs parapets past my lower lip, grows slightly the wider as his pupils dilate wide enough to his jaw ajar as presented is he the head, then vanishes into its emptiness, ye of the blade shall glint greet me in [[kind->qstart5]].

Smoldering the gates, smoldering my soul. Languid in anguish tossed upon a chaise longue. Metal steps and swordthroat screams. Vault locked with Ganymedes and a phalanx, [[refusing->qrefusing]] to glance at the door where Berenice had, had [[kissed->qkissed]] me goodbye...

"I won't let you go, I can't, I absolutely will not! Berenice, you have to, you, please, listen to -" "Listen to my heart, precious sister, and hear the home where you will endure. This world is so fleeting, we are so eternal beyond its -" "No, no, don't say that, you can't -" "I must! Do you hear me? I absolutely unconditionally must. I am Queen Berenice IV, Queen of Egypt, Abattoir of Her Destiny, [[Bearer->qbearer]] of Victory, Barer of Defeat. To where I am called by Kebechet's song, my [[sah->qsah]] must goddess. Do you hear it, my love? Can you hear what I am going to become? My whole life have I waited for this immaculate moment, transposition to artifice, embalmed by artistics."

Indefinite metamysm. Dissociated entirely. She enters to where the she I suppose lays. Some akin to speech. Sun kin this reach she quivers my circulation, drowns me in it, gasping myself [[ajar->qbearer]].

Purified of the falsities of bodies, intangible and in truth, [[resumption->qdignity]] of source, unvitiated, vitreous, uninvitro, untroved, rainbow essence, unable to account for each component yet composed of them, loss of taste, touch, scent, sight, sound, analgesic dredge of anhedonic pressurized tethered, deledgerous to communion of primordial sin and perpetual grace, evulsive constructive of ambiguities irreducible, differential amplifier of devi, integrating factor of every, mistress of the consortium of stress fractures, immanence consort of tresses' raptures, unaddendable minus, mine us of bled ends' denude, slashers essence retrafficked of troves nocturne icy in my magics, molten massmiss, song of the sistrum sweetly funereal, couple with me my discrete unreal, completion of the feats of our scars, arise upon us stars, immortal sah.

"Arsinoe, my love, I'm here, I'm here, please, look at me!" "Berenice?" "No! No, no, look at me, look at me, I'm here, it's me, I've returned." Shocking back from hemotoxin saccharine Cleopatra rouge of maroon sliding a ruby ringed finger through my tresses. She bends looms occludes over me as if struck in the gut by my retreat. I can feel how tense her other fist is. "Where's, where's..." "It's, Arsinoe, it's been so long, you've grown so much, how beautiful you've become, my tan daylily, look at your hair, it's so long and lush and wavy, such a sleek onyx, ah, you, you look just like our mother does in the murals of her youth." "I, I..." "I know, I know, it's been so long since we've felt her presence, but she's here with us now again, our mother has returned to us, hasn't she, isn't she in me? Can't you feel how Mother animates me solar? You and I are the last of her daughters, we are the entirety of her goddess." "Last? Last? But what about -" "Hush, my beloved, you've been poisoned, you're sick and need to rest, but I will nurse you to health, I promise you, I will [[return->qdignity]] you to us. I love you, Arsinoe. Look at me: I love you, Arsinoe." "But where's Berenice? Where's Berenice!" I slash wild until she slides off; Charmian appears in her silhouette; a syringe; I am screaming until it seems my throat no longer responds.

Protection of his Horus falcon grasp, supreme sensation of involved forever for sever or verse. Swaddled in his bulwark. Reality brackish and swirling cascades into him, purls clean and clear from his soothing placids. Never to need, his certain presence in every glance. Why should I fear when he enfolds the absolute essence of fear? Let me [[march->qend4]] through him to me.

"But Arsinoe, the, the Romans, how they, our father -" "Our father submitted to Rome to sate his craven and selfish vitiations. He had no right. Vulture of our devil sister, he picked apart our bones upon the Roman altar, but we pray to a greater lineage, a truer line for blood to flow, Egypt eternal of evanescence, Egypt majestic of carnage. Don't you see this Pompey is their great conqueror, how meekly he begged our beneficence, how easily his neck surrendered his ideas? They are all as this disjunction of murder and meekness. We have no such sin in us, we are bold and beautiful of devastation. This next of theirs, this, eh, Ganymedes?" "Julius Caesar, my queen." "This Caesar is the same as the last, as same as the next. We have already bested a much greater foe, the one that guaranteed them our grains. Cleopatra is gone, and with her, their claim. We will prove it to them in blood." "I, but Arsinoe, the, their legions are already in the city!" "Are they? Excellent, then I can show them my contempt immediately. Come, my love, let us march to them their unreachables." [[Leading->qend4]] his hand as if leading my own, pressing his as if to assure myself of pulse.

"But how can you be so certain? How can we know our will will overwrite their might?" Ptolemy. "Who shall say it will? We are gods, not prophets, ours is to purify the cosmos to will, not count the signs. Whatever outcome occurs, it shall be ours as we deserve it. Shall we die, shall we die hand in hand, Pharaoh and Queen of Egypt, and shall we live, shall we reign hand in hand, Pharaoh and Queen of Egypt. Do you not see there is no difference? So why should we care what manifests of our eternally truthed? Bury your invested in your body in this act of being. Come, my love, I will show you the life and death we desire." Pulling him to a radiating embrace so that, were a painter here, they could capture the image of infinity. We [[follow->qend4]] our hearts.

Into the [[bowl->qpresentation]] of Berenice and Archelaus I peer to enfold. Do I look like her? When she was queen, how did she feel? How do I feel? What would she say if she could see me now? No, what are you talking about, she's in you right now, she, didn't you see her in the Nile, she came to you, she's in you, she is the reason you became queen, undeniably Berenice. Bear her being to [[victory->qvacants]]. You have assumed this role, her [[vessel->qvessel]], her intoxicating virulence pours through every cell stirring endurance. She is in every move you verace, enact like it.

When you click on a chapter, a plot summary will appear for that chapter. Click [[here->qreference]] to return. (link-reveal: "Background")[: The following events have occurred prior to the story but are frequently referenced during it. Egypt is a troubled kingdom. The Ptolemaic Dynasty, a Greek royal family which has ruled the country since the time of Alexander the Great, is collapsing under the weight of centuries of internecine dynastic conflicts. Hoping to restore order to the kingdom, Queen Cleopatra V subjects her children to a rigorous process of Egyptianization. The two oldest sisters, Berenice and Cleopatra VII (Cleopatra VI is a slightly murky historical figure; //Queenlash// refers to her as being a daughter of Cleopatra V that died in infancy), are traumatized by the process. The youngest sister, Arsinoe, is mostly ignored as a superfluous princess, and spends her time reading Greek books in the Library of Alexandria. Berenice struggles under the pressure and eventually murders Cleopatra V and appoints herself queen. Cleopatra VII and her father Ptolemy XII flee to Rome. While Cleopatra is in Rome, Berenice and Arsinoe bond. Cleopatra eventually marshals a Roman legion to retake Alexandria. A young Roman officer, Mark Antony, has an affair with Cleopatra during the campaign. Cleopatra is successful: she retakes Alexandria and executes Berenice. Egypt must now pay taxes to Rome but maintains its independence. Arsinoe is deeply embittered by this, but Cleopatra tries her best to befriend Arsinoe. Several years pass in relative quiet before the story begins.] (link-reveal: "Chapter I")[: Arsinoe. Arsinoe has traveled to the Nile. As she bathes in it, a specter of her dead sister Berenice appears, and Arsinoe has a vision of Berenice entering into her body. This causes her to reflect on her relationships with her two sisters: Arsinoe idolizes Berenice and loathes Cleopatra. Emboldened by the feeling that the spirit of Berenice is with her, Arsinoe decides to return to Alexandria and convince her brother, Ptolemy, to exile Cleopatra and make Arsinoe his queen.] (link-reveal: "Chapter II")[: Cleopatra. Cleopatra and Ptolemy watch the construction of a monument from a balcony. Cleopatra reminisces about her time with her sister Berenice: they were both subjected by their mother to rigorous training and scholarship so that they could be capable of becoming queens. Arsinoe's palanquin returns to Alexandria, but she does not return to the palace.] (link-reveal: "Chapter III")[: Arsinoe, Charmian. Because Arsinoe has retired to the Library of Alexandria, Cleopatra sends Charmian to demand that Arsinoe continues her procession to the palace. The demand is refused. Charmian, suspicious, uses a ritual to enter into Arsinoe's consciousness, and watches as she and Ptolemy conspire to overthrow Cleopatra. Charmian takes this news to Cleopatra, who is unsurprised. Charmian and Cleopatra hide in the palace.] (link-reveal:"Chapter IV")[: Arsinoe. Arsinoe is now queen. A Roman general, Pompey, is fleeing his victorious rival, Caesar. Pompey begs Egypt for safe harbor, but Arsinoe, who loathes the Romans, and Pompey specifically, has him beheaded. Caesar arrives, and Ptolemy frets that Caesar will find the gift of Pompey's head to be offensive, but Arsinoe demures and goes to meet him. The chapter ends with her defiantly facing Caesar.] (link-reveal:"Chapter V")[: Cleopatra. Cleopatra sneaks into Caesar's room where she convinces him to side with her against Arsinoe. Caesar, who is deeply offended by Pompey's inglorious death, is open to the idea.] (link-reveal:"Chapter VI")[: Arsinoe. Suffering from a bit of nerves, Arsinoe takes Ptolemy to the Tomb of Alexander. They argue. When Pothinus arrives with the news that Cleopatra has convinced Caesar of her cause, the argument intensifies. Cleopatra, flanked by Caesar, arrives, and Arsinoe and Cleopatra rage at each other. Caesar asserts Cleopatra's right to the throne, and Arsinoe storms off.] (link-reveal:"Chapter VII")[: Arsinoe, Cleopatra. A civil war erupts between Arsinoe and Cleopatra. Arsinoe initially seems victorious, but Cleopatra, who had followed Arsinoe and knew of her plans, manages to lead Caesar to his legion in the harbor. However, when she sees that the Romans will not be able to overcome Arsinoe's forces, she transcends into an empowered state, flies to the top of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, and uses it as a beam cannon to obliterate the Egyptian army. Yes, that is literally what happens. Arsinoe wanders the carnage and encounters Ptolemy. After a final argument, she kills him. Arsinoe and Ganymedes then flee to the Library of Alexandria and set it on fire, intending to die inside it. Cleopatra is reviving Ptolemy using the body of a young Egyptian captain when she hears of Arsinoe's suicide attempt. Cleopatra rushes into the burning library and manages to extract Arsinoe.] (link-reveal:"Chapter VIII")[: Charmian. In the aftermath of the civil war, Cleopatra chooses to sail to Rome with Caesar, where she intends to ceremonially murder Arsinoe, who is suffering from severe burns. Cleopatra decides that she will assist Caesar in his quest to consolidate power and become a Roman emperor.] (link-reveal:"Chapter IX")[: Octavia. Believing she is beset by a plague of rats, Octavia finds it increasingly difficult to engage socially. At a brunch hosted by Calpurnia, Octavia is brittle and frustrated with everyone, including her husband, Mark Antony. The news that Caesar is returning in a triumph, accompanied by Cleopatra, does not interest her.] (link-reveal:"Chapter X")[: Porcia. Porcia witnesses Caesar's triumph. During the subsequent Egyptian royal procession, she is intrigued by the figure of Arsinoe, who is lashed to a float of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Porcia convinces Calpurnia and Caesar to intercede in the parade to prevent Arsinoe from being ritually sacrificed by Cleopatra. After a drunken fugue of several days, she appears at Cicero's domus, where Cicero and Brutus, Porcia's husband, plot their political strategy against the triumphant Caesar, but Porcia evinces disdain for their process, electing instead to travel with Catullus to the Temple of Diana, where she enters the sanctum alone to meet the imprisoned Arsinoe. Arsinoe is testy but melancholy and finds herself opening up emotionally to the perceptive and introspective Porcia. Arsinoe leads Porcia into the temple crypt, where Ganymedes has been mummified, and challenges Porcia that she cannot reckon with the legacy Arsinoe represents. Porcia agrees but says that that unbreakable isolation is exactly what draws her to Arsinoe.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XI")[: Cleopatra. Cleopatra meets with the Roman elite. She is threatened by Brutus and Cicero. She finds Porcia annoying. She encounters Mark Antony and remembers the affair they had years ago. She is taken by Octavia to meet mythological sufferers. She tries to help Octavian but achieves a negative result. She receives a cool reception from Calpurnia. She has a tense discussion with Charmian. At the end of the day, she feels exhausted, contemplating the nature of her predicament, struggling to find the will to go on.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XII")[: Calpurnia. At a banquet, Calpurnia takes Octavia to visit with Caesar, but Caesar evinces discomfort and awkwardness, so the conversation dissolves. Calpurnia is incensed, bitterly reminiscing on how she feels her life has become broken and how she desperately wishes to help her niece avoid this fate. She then tries to talk with Octavian but is rebuffed. After leaving the banquet, she has a premonition of Caesar's death.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XIII")[: Cleopatra. Caesar plots to install his nephew and his son in law as the new members of the triumvirate, a key stepping stone to acquiring total power. Mark Antony flirts with Cleopatra and invites her to dinner. Cleopatra, despondent and lonely, agrees.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XIV")[: Charmian, Porcia. Charmian threatens Porcia and suggests that Porcia should stop visiting Arsinoe. Porcia ignores the threat and visits Arsinoe. Their friendship deepens and intensifies into a romance of dooms. Arsinoe rechristens Porcia to Chrysothemis, a Greek name, and they conspire to kill Caesar as a way of frustrating Cleopatra. Meanwhile, Charmian takes Cleopatra to visit Mark Antony, and the two initiate their own romance of dooms.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XV")[: Octavia. Octavia has locked herself in her room. Octavian comes to visit her but quickly breaks down lamenting their humiliation before Cleopatra and ultimately begs Octavia to kill them. Octavia reluctantly obliges. Calpurnia comes to visit her, so Octavia hides the body. Growing increasingly anxious, Octavia instances her body into a simulacrum so she can leave without Calpurnia knowing. She intends to find her husband.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XVI")[: Cleopatra, Octavia. Mark Antony and Cleopatra are together when Octavia appears. Octavia and Cleopatra fight; Octavia loses and flees. Mark Antony chases after her to console her but fails. At this decisive moment, Cleopatra proves the irrevocable inexorability of her and Antony's relationship by giving birth to twins who are already six years old. Antony, Cleopatra, and the two children spend time as a family.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XVII")[: Calpurnia, Chrysothemis. Calpurnia has a vision of Caesar dying, so she rushes to beg him not to proceed to the Senate, but he refuses to retreat from a ceremony intended to solidify his powers. Caesar is murdered. Calpurnia and Antony take the body and stage a public funeral, but Calpurnia decides to merge with Caesar's corpse and become a zombie queen, enslaving the masses and using them to kill Cicero. Meanwhile, Chrysothemis retreats to the Temple of Diana. Octavia encounters her along the way and confesses her love, but Chrysothemis, already committed to Arsinoe, rejects her. Chrysothemis and Arsinoe pledge their love, but an infuriated Cleopatra bursts into the temple, and, after an argument, kills Arsinoe. A griefstricken Chrysothemis returns to her house to find it besieged. Brutus, facing defeat, commits suicide. Chrysothemis accepts death and dies.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XVIII")[: Medea, Octavia. Totally alienated, Octavia wanders the city in distress. She slips into the sewers and finds Octavian's corpse, animated by the ratking and Medea. The ratking explains why the rats are haunting Octavia. Medea relates her life story. Octavia then merges with the corpse of Octavian to become Octaviana, and they emerge from the sewers irradiant.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XIX")[: Charmian, Cleopatra. Antony returns to Cleopatra to warn her of the dangerous situation developing in Rome, with an altered Calpurnia and Octaviana having gained control of the city. Cleopatra and Antony flee the city and return to Egypt. Charmian, entrusted with the protection of the children, attempts to flee to the Parthian Empire, but Octaviana catches her. After killing Alexander Helios, Octaviana has an unexpected moment of familial connection with Cleopatra Selene. Octaviana orders Charmian to take Cleopatra Selene to their villa in Ravenna where she will be raised as Octaviana's daughter.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XX")[: Octaviana. Octaviana is on a ship in the Nile chasing the fleeing Cleopatra and Antony. They watch Alexandria burn in the distance and reflect on what they hope will come from this violence.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XXI")[: Cleopatra. In a tomb in the Valley of the Queens, Cleopatra and Antony reflect on their situation and their romance. Cleopatra assists Antony in suicide, then commits suicide herself. As she dies, she can hear a hymn calling to her.] (link-reveal:"Chapter XXII")[: Zenobia. Three hundred years after the death of Cleopatra, Zenobia, Queen of Syria and a descendent of Cleopatra, performs a ritual in front of a statue of Cleopatra, asking for Cleopatra's spirit to enter into her body and assist in her war against Rome. Cleopatra enters into Zenobia's body, causing an epiphany about the nature of being in loss.]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter V: Cleopatra''] --- "Ask her her purpose," in Latin. "They ask your purpose," in Egyptian. "I purpose the Queen of Egypt," Latin from my Charmian. "This is a gift?" In Latin. "This is a gift in Egyptian." Armor clanks into the next room, out of the next room. "Bring in the gift but be quick and quiet: the triumvir is not in the mood for Egyptian gifts." "No, don't, no, you musn't!" Another voice. "Charmian! How did you –" Quickened not quieted steps. Pounded back into my body by the shakes. "Stop her! Don't let her –" "What's this?" Austere gray. "Sir, the Egyptians wish to give you this gift." "The Egyptian Queen sends me a carpet?" "You are given [[she->qcleopatra4]] who walks upon carpets," Charmian sings. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Break me into burdens none shall carry. Immesh me in stresses some hell ferries. Nile gravities these veins immersed. Induce me to feign fangs a purr, vanish me to wiles. Torsion to version of I in flowing black velvet bilaut with dark turquoise sequins in gibberish hieroglyphs below the waist. Strider of somewhere never to be location I abcess abbess mothering the stitches to unstitch, peeks through the what, he gawps the what, begin I to convulse, spasm back in my head my eyes until redpiercers stare. Weeping menstruation of all in vision never fertilized. His lack larynxes in puff bursts I blow to cloudettes over our vaulted. Thousand tensions could they crumble not glut the gasping through drool coppery, sewer sugar, dead oak splinters tang. Thousand thrusts above the earth dangling sprawled half dive rotating in a celestial pace in a too pale nearly translucent slip, sable locks loose veils my too minute to gauge expression cracking to twitch the whole face shatter seism sleeting shinesoaked lacy so the immersed may gaze confused at this blankness angel blotting the blazing behind metal and myrrh thunderclouds emblems of fatal serendipity orrery of inkblot orifices spilling. Inundated rosettes petal the oil oozing out from the darkness, sitting by the brook with my legs tucked left leaning into the relaxed reciprocate of a lunge over the twinkling reflective of where there's not enough light, but there's not enough light, some, maybe ghostly there it glowers in the lull slush flow, lowering my head underoil sinks sludge into the river, blaring the jet flood flares spume splash my boulder skull rapids encased crashing rapidly grip downwards into the pitch abyss, spasming my desperations on nodular overhangs, wounds sliced open in the pull along the coarse along the course swallowing filth as screams blast inwards to swell the lungs to burst, ripped in the strid semblance. Overturned into the gush wriggling helpless, I have felt this before. "How can you hold still when we are born the storm?" Scream into his ripped open ear. "I don't know, I don't know, ahh!" "You do know, you simply do not want to know." "I don't know, I, I can't -" "None of us can, don't you get it? Never receivers vault we hollowed, because we authentice the nothings, cannot be added to, only infinitely reduced endlessly, smaller and smaller nots to untie to being's gulfscar." "I have, so much that, I..." "I know, I know, shh." Against his lips pressing into the shape of a cross upon which can we crucify ontic embodiments of differential factors of biological emergence into an infinite intransigenerative reproductive ineluctably to woundpotential which underwrites our episteme rhymes natal to culturally transcript, transept injunction inclusion of parallels the procession to the altar elides, nave narrowed to the uncertainty of becoming both grand allure and existential terror that animates us to reliquary undeath, liminal violence of this dipolar pull between the intrahuman and the transhuman, postgradia paradise, singularity temple, cosmic period cessation possession unmaking of the unmode of naivety to verity, or should we rather simply to the swamped succumb, preserve your body in peat long after your soul shatters to pallor, dig us up and declare us sanctified undecaying, tear us apart to talismans, we are but your blessing, your experience of more included into you, mercurity matrix to signify in absolute erasure manifested essence illation, dilation to presence, here to augment your where, where is the swerve atomic, where can we compose orientation queer, by which points assembled intralinear, to which voice a vector, how to imbibe the austere to sterilized bride, our something as solely for itself, love depth of the erasure, purity beyond our imprisoned, transcendental exundation, there where we are loved beyond but not beyond. Thief of himself he is nailed to my figure. We simultaneous [[smile->qend5]]. Scythe metonym.

Uprush sway before the pulse, the rush to the touch lustrous, volcanic, phantasm titanic in a black velvet circlet, plum eyeshadow, sequins gold over seagreen fabric like a lush tide pool winking summer glitter, summon Caesar's navy curls these waves, dragon tongue bursts from its poppy grotto, spray washing gently its twirling form, sixteen feet in the air cloudette I in one silent, sapphire minute, bending heels over head to keep locked the gazes, our gated interwoven, our glowing intergoing. "What magic is this?" Caesar sputters. "How can you..." "I am the goddess of this beyond you, sunbeam scepter, sandstorm chariot, swaddled in silks." In the room everyone quivers, elongates eight inches, eight feet. Little flesh pops bubble off our bodies. In the room the Egyptians drip to oblivion; the Romans stagger, kneel, choke. Blade eyelashes tease his throat with punctures, on my eyeliner gagging as I bat lacerate his larynx, gurgle. He falls to his knees, but the floor does not stop him, he drops to my whisper. Sip him to reminisce a youth dyed in Roman wines. Coagulated forgottens silt impressions. I've missed so much right here arrayed according to and against my will. Holding together the disparate importunatures legislating destitutinies desperate to hear a harmony ensure convergence to an ordinating not random, ruthless, any together to hold. Why do we not paint our portraits in splatters asks the unconfirmed. Domination lines scar our globes, but nothing spills out our dismay. Kill me an aesthetic, anesthetized flux to be cherished from afar. "Share me your lungs, I need breathe what you sustain." "Who are you?" Framed by the guards I have posed slain. "Queen Cleopatra VII Philopater of Egypt, Goddess of the Nile." "Her doppelganger? What is this?" I try to reply, but the guards clatter back into the scene screaming. One of them has exactly my voice. They all have exactly my voice. Aghast behind me screams open a sarcophagus to my mother's scoured resemblance, I need not turn to know, she has been summoned by the sound of all this my terror. My [[terror->qend5]]. Am I terrified?

All built inside us beats in the deep drums. Daring to trail out to a guess windwet. Figurine so smashable inhabiting world tiny of suspended dance. Porcelain yes sets the vines designs in beauty along the fractures. Syllables gentle mantle the tongue's serracules to sentencing. Caesar sits, in armor despite the hour, at a table, scrolls inundated, scrying the flood for portents seeping into my soaked against into prise, serendibite hair in a wavy bob with a long fringe spills from a gold rain headdress, black razor eyeliner, caramel wrap aflutter from my gaze anvil. "I..." he stammers, yes, could devour his soul so defenseless. "Is before you Cleopatra, wrongful Queen of Egypt, mesmire voluptuate of gloom lush nadirifires scintillates in the grinding ashen, murky incandescencer fiend design, whose appall you blanche, whose bled sere sybarite of senseless slaughter I lavish as oils to perfume my xenocide enthronement, devil in your basis inescapable, cudgel bejeweler, desecrate luxuriate lens, emplace, reciprocate place me, lace of my reverse. Swelter unto my domain your march hence, haven't you always known by the mass graves?" "I, I don't understand, who, guards, who is this?" I glare at who might presume to answer for me, which melts their tongues inside their throats, searing suppression sprawled sizzling speech ghosts. I paint honey screens on Caesar's glances. "Why has death not fulfilled you?" "What?" "Whom have you come to kill?" "I, you, after the beheading, you dare! Have you come to insult me? Has the Egyptian queen come to gloat? You, but you, you're not her!" "I am her, she is who is not me." "She, I..." His hesitancy begins to annoy, so I rip it out of his chest, my dagger nails clawing, toying, petting, teasing, stoke in strokes the vigor. "She, you, whoever, she killed Pompey, that barbarian, you mongrel! What right had she to that history? His death belonged to me, he and I were, our campaigns built up to, but she robbed me, that wretch, that wraith! Queen of ancient ashes, no wonder she thrilled to see fresh blood. They thought they would please me, idiots, savages, by beheading Pompey. Pleased! I am pleased only when I look upon masses and see pressed my sigil." "Dispossession into our all unites our isolates, don't you feel me here?" "Pompey, I, to have lost the chance to see my reflection in his blood! What filth did their peers sully in that precious wine? In each battle we kissed across corpses, in intrigues we whispered, now I cannot hear his ecstasy, his final panting plaints, the moan of his soul eruptive! All there is is this pressing in, in! How, striding amidst the dead, I yearned to hold him, behead him, taste each sweatdrop to gauge how quickly so a fierce spirit goes, but they robbed me of the power more pure than any province, jewel beyond wealth, the moment that would have made me Rome, what he would never admit me. Why do these barbarians think I chased him here? I, who wander the world a conqueror, why did I chase his geodesics, patterns of a disappearing into me? I allow the petty their caves, but the magnificent must resplend upon the altar, I demand it, I demanded it, until they, they stole, this dream, this denial of my daylight, now that he has been denied my seal, I feel him in my temples, he usurps up my nape, scuttles my hull, my pall, my, his..." "She insults you deliberately, this shall you call her a queen, my doppeldoppelganger entrances you into this spell, but you must shake free from her fugue, see beyond the stains of her null extravagance. She wants you in her mists, she wins when your heartbeats skip to her tempo." "Who are you, you wretch, to speak to me so? No mist is this sister of yours, mere puddle to such as I." "A puddle drowns your poem? How shallow must be your lines." "My poem! I write histories." "Egyptians are histories written, dwell in shadows deeper than your season under the sun." "Oh? Look at all this wasted paper, from your mills mind you. Governors obsequious to the scraps of my attention, senators slobbering titles on me, my enemies threatening inspiration for my next works, my allies conspiring, my friends denouncing me with sycophant praise, even the gods themselves petition me here. All the glory that exists piles up before me, but you, refugee, zombie queen, are a prisoner in carpets whom my pleasure adheres to your prostrated plea. Kiss my munificence, and I'll consider the request." "Your munificence? You come to gawp at our riches, to admire at spearpoint mysteries older than your impulse to quake before their haunting totality, statues that never needed your birth to augment their domain. Pity you, proud conqueror, cowardly in your chamber, simmering at the sort of slight you would have slain a Roman for, but you dare not me." "Dare you to what contest? Your words congeal at my feet to be washed clean by slaves." "I contest you. No more Caesar are you than this Pompey was who you insist." "Recant, slave." "I spit upon your soul to bless you your sole greatness." Martial flare of one used to seeing swords drawn for him thrusts his blade into my neck from which wound froths small palms which pull the blade deeper, deeper, my grin wider, whiter, freeflow from my mouth mercury. Terrified he tries to yank away but his whole body is drawn into my whirlwound. "Yes, unleash your fury, your confusion, every spite spasm, let me know you as I know myself, let us kiss inside our corpses." Seventy eight teeth file his knees, grated shin splinters gouge up into my ear canals, his kicks yaw my jaw agape, we crash asunder one [[face->qend5]].

With delicate clumsiness I tumble to a slight ruffle in a white ruffle dress, my coiffed hair lithely unperfected, as I glance about, first surprise, second a pout, third a butterfly flutter, fourth calculatedly delicately flirtatious. "And what is this?" Caesar relaxes his grin wryly distant from my just crumpled enough at his feet. "I am Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt," I make sure to stammer. "Are you? Surely the years have not been so cruel to Egypt, that this is exile?" "No, I roam where I will, as I do." "Is that so? You speak the Latin tongue well for an Egyptian." "I should speak it as well as you, since we both learned it from Rome." "One Egyptian speaks to me in Greek, the other in Latin. Troubled land." "We try to keep up with the world's fashions." "I see," exchanges laughs with the others. "And what brings this Queen of Egypt to me?" "Haven't you come to me? Oh, I'm sorry, yes, I'm getting too far ahead. I come to bring you a gift, I assure you, immensely pleasing." "What could a queen give to replace what I have lost?" "I know how the masses thirst the fevers of a dreamer. I know how your arrivistes mutter. We're not so different, you and I, and where we are, perhaps we can combine those to strength, gritted teeth grins. In a dozen strengths could we dalliance; for instance, I could sail you on the jeweled passage to India." "India!" "Are you surprised? How can you stand before us yet see so little? Egypt is a land of grain, yes, gold, yes, and secrets, dreamy decadence to sigh nights. Why not feast, glitter, glimpse? You snatch a few bales to feed your sailors from the earth's primordial trove: how can you be so base? Are you not who you have been prophesied, the first Roman to discover the imagination, where it leads, where it reveals?" "So you have heard of my imagination. Inspire me." I draw a lapis lazuli lust that dims the room marine. Tension of airless stares. "Am I not the sparkle of your imagination?" "Perhaps you are. Egypt truly is a land of secrets." "Egypt is a land of me and me alone. Who could ever exile me from it?" Shrug grins he the invited hither motion but the moment we touch the edges on everything melt maelstrom, his screams blast apart shattering lungs. Attempting to control, consume, consume, no, don't consume, control, focus, insert, self... throw the synapses in a flush, soar dizzy, to settle the floor for the marionette, jittery, jerked. Spitfire tongue slash everyone's eyeballs, swallow them all at once. Maybe this is what Arsinoe knows about me, success, her jackal mask seeks to suck my soul as it bleeds from whoever this is, why wouldn't she, humans are slathering after whichever other selfishnesses a selfhood breeds, worthless, fractious, filthy, in the sun stale. Why can't I not know. If beauty in intention exists, and it does, if, and never will it exist, then if it does, then it exists only in failure, because only failure braises one attuned to the jolt rhythms ruins which blush saturate the agony chiseled inscriptions on our weathered blank, bizarre. Suffocation sentience, sentence smotherers, tense in the wrong tense, structures that compose the myriads that alienate breakviral. I snap my crunched spine, they all fade, flash drain deradiance cascades ablution annihilation swift, total, lovewrack. Dream dusk cream and unending where gods howl. Where is the want that warps the waiting a pulse, squirming, squirting seethe of limp minutes, suggestions of victory rolling up the sky so the stars that guide us can be shoved somewhere on the back of a shelf. What we need: presence abstractly ours, collected dissecteds. Feast these organs, craven, take what there is for your hounding. When you lope tonguedragging in hackling packs on some charcoal moor, I hope you trip and break your neck, not because I hate you, but because then can we huddle, gasping, in final recognition. What's the purpose of any of this, if not to [[fail->qend5]]?

Meant to be more than the wanting is how I found myself wanting so much from the wrested is how I stand before him clad in a cloudy palla. Father taught me how to stand before a Roman: a rotating lean that seems somehow stiff. Wolves will they pounce upon your postures' misgrammar. I stride towards Caesar as side by side with Father we used to pass under xystus shade towards dead dreams of home, how menacingly resigned we passed under ivory shafts basilica shade from the scoured steel blueburn, how we bore their paces past ensnares, how he once held me bittersweetly to say, ah, my nightshade, you have your mother's eyes, the way they always saw a minute ahead. "You have a royal bearing. Perhaps you are the queen exiled?" Caesar. "Do I seem to you an exile?" "You seem to me many things." "I am everything, I am Egypt as it entires the lives of thousands of thousands over thousands and thousands of years. In my voice you tremble the song unbroken." "Are you also then Queen Arsinoe? She seems to differ." "She differs as I differ, she exiles my estrangements. You speak to her as you speak to the shadows with which I kiss the land." "She seems to exile nothing, if you are here." "I am nothing, I am Egypt as it hollows us to fragments. In her voice I weep our song unspoken." "Have you come to bore me with riddles?" "Yes, I intend to bore into you this riddle: why does a severed head speak so much to you?" "You've come to taunt me?" "You chased this Pompey through so many lands you did not understand, and when they gave him a tongue you could not understand, you held him at last, and felt how far you were from home." "You shall not speak to me of Pompey!" "Did I not speak Pompey to you in the way you yearned to be spoken to for so many nights?" "It was your decision then? Have you come to confess? I will -" "Nothing will ever happen but separations and stars! You meet me their vertex. Of the twain we tremble -" "I'll have you killed! I will return the queen her favor with your head!" "Respite swallows our soluted -" "Shut up, I command your silence!" "Guillotine crown I laurel your conquerors -" "You wretch!" He severs my head which floats and morphs to Pompey's until placed is it upon his shoulders until in the writhing he rips it off and it rolls upon my nape gash but is refused, electric conduit jolts us into unison kissing through gaps, antagonist metastasized molts free of form the fiend fever volt veda, we collapse into agony. My father lurks in the corner phantom as if to ask where are we, where are we, where am I, where is his khet, what is this [[pain->qend5]] that has become us?

Relinquish the visage and vie, aspect shorn sheerness denial sage of the brume in the lake luminous lolling along wavetip shivers ulcerous veinwebbing tapestries to supply eternally a crawling atop me scythe authenticity, culling becoming, ravenous grimace over waxclumps gibbous plunking self oozes on nervous lash quivers impastos of carnage raw roaring why in the wilder need denied, denifier placed, to this faceless in this frame denied by this spear's rupture, clatter here clavicle bare before the beast aprowl, strapless maxi marigold on black pearl and plum, sieve canter bulging up the syllables in smoke coils, erstwhile thus. Polish gleams sud my diamond pass. Caesar turns. My spine whipcurls from the skin in a viscous splash, then seals in again. I speak to him adrift to my cherished darkness. "Is this Caesar?" "I believe that's a map," he grins to his – Blanches the room my roil, seeps earthier. Hovers in my palm the folded in a helm map slowly revolving. Someone, far away, but somehow we all still feel it, suffocates. "Is that all you are?" "Why do you ask?" Neutrality conceals the nerves, the violence that suppresses the nerves. "I was taught once to savor the wise questions." "And who taught you such a thing?" "My father, Pharaoh of the Living and the Dead, who showed me how blood dries, builds, how wounds never, how to fear Romans." "You are afraid of me?" "I am afraid of everyone, because I anticipate everything." "That must be exhausting." "You would know. Besieger to stem erasure upon the rims of the earth, declare your name to star so your nights will bear witness to what still shudders and awaits as what awaits encroaches. Accumulater of era momenta ejecta to compel your compass beyond the limits borne in your ligaments under your sculpture drenched in sweat, alas anxiety endearing, desperate, weren't you, to peer into Pompey, glean your own fate when finally you will gaze upon what never you can contain?" "What does it matter to you?" "Matter and mean are two different things, so our bodies teach, and what does this touch teach?" "You are Cleopatra, the rebel queen?" "Rightful queen, yes, is this who she could be, hidden here? As we speak a slave races to the throne an alarm that Cleopatra is with Caesar. Look inside yourself. Isn't she in there?" Butterfly touch on a chest valiant against the sags of age, strange that white flesh can burn, how beautiful would it be should he feel snowy? "Where imagine is your you shall mirror? Massacre as many as sates, delicious cries compose your pose atop the slaughter, but no matter how close gleams the elusive in the fray and dismember, never mind how far you march, death and your drive shall never correspond. You cannot inhabit any interposed exteriority: you are incidence imprisoned, vistas taunt your excluded, emergence magnificence of your non luring you to imbue inject conflict into yours, but never to the taste, don't you feel the draining along your tongue? Hell's conqueror gains misery's grandest scale, suffering you signify as shadow of its abjected from. You are not so stupid as the corpsemad lechers of dead empires, surely you aren't, don't you don't want this world against which, in which, for which, inscribed you war? What good further fountains of our bleak pitch deluge? Any position you assume upon the crag amounts more curses and less you is the deserves it maligned, as the more that know you, the viler the secrets imputed to your signet, the vast creaking mass of baskers and slatherers are incapable of hating themselves so instead they hate whatever apparitions haunt the bogs at midnight as they suffer the constant, constant, constant, any encounter they have with your disinjunct wounds their inadequate to explain, contact tears our trussed, pains sanctify how they accursed your externalized you a desire overrun with nothing you inspire, composite of others' smothereds to contain how your actions fail to express your inhabitance. Because we are all innately passively cruel, we will believe absolutely anything about anyone, so long as it is negative. Virtues miracle to our disbelief, intervention of some other substance worked through us counters with the absolute natural of us, squirmers teeming from under and inside our trunks, so if one, twenty, a million multiply beneath your shadow sins, what could be more natural? No immunity against hatred exists: how could you be immune to your own humanity? You experience your consciousness in its fraught, its promise, its chance, but your aftermath buries its intricacies under your inevitably carnage. Nothing about you matters but the hatreds you sustenance, because the rest dies with you. We bury everything deep down but our bitternesses which tumult us to surface. Encountered, your causal horizon dissipates into an overcasted, actor judged by how best they manifest their being before an audience an expected otherness. You and I, dalliances of loathings, exhibit of ourselves nothing but the demands they inflict upon us. I imagine you fancy yourself some besieger of immortal citadels, you locust plague, but isn't your Pompey beheaded like a common thief, and wasn't he, is that not your whole enterprise you and he each stole from each other in your mirror ire? When they kill you, and they will, physically and spiritually in the same act, your deeds will wilt instantaneously, malice to dust swept away. In your murder will they you the same as them, and all the delicate inlays in which you slouch subjective will be blotted beneath the inscriptions severe and alien as history written. You will be Caesar, not who stands here thus, but exactly the reflection you saw simmer in the glare of Princess Arsinoe, no salvation from the gaze, nor should you wish it, because you deserve to burn inside others. There is no Caesar worth saving, because their calling out to you composes the word you you. Chasing sunrises over lands you ruin, spilling blood you don't understand, what a worthless thing this Caesar is, how quickly should his actions rust to their true nature, but caught in this deluge sleets your humanity, your absolute and repulsive liecoursing: should you not wish to preserve this over your principally? They make you a monster, some effigy to be bloated up with all their wretcharia: externalized to be purified, their names sealed inside yours, a monster that must be and will be abjured to tropes liminalities ablative, but that gaussian hatred is the death of the anhedonia hatred you deserve, beneath this touch lies the sins that selve, your voice, this heat, our touch, seethes the structure, the truncation translation, the source into the stage. Why do you do the execrable things for which you are known, but why, how can you not do more? Isn't this the tragedy: hated as we should be for all the wrong reasons? Because then we never reckon with the causes, each other, now we construe nothing from our catastrophe imminent, innate, ever unfolding, nor can we love, gardencrawlers slunk half rusted on the wreckscudded sear mewling miasmas arranges us the chance for love fetid, litter angels of mummified surgescepters split in the clash echoes of themselves empty for the other nonfulfilling resound to the songs lips lyre in honeyed hemlock viscous capillary silks coating the juicedrunk serpent. Desire, purely impure, geysers from the fault. Humanity deserves annihilation, in the gap love crave we the justices absences embody, but from you is this stolen, for whom should they hate, if not you here, where will you lie in wait for love's hemotoxins, don't you quiver with me sin's bliss in this caress?" "I, I don't know what I..." "Exactly," as we kiss, briefly, like petals [[torn->qend5]].

Bobbing to the pace, the pulse, the expulse of [[tenser->qtenser]] and cancer, [[metastasis->qmetastasis]] we circumstance these poised to mural, myth endural of our writ within this contain, formed from its frame she stalks long sighs through blackness both sides of my blinks, phantom of the scene sign, perhaps will she lead me to whoever currents her role, can I hold her unrolled there, scroll of who she was firstly even to me, though in the balcony night sipping [[crushed->qcrushed]] ice asked she whether I regretted what I had said to our mother, and I said, I do not regret what is wrong but what is right, because the right prevents us our [[authentic->qauthentic]] tensions, forever to false smiles arraigned, holding hands we swore to abstain forever from what is right, remain. Is this the right way? Rounded halls elapse to muddles, wondering, is this the palace I fled? Skewed from my [[memories->qmemories1]] map, distortion nausea, sweating azure, slime globulating in my sinuses, focusing my consciousness out to a cyan orb pulsing sinuous silk thread quivers across the unshapeably [[negated->qnegated]] the ways touching blindly to suss the shape, truss focal lens us our antipodals, trellis the creeping feeling, [[edifice->qedifice]] we can burn when its artifice outspeaks us, and there will be an after we have spoken out, won't there, won't there please, after all these, and, and of course after all those years I tried to do right by my sister, my own, myself outlayered where I cannot reach by candlelight so harsh does the quell crush, mashed knees in bone archipelagos my crawl sails as I [[slobber->qslobber]] my relate, our murk, our swaying upon a precipice half passionate and all [[possessed->qpossessed]]. Pressurized tears shoot thin gashes. We are made sufficiently self reliant to loathe all the humiliations that bind us. [[Exile->qexile]] is where the heart is. Piled up from snapped tendons and [[razor->qrazor]] edges I will [[mistress->qmistress]] these bile spires our foreign created. Bring me to what breaks me.

Isn't death more preferable than any aesthetic you can crush your soul to sprinkle? Like who should I rather be than dead? Why humiliate yourself to truth when you can simply silence be? Burial shroud pall and pallid cloth I entomb myself in Caesar's deliciously unnerved, lime juice sweat I lick to transfix into my quicklime slurry his quickened to lying before me, I perhaps atop him in our mass grave. He delightfully pathetically tries to claw his way free, so I shush him ghostly, whisper slowly his pulse to still, treasure the fleeting color fading. We can both be whatever we wish so long as we never need to be. This time I allow him to flick out of the death embrace, if only because the emotion is over. He says all sorts of awful uninteresting things to which I reply: "But why should we argue? Isn't conflict the curse of being alive? Argue your point to a mountain; I am Egypt, I hear as the mountain hears. You will hear in the cold breeze my beliefs." "My sword is your silence. There are thousands of shades of silence, and I prefer mine more than yours, so I will bleed you dulled to my hue." "Yes, oh, that sounds rather lovely, do bleed me dulled." "You beg an audience with me to insult my power?" "You have begged an audience with me by sailing here. As for power, well, it's impolite to discuss." "I'm not going to be toyed with. If you don't recant, I'll -" "You are a toy, this is a game, none of it is real but how I feel it can't quite be." "I'll, I'll strike you down! Recant. On your knees." "No, no, I've a headache, sorry. In fact, I think I might be dead, do you have an electrocardiogram? My voice has hit monotone, makes me wonder what else has flatlined." He lunges at me with rather impeccable form, honestly I didn't expect a general to know how to fight, but I kiss the blade, slices through my lips to become contiguous with my tongue. He tries to yank it out, so I let him, he writhes with the slimy ululator. Blessed sarcophagus, to simply rot beneath a painted [[veil->qend5]].

In a hyaloclastite mantua with a long coral train I emerge as my smile scissors his tendons and the wallpaper of the world begins to fray. I lean over him until my syringe circlet falls into his gnashing. "Your brain is being manipulated, and it's the only thing you love," I whisper into his twitching and retching, over his who are yous I continue: "No one cares who you are, you are alone, you are pointless, but this stimulus will give you a color. Go ahead, experience it, tell me what you see." "Oh my gods! It hurts, eahh, it hurts, oh gods! Please stop! You're, you're torturing, gods, guards, stop her, please, anyone, eahh, ahh, ehahaa!" "You're not telling me what color you see. What color do you see?" "Everything, everything's red, it's -" "Wrong!" Glitchy jagged sparks between us subdue the space to seisms, scars in which starshine projections. "You're not paying any attention to it. You need to focus. What color do you see?" "It's blue, or, or orange, or, I don't know, I don't know what color is, it is, what color is it it is I don't know." "Exactly, do you see why you belong as part of our patterns? You can't even see colors. You have faulty perception which must be whipped out of your isolation nausea. What is the relationship between an orthoschematic simplex and convex polytopes?" "I, it hurts so bad, I can't, please, I, I, ah, ahh, I can't breathe, please, stop, stop, please just a second, I can't, I can't -" "There is a character called A who is good and you love them. Would you like to see A have sex?" Caesar vomits. "There is a character called B who used to know A a long time ago. They have not met in years. B is very important and has a talent but is not nice. B is abusive to their subordinates. B loves to hurt people. B can fix any ceramic in the world. You bring a broken ceramic into their laboratory, they instantly know how to fix it, they use all the world's most expensive machines to fix it. The ceramic is fixed. You could never fix a ceramic, could you?" Caesar can't stand up or sit up or reply. "You could never fix a ceramic. Ceramics aren't even things you fix, it's absolutely nonsensical to talk about fixing a ceramic, it's just a verb to a noun for no reason. What is the gradient of a barrier function? What is a barrier function? What is a gradient? Why don't you just lie there? If you lie there, people are going to starve. You have to work in order not to be a parasite. You could not sew the clothes you wear. You're a parasite. I'm going to slurpblurb your blended metatarsals like chunky jelly." "Oh my god, oh my god, where am I, what's happening?" "If you just hustle, you will be worthwhile. You can hustle by following the lives of others that are better than yours. If you learn the nine thousand seven hundred and seventy nine lessons written into their skins, then the centipedes will stop nesting in your pillow and crawling into your ears at night to hunt your neurons. Chanting their names as a mantra is the only way to stop the drill that is going to enter you, you will enjoy it sexually, the drill. A will be there with B and they will sixty nine while the drill enters your body. There is a character C who knows the hidden truth: you can self induce a migraine by eyeswallowing a lightbulb. This is better for your body than going to a gym, because it burns out all your electrolytes with natural electrical lights. Why would you pay money to access a building and the objects inside of it? That's what a job is. Why would you pay to have a job? Jobs pay you. Don't you know that? What color is a job?" "A job is, eah, ahh!" "The color of the blowjob that A gives B is a dark gritty brown like coffee grounds. There is a character named D who dies. Would you like to know who killed D?" "Yes, yeahrg, eah, just, please stop, yes, who, who killed D?" "There is a character E who killed D. E is exactly like you in every way except that they are not you and never will be you and you will never go outside again and the vast majority of people who will ever know your name have now forgotten it. There is a character B who is good at everything but is bad and because of this you love them more than you love A. A will never make you feel anything like what B does. There is a character F who is bad and stupid and does the thing you do not like." "I hate F, I hate F, eah, I can't breathe, please, please help, I..." "A cardiac arrest is caused by ventricular fibrillation, an arrhythmia of the ventricles, that is, they spasm out of sync with the heart's palpitations, causing blood to be improperly pumped from the atrium, which starves the organs of blood, including the heart itself. The brain begins to shut down, the lungs no longer fill up with oxygen, an entire cascade of disastrous processes begin within minutes. If there is not an immediate intervention to return the heart to normal function, death is almost certain. Have you ever tried cassava?" "No, no..." "Traders from the south often bring us cassava, it's a staple of their diet. What's strange though is that it's actually soaked through with cyanide, if you eat them raw regularly you become subject to all sorts of strange maladies, including tumors that balloon the neck. You have to soak them in water for days, letting the poisons evaporate, before it becomes safe to eat. Can you imagine what it must be like, every day eating this substance that tried to kill you, that you had to drown into subservience, what that must do to someone psychologically? I have had cassava, it's good, but it seems like such a strange thing knowing that it might be killing you slowly, that each bite might be rife with residual toxins, like the ones I've injected you with. One of the things C hypothesized was a way to blend cassava so that you could eat it raw and have its poisons evaporate in your mouth, feeling the smoke leave your body like [[death->qend5]]."

The only thing I want out of life is a closed casket funeral. We have to be so much alive, can't we then rest? Primrose floating upon the night ocean asymmetric pleated dress I twist his tilted world to elegance in a wide wrist sweep to present my palm to his devoted kiss, grasp up to stroke his stubble until beneath his chin my fingers in a frozen snap tense, tense, flutter teased back to toss over my shoulder my hair. Icy dispassionate glance engenders his own smooth reserve; we soak in intermixed reserves. How so much I've had to wring out I luxuriate his as rain. He asks of me my name, and I grant unto him some plush of it. He asks of me my purpose, so I bare my canines to purr. Like I could slake of his clear I stray wintry to wonder the walls do not close upon us. Urn ultraviolets cascade around us halos as I hover a pellucid could pounce that I ripple relent to the darkness stippled with purples. Lithe bend sways lei my projection supple around his stolid. Whisper into his ears from so far away how little could the light contain us, reframe us in a blend lust labial helix within the innate, perforated phenomenality precipitates us to the graded edge aganst which we, gritted jowl, narrowed eyelids, spiral turned neck, slightest hint of a smirk, can mutually disusdain. He acquiesces, or simply quiesces, so hard to tell through my nails against his jugular despite leaning into the chandelier beams paces away. He coughs and coughs, and I cut away the tension: released both of us forward with a [[jolt->qend5]].

Charcoal blazer I stride assured to his desk and sit in his chair, motioning him to kneel. He refuses so the earth sucks the world several feet further, and I riffle through papers to present him with my mandate. "I understand Romans are obsessed with the illusion of the law, so I am showing you here the Senate decree declaring my father, Pharaoh Ptolemy XII Philadelphos, to be the proper ruler of both Pontus and Egypt, and that Governor Proconsul of Syria Aulus Gabinius is to restore Ptolemy XII Philadelphos to the Egyptian throne, removing any pretenders therein to either Pontus or Egypt; proviso the said Aulus Gabinius receives adequate compensation; proviso Ptolemy XII Philadelphos hereby renounces the throne of Pontus and accepts its accession to the Province of Bithynia, hereafter the Province of Bithnyia and Pontus; proviso the state of Egypt, beginning from the calendar year marked after the successful resotration, nota bene the aforementioned calendar is the Roman Calendar as prior to the Julian Reform Calendar and shall thereby be exercised according to the original calendar for the duration of said agreement unless mutually referred unto the Julian Reform Calendar according to a codicil signed and dated, it is subsequently declared that this referral has been mutually affirmed per the appended codicil so signed and so dated, pay Rome a tax of a tenth harvest each year for fifty years, in addition to a currency remuneration to the legion that must each year collect it; it is subsequently declared all provisos have been fulfilled or acquiesced; it is subsequently declared that two pretenders, the self styled Berenice IV of Egypt and Achelaus, an illegitimate prince of Mithridates VI formerly the King of Pontus, whose death is accorded as a triumph of Gnaeus Pompey, whose lands are a gift to Rome of the said Gnaeus Pompey, have been afforded justice to their claims. Now let me show you this affidavit signed by my father and attested by five witnesses in Rome, which says the following: Pharaoh Ptolemy XII Philadelphos hereby affirms before the law that he is the rightful heir to the throne of Egypt, that his rightful heirs are his son Ptolemy, to be styled Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII Philopater, and his daughter Cleopatra, to be styled Queen Cleopatra VII Philopater; any other issue of said Pharaoh are hereby to be disinherited, with the exception of his daughter Arsinoe, who is to be recognized as an Egyptian princess, for whose beneficient marriage shall be expensed to the Egyptian state a fund minimally equal to 4000 talents. So, mighty Caesar, you see the legal situation of Egypt is obvious: I, Queen Cleopatra VII Philopater, am Queen of Egypt, and my recalcitrant sister, Arsinoe, is merely a princess, for whose marriage I have reserved a fund that I intend to fulfill shortly. This testament is proved; there can be no other situation. As such, I, Queen of Egypt, hereby exercise my prerogative to issue a formal petition, signed and dated here, to the Roman state, requesting assistance, proviso the Roman state receives adequate compensation, to correct a contravenance of international law, proviso the Roman state acknowledges the matter, though subject to international law, is a domestic affair of the state of Egypt and for which the sole authority to settle accounts shall be Egyptian. I of course understand that you must liaise with the Senate and seek their opinion regarding the legality of the petition, but it should be obvious how their opinion must be decided. Now, the only relevant question that remains, dear Caesar, is what shall be averred adequate compensation?" "You make quite the jurisconsult, your majesty, and your command of Latin is commendable." "I lived in Rome for some years, I have learned its trade." "Have you? Well then let me ask you: what should be adequate compensation for such an expensive use of our legions?" "Nominally or substantially?" "Ahaha, I can see you are a valuable ally indeed. I must say I am willing to bargain with you; I have found this pretender already rather costly. Come, bring us sheets, the queen and I must enter [[negotiations->qend5]]."

Caesar convulses frothing beneath my feet. I glance up grinning at his legionnaires. "The triumvir has agreed to assist in restoring my right to the Egyptian [[throne->qstart6]]. Won't you help him to his feet?"

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter VI: Arsinoe''] --- Naphtha stalactites pillar the pitch dark yawn encase projection of the tomb. Splendor desire oozes lucre in flicker motion down elephantine myelin sheaths, ivory and carbuncle, peridot dotted with cavities, encephalitis surmise of whispers pressurized in sludge slateseeming limestone crusted and cracked, temple to the destroyer. An ark in Persian patterns etched where once draped were shawls Gandharan maroon and scented on which ritualinas swaying summoned the ebb and gush of death and abundance intones its topaz and brass magnificence intention in the solemnity brimming beneath massacres: worship thus, thou crushed, demands the [[Archaemenes->qarchaemenes]] of Archaemenes, scythe oak shade for the architects of all this again, atomic swerve cascade waterfalling stars over the eternal downfall. How small seems this worlded over the corpses of those who culled it to lands. Incense spirals gunmetal faders into the canopy candelabra caressing the vault with seasonless and sigh scintillas. Gilded asphodels on marble stems sway in the tilting, the whole vault tilts, stagger up I steps, [[splash->qsplash]] over stone gargoyles, babbling crash past rails, plummet into the [[whorl->qwhorl]], symmetries stutter until in a clang they sunder, astigmatic blastblackback from a cresset corolla pouring quicksilver froth that cataracts the earth to palemilk ripples. Myths stippled into skins tanned and hung on hooks. Cithara molasses of yestersongs soaks the ceiling, if it exists, lyrics strophe and antistrophe whether exists the ceiling as smash I through the vault into their vaulted effluescence, rim catalexis deep in my bones begun, unsynth icicles splint veins retracers in a vessel in which echoes snare the mind of Anaxagoras, atavistic ataraxia of the genesis refraction, the of all in all in its all singular, suspension to the negative of its completion breaths me, I can't breathe, I can't [[breathe->qbreathe1]], I can't! //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Held and secured in Ganymedes. "Queen Arsinoe, my queen, breathe, it's okay, I'm here with you, hold on, I am here with you." "What is this, Ganymedes? What's [[wrong->qwrong]] with her?" Ptolemy. "What's wrong with you, that you are here and do not [[suffer->qtravesties]] as she does?" "Please, Ganymedes, there's no time for [[riddles->qriddles]]. I forbid you anything but facts and the words immediate to them." "Why don't you see for yourself which words are immediate?" He laughs, holding my hair as ultrasobriety surges vomit into an ornate amphora.

"Shu's mercy! Is she ill?" Ptolemy. "I'm fine. How are you, Ptolemy? You seem on edge." I. "Obviously I'm on edge! Did you see Caesar's face when you showed him that horrible head, how furious he was? He's sulking, skulking, plotting, he's going to, it'll, you know what they're capable of!" "No, no, he was quite thrilled with it, I'm sure, you can't gauge their shallows properly; the Romans are students of Zeno, bred like Spartans, never to feel a thing they cannot beat into submission. On his wedding night, his wife slept beneath a cliff face. Never you mind his mind, you will not find yourself there." "How about your mind, shall we gauge that, summoning me here with an impossible missive, some feverish nonsense about assuming graves, or, or what was it, or it doesn't matter what it was, what this is, I am quite busy, as you can imagine, trying to placate our guests from your willful offenses, undo the damage you, you, and need I remind you they haven't yet caught her? Who could guess what might befall us if we do not play carefully, but you haven't a hint of her subtlety, you're –" "Subtlety! Is that what you're gasping for? Subtlety is for mortals who cannot cast our scales. Gods write in [[plagues->qplagues]] and [[travesties->qtravesties]]." "Tragedies, you mean, like what could very well happen if we don't –" "I will swallow your tongue should you so presume my words again, Ptolemy. You're such a child, you don't –" "I'm older than you, you're the one who's too young to, who doesn't understand how –" "Mighty Pharaoh, let your slaves gaze upon your wonders, the temples you have built to tower over them, and marvel at your subtlety."

"Netjeret, hold on to me, you're okay," Ganymedes through my gasping. "What's wrong with her? Ganymedes, answer me, what's happening?" "How can you not be happening alongside?" I laugh through coughs. "You're so strange and aloof, my love." "Don't pretend like it's me who's not making sense, when I'm forced to waste my precious time chasing you into tombs as you gaggle about who knows what. You promised me that you would –" "Netjer, whyever so afraid? Hours are ours to cherish how we slow. In this lugubrious umbral luxury, ice into your elegance. Frieze dress the fulcrum bend beneath our goliath combinatrix in mauve and mood, slither in the thrum of pulse a pause arise to lullaby, this lull we are by. Are you too busy to dance with me?" "Arsinoe..." "That night we swore to each other this scene, not the power nor the brocades enticed my caress, but the awe that neons the electric circuit tiara of in an embrace embodied. I felt it in my skin before it happened. Has my oracle misled me? Will you not lead me in a dance?" Hesitations his [[doubts->qdoubts]] overlapping nearly to a storm. Each in him emotion I wish to bring out in the brokenness of their lostness so might we in our worn unworn and torn find each other precious and drenched. His hands, youthfully willing to believe a new experience, wrap themselves around me, shivering, lean into his slightness and desert flame his ear in an eglantine soundscent plume. I can feel the tears tremble from the temples. "Netjeret, I... believe me that I want to make you happy, that I want us to be everything we've been denied. How could I not? What would there be of me if I would not?" "What you have sacrificed, then what must I." "But you have spent too long in books, you feel in philosophies, you dream awake. I have been raised Pharaoh, how things must conform. This tomb bears us the name as must I to what must we stage, and I cannot come here in more than mourning, this echo not yet in my voice." "Yes, dance, dance our mourning upon our are already buried here! Our song ceases into this endless empty, why we must dance as it plays, thrive its etude to frenzy as it frays fierce and [[kalique->qkalique]]. You fret what will not conform, as if the world was not already your doll, dress it to your mood, suffer it in your stead. If there will be victory, first let us luxuriate it; since there will be defeat, aggrandize each moment our pleasure, doomed grandeur, excess exanimation, we are going to die, netjer, isn't that so wonderful? We can finally like mortals live." "Die! What are you, what are you..." "But you must, we must trust these steps, cling to the count. Listen to the music the echoes of our heartbeats build."

"Were you ever told the story of Ramesses' tactician? No? Did they tell you anything, my love, or are we siblings of the same distances? Let me, here, come here, I will tell you the story of Ramesses' tactician. He was, here, rest your head. This tactician was –" "We really don't have the –" I slip a few fingers into his mouth pacifier, gently rocking him into my warmthlessness. "Pharaoh Ramesses III, or was it the fourth, nevertheless your glorious predecessor, had a tactician of divine cunning who led the pharaoh to many glories. Sudden as the viper's strike he wove the ways of his god into fractured orbs. Fear of his Ramesses, Master of the Sun, Son of Amun Ra, spread far through the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, even unto the Scythians, so, their cities sunk penumbral, houses blisteringly hushed, forces of a wary king sought anxiously an ancient mage who had forsaken the world for deeper currents, begged his curses to infect the world unpredictable. This mage, sated by the blood of a young prince, hexed an effigy of the tactician, made so lifelike by a soldier who had seen his entire village break upon this shoal, that the effigy screamed in the Egyptian tongue. Squirming and howling this effigy was carried into battle against the pharaoh's forces, and while the two encampments slept over the valley a priest fed the effigy to an Egyptian captive, but the captive could not swallow all the doll, he choked upon it, woolen hand clawing from his closed throat. Early the morning of the battle, when the tactician rode out to survey the terrain, his chariot snagged on the gravel, and he was thrown out. The physicians tried to resuscitate him, but to the dismay of Ramesses and his court, the tactician could not recover. Though he did not die, never was he truly conscious. Entire a day would the tactician sleep, but right before midnight he would shock awake screaming, then the generals would besiege him with their wars. Smothered in nightmare the tactician still yet could garble out strategems fiendish until midnight struck, when he would sink away. So the Egyptians continued to route their enemies, though no longer with alacrity, often with terrible casualties. Night after night this tactician would fire helix from hell to sail the world's bloodtides, eyes ever wider and whiter. Upon that bed a banshee, more and more cords were required to restrain, and even once he managed, halfway through raving a tactic, to feast on a general's arm, and they had to flip the bed upside down so the tactician would not drown in all the blood. Less and less of his humanity withheld, but the pharaoh, struggling to maintain his youth's momentum, demanded the tactician be besought before every battle, even if they had to tear out his teeth and jam their ears in his gullet to catch his hidden wisdom, until the tactician, now nearly skeletal, began to utter looping impossibles gnarled in abstractions, which, loosely translated by the generals, drove disaster to disaster, so, distraught, disgusted, they ceased to consult him entirely, and finally he slept forever. Wasn't this tactician [[perfected->qperfected]]? Isn't he the beautiful possible?" "For the Nile's blessings, Arsinoe, what is that supposed to [[mean->qmean1]]?"

"Is it not nonobvious to you, my love? Must you always refuse what should echo within your hollow to mystery? Don't you know your namesake, the first of our era of Egyptians, was also a tactician, a scholar warrior alongside this very marauder, this tomb, how can you not hear, trumpets of the earthentwined? Your throne is the state of being before this tomb a dancer. I promised you that we could become one another, that's why I lead you here, to be this, feel this, in you, of you. Gardens grown from fallen pulses garland our woven, if only we propulse it through veins leading deep into the land we command to answer, where, in those lower networks, you might feel me, won't you at least try, in the attempt we will be chrysalis against the degrading into soils, yugen genuflection unto cosmos voracity, vortices indishumanities enveloping our emptinesses single symbol skin, being scene, zythum of our biding in darkness beneath gods, adjunction into corrugation where our strangeness syrups the fractures of our forced to display, die splay, casting our die to the [[gambit->qgambit]] we weep."

Unverity rasps through our spun guttural in rusted blade waves. Surrender to the second that soaks us through this submergence mazewinding to shiver out the canticle dredge of dreads to disharmony mellifluous. Can be built better from abashed to agony and misery of mutters orthogonals' collision, rubble [[reconstitution->qreconstitution]] to bolders of smoldering. Tragically naive, Ptolemy, to believe only in positive instantiations, as if were not his doubts precisely faith's candlelit vigil. Never have I known whether what kills or soothes save that so often has it not mattered has this meticulous collector sculptor of dead skin cells to self corpsetraits learned how to in the neither restyle fire, nurtured of nectar of nexal knots to subsist through condensing, be alive in the melted together, capable of one day in wrack and without reality wrested out reveil. "Why can't you hold my hand with the same reverence I yearn to hold yours?" I. "What?" "Stop saying that word, that most beautiful of words is sacrileged in your brute tones, I cannot bear your ruthlessly harsh light. Synthetic to you, immersive to me, us, who you must learn to love, if there proves any within you." "Arsinoe, please, just -" "No! No, I won't, you can't make me any other than this, I don't need to be." "I want you to be who I -" "You don't get to decide, nobody does, not her, not you, not even me, only the hours I weep to my memory of Berenice, she is the only one who, I don't even know what, but that's beautiful to me." "Arsinoe, you need to think practically, about, there's so many, we need to be concerned with -" "So what if the Romans storm our palace, slay us all? Who cares? What does it matter? If they kill us, we will become more purely Egyptian than anything that endures. Why have you been born? To sag your skin across as many wasteds as can fit within it? No, to be pharaoh, to be god of the hour, whether an hour of victory or defeat, whether a glory or disgrace, so that you can be what can be spoken of as Ptolemy XIII, so that your name [[signifies->qwyrd]]. Wasp of Alexandria, [[she->qgambit]] has injected you with anodyes; fight through the poison with me, let us froth out together hateful and hopeful, beacons of our headlands."

Skulls necklace rinkling around indigo sinuous until bursts from their surface volcanic sight in which melts our souls to skyless and forsworn mutually [[execration->qgambit]] desync hymn from lolling tongues desperate as dozens of hands sunder the worldseams and the devils that seal them to percuss the song so searing our ears cease hearing until the fear seems nearing ecstasy and we worship as one the wode, the [[wyrd->qwyrd]], its wilds. Blessed protector of our brokenness, dream desecrator sacred, loose us into your luminous lathe, let us drill unity into the night sky's deepening, lightning one whom in a single strike quells the earth's dynamos, immaculate [[mendace->qreconstitution]] us from molded to molten, wreathed in winged flame as must gods become, how I kiss his cheek, beg him with watery and quivery to please let us believe this, bereave this earth of us to blessings of heaven, heaving with the weight he will not share.

Dancing orange sparks over your whole world illgloominate my yearn to be amused more than the voidhum. Your suffering provides my paints. Every agony I harvest and douse in the sauce of so many other crushed screams. I seed you, nurture you, cherish you, so that when you are [[slaughtered->qgambit]] en masse I can genuinely pleasurably sob. Because, goddess, I envy you, how I would love to be definite, finite and [[de->qrefusal]], stars blink errupt irrupting blinking out into the darkness always. The torturer shatters into the obsession with the tortured, how so infinitely they fade.

Beneath in the bellicose caustic [[refusal->qrefusal]] to be contained in the cost measured in the measure for measure a sheer excess arsenal, delighting the raze for flame enchantment. Write in [[ruins->qgambit]] my spell. Cast upon the decanter flanger of huespark illusives my wind whisper to chill haunt the spectra law proscribing my light signaling to the night sea against the storm angel of radiance maybe.

Wrong insofar so far in, so I am to you. You see me how you should hate me, and I apologize. I don't, but I do. Infuriates me to apologize for an act with no effect, yet isn't that the point of the apology, not the effect but the affect? Burdened most are we with not the outcome of the person but a person outpouring, demanding our disgust of them, and why not such a demand, we are all disgusting, anything of us pours putrid. Anyone who shall not immediately apologize for anything about the world they inhabit has an arrogance we abhore. I shall apologize for the sun rising shall you need me. I am sorry for everything and everyone my tongue can form. Languished upon another wrack, shall we not ruin to reasonless and weep the admixture? I reconstitute myself sober and sterile, gleam my palm to his cheek a caress. "Ptolemy, I'm sorry it has to come to this, has it, or will it, who can know, though I wish it could be anything else, that we could be, but isn't this what maturing means, accepting how you must give up and become? Relinquish all angles that do not lash you here. Shackles acquiesce, accentuate, accede to their binding resolution. As you were seeded, so you have grown; shall you not blossom so brilliantly they shall [[behead->qgambit]] you to a bouquet?"

Why should we not worship the ancient Menes anew, he who has endured in this land to the present age? From him we [[draw->qwhorl]] strength, in him we burgeon. In his nemesis' nemes he still supreme reigns. Egypt is the only land old enough to [[bear->qriddles]] its own conquerors: our children return home to suck the breastblood of our [[wounded->qsplash]] by time. In the buried eras, the Assyrians came to fertilize Egypt, and the Persians were born, growing to slaughter their father Assyria and their mother Egypt, then this Egyptian daughter came to Greece and, fertilized, gave birth to the Macedons, who brought to the world the Egypt of a new song. Egypt is she who endures. I am Egypt, all shall [[break->qgambit]] before me.

"Instance disactual responds the pressure to suffocation layers in which can we rest eternal. Never let them force you to more. Radiating excision of violence to fragile shell which envenoms the world around, we are pearls of our depravities. Why won't you [[recoil->qgambit]] your rebounding ricochet your volatile amounting? Spellbound grenade, jaspers inlaid."

"Lord Pharaoh!" Pothinus sweats towards us. "There you are, praise Amun! Urgent news from the palace: Princess Cleopatra is in Caesar's chambers!" "What's this! Ah, we've been betrayed, we, we must respond [[immediately->qimmediately]]!" "Netjer, doubtless she is making an appeal to Caesar to resolve her [[dispute->qdispute]]." "Has she gone to grovel?" I tense. "Even in exile, she disappoints."

"I told you we didn't have time for these games, Arsinoe! While you weary us weaving graves, there's, in the palace –" Ptolemy. "We don't have time for the palace, is what, who cares about that, we only have time for this, for us, to make us us upon this altar! Ptolemy, Ptolemy, look at me, we're not yet –" "No, I refuse to be beguiled by you! You've led me astray to tombs. If we are to survive, then I must lead, you must accept me Pharaoh and future." "Lead us to what, surrender? You have to -" "I have to what? Slather myself in ram's blood and wail before an altar? You say you're different than [[her->qcleopatra5]], but you never act lke it."

"Goddess of Waters, please, we must hurry to the palace immediately and challenge Cleopatra, persuade Caesar to see her treachery. We'll be ruined if she, if she –" Pothinus. "She is the ruin, we allow her so. She may come humiliate herself before us, why should we care?" "Your majesty, forgive me but, I believe you're not appreciating the gravity of the situation. With the, the Romans, she is going to overtake us militarily. His grandeur the Pharaoh of Egypt must immediately begin negotiations with -" "Shut your traitorous mouth! Never shall again the pharaoh grovel to a Roman. I am of blessed Mu, will birth Egypt of myself alone, I need no one, nothing, if you all abandon me..." "I will reign my will, I am Pharaoh, and I will solve what you have –" Ptolemy. "No, you can't solve me, you, you can't, ignore them, ignore everyone, there is but Berenice and me, please, Ptolemy..." "Why did you even want to be queen, if you won't even match [[Cleopatra->qcleopatra5]]?"

"Shut up, shut up, you're not allowed to mention her, not in this place where I have invoked [[Berenice->qberenice5]], she'll, she will hear, and, and, but why are you so cowardly, is this who you are, who you presume so? No, you are a [[ghost->qghost3]], you are possessed, by, by her, we must, Ganymedes, we must hasten a priest –" "Pharaoh, this way, this way," Pothinus. "I've already alerted the generals. The army will –" "What will your army?" Caesar barks. "Shall you throw away the pretense, meet me as enemies? Shall we teach Alexandria the scar wisdom of Africans?" "No, we are well aware how [[Latins->qlatins]] treat those who greet them with open arms, as Carthage once then thrice," Cleopatra. "But we need not meet our enemies where they are but glare at them from inaccessible heaven." Blush she our sense of place in sways deep orange and maroon bruises, or she thinks she does, never will, not me, you cur, groveling fiend, I am my own sense of place, stability is my iris slices in tempests. "Have you come to disgrace the city's [[soul->qsoul1]], you influenza?" I seethe.

"The city's [[soul->qghost3]] is my plaything," that wretched grimace of infinite disdain pleasure. "I will damn it to torment shall I will it. "Even for the shameless, you, to do this here, in this –" "Shameless? Hiding in the tomb of your [[ancestors->qegypt2]] from a [[fratricide->qfratricide]] ought to teach you irony."

"Fratricide! How can you possibly utter the word, you murderer of sisters? How can you, how can you, everything, eah! You killed her, how could you, how could you, you killed [[Berenice->qberenice5]]!" I. "I released Berenice from her –" "You murdered her! You murdered my sister!" "I gave my sister love, that most austere of mercies, I met her in our shared anguish you cannot and will not know, nor could you even know what it is to share, you've never given anyone anything, you only take, steal the –" "You're a murderer, you have her blood on your –" "She killed our mother! She destroyed our family! She got what she deserved!" "You destroyed our family, what it was supposed to [[mean->qegypt2]]! You've plotted this all along, you and your father sold us to the [[Romans->qlatins]], and you've smothered our [[souls->qghost3]] one by one, her, me, Ptolemy, you, you –" "I do what I must, a [[duty->qshrine]] you assume to derelict. You reave our family apart, turning my husband against me, you're trying to exile me, you want me to die, isn't that true? You want me dead, isn't that true? Answer me, cruelty, answer –" "Why did you kill her? Why did you kill Berenice? Why did you kill our –" "She murdered our mother, sought to assassinate our father, chased us from our home, she became a monster, just like you are!"

"You're a traitor, you have no right to stand before me, before this tomb, before everyone you have betrayed! Are you so shameless that you will lead our brutalizers into this sacred [[shrine->qshrine]]? How can you, how can you, you're so, ahh, I hate you so much!" I. "Arsinoe, please, this isn't –" Ptolemy. "Our name belies a bunch of thieves, from how you cavort in roles you cannot fulfill." Cleopatra. "How dare you! How can you possibly..." "How can you possibly! Why would you humiliate us in front of the Romans like this? The things I will have to give them to assuage your tantrums, your frivolous mistakes!" "Humiliate, oh, oh, you're such a hypocrite, Cleopatra, you're the one who sold us to the [[Romans->qname1]], we pay their taxes like good little slaves, don't we, just so that you could sit on a toy throne, having murdered our true queen, our blessed sister, the only one who –" "She murdered our true queen, as you exile her now, I am the one who –" "No, I am the one, you're nothing, not to me, not to anyone, hence their so eager to betray you, how easy it was to convince them to let me rule instead of your nightmare, your cruelties, your humiliations, but I will craft an Egypt of your [[absence->qsecrets]], of all I can become in that void."

"You are a destroyer of our family, our history, our people, just like Berenice!" Cleopatra. "Yes, I am, I am just like her, I've found her, I found her spirit in the Nile, and I've become one with her, I've –" "What are you saying?" "I am Berenice alive, ghost of Arsinoe, our vengeance propulses." "You're nowhere close to Berenice, you haven't lived her like I have, you –" "I lived with her all the while you suckled from wolfmothers." "You, okay, you don't know our mother, first of all, maybe she never loved you, and I'm sorry for that, but you –" "You don't get to decide how, what my mother –" "I don't decide where there isn't love, you did, celebrating with Berenice over her corpse. You are the lack of love. Own it. Admit yourself." "I, you don't –" "You cannot conceive of the grief that clove us apart, you cannot conceive of Berenice in that moment, you can't conceive of anything but yourself, you're so selfish, you're pathetic, but I love you, but you never suffered Mother's perfectionist fantasies as we did, she obsessed herself Egypt and only in that obsession did we crawl through coals towards her, you never were whipped by her hand for failing to recite, you were –" "Our mother deserved to die, Berenice deserved to be queen, she was the eldest, she –" "Why are you so obsessed with her? What's it matter what happened with her? Am I not sister enough for you?" "No, she, she's, she's the only one who, who..." "No she didn't, no, no, Arsinoe, I'm so sorry, but she didn't, she thought you a curiosity, she simply wanted to gauge what threat you posed to –" "No, no, no! She [[loved->qloved]] me! She met me when all I could imagine was, was submerging in the Nile, never to, never to, but she loved me, she loved us together an [[Egypt->qegypt2]], we were a family, she was, is the only family I have!" "She annihilated our family, sacrileged our ancestry, forsook our traditions, she's a disgrace, she sold us to Persians, tried to destroy our culture, she loathed the Egypt Mother made her swallow, she wanted to destroy our history!"

"You're the, you know nothing of what our ancestors –" I. "You know nothing, you're a child, a sniveling child who believes she's been written down, all she must do is find her words, whereas I, I'm the one who's chased the furthest shades their resting place, how, how can you even believe you know more about our ancestors than I, you know I sweated out my formative years in temple [[secrets->qsecrets]], I am formed from forbidden shadows!" "In which books? In what texts? Can you even name –" "Which books? Don't lecture me, you Greek, you ingrate, you heretic. In tablets nestled in valley monuments where never you have ventured I gleaned ages of Egypt you cannot recall you've forgotten." "That's not, you –" "Have you lost them, you infant? Need you go suckle? Is that why you lurk in family graves, looking for mommy's skeleton? The one you murdered, ersatz Berenice?" "You never let me speak!" "If you had anything to speak, rather than [[spit->qatrocitress]], perhaps I would –" "Shut up, shut up! You, you deserve spitting to reciprocate what, what you've done to our [[name->qname1]]!"

"You killed her, you killed the only one who loved me, who cared, you stole her place, you're the ersatz Berenice, you –" I. "Berenice condescended to you, met you where you were solely because she believed you could not be rescued from it, but I have fought for you every step of the -" "No, that's not true, that's not true, you don't, you don't know her like I did, you weren't there, you were busy sucking power from –" "Didn't know her? You didn't know her! I lived as days excruciated [[us->qname1]] to months of our huddled and troubled while you hid in your little library forsaking our family for your dead friends from some other nowhere. I knew Berenice more deeply than the kitsch idol you worship, I was her, we were one, for so many sweltered years." "I was there with her while you fled, while you were training your tongue to taste Latin, meretrix!" "You will never again speak to me so, or I will destroy you, I will annihilate what you've become in my infinite love for who you were, were meant to be..." "There, at last you admit it, the violence that sums you, you are an axeblade that dulls when not teething broken bones whetstones, incapable of life, neither poem nor purpose, never a sister." She snarls forward, I stare bleak and pyre, prepared to be slapped deep into the crypts, but she glissandos tragic and fury. "You're an illiterate, you hide your ignorance in any voice that devoids you, I cannot hate you, as the carcass loathes not the jackals." "I can, I can hate you, and I do, I do!" "Arsinoe, please –" "Address me as I am, Queen Berenice Reborn IV, Lady of Desiccations, Mistress of the [[Furnace->qfurnace1]]." "I will address you as you are, Misery Princess Arsinoe Resigned, Lost of Her Kind, [[Atrocitress->qatrocitress]] of Pureness."

Infernal ferry logos, broadened upon the passage of identifying orientation strictures that constructure us to displacement within its inexorably postretroactivable, mandate magnifier of ferrofocus, compass collateral. Unnatural in demand burns hotter than my tears my ears fugue feints me forward into a flurry of freed hair until at her feet I find myself away crawling. Her whole body roils savage like both she will and will not pounce eviscerate. "You have so often tried to circumvent me, that I almost feel nothing in this most forsaken of moments, almost, almost..." Cleopatra. "You should, because then we would equalize." "No, you wouldn't understand anything that takes outside of yourself to fulfill." "As if you're the only one who has anything outside of themselves! Isn't that what you've always denied me, beyond of beyondness?" "I denied you nothing but what you have assured yourself is more than the knotting." "That's not true, you, you, but you -" "I, yes, isn't that the case! I, I, I, and in the gaps you can dream whatever. I begrudge build whatever you loathe simply because I am everything that can be loathed, but you into your own ire excruciate your capacities annihilistic, animalistic wretched, choking on natal bile. Reciprocity resuscitate my anything grander than rejection, you genesis cruelty. I reprove you, both the positive and the negative, if you wish anything more than the negative, the negativizing." "If I make anything of myself, as if a self could mean anything, it is only in spite of your restrictive negatories, only as signitory of your erasure. Berencie and I make of -" "She's not a part of -" "I will say of myself all that is -" "You will, and I will [[destroy->qend6]] it."

"Everything I've given you, so gladly given you, yet all you can give is pain endless and pain primal! You are a wound, nothing more, one that I will heal. You are moral hazard, heart hazard, you hazard everything but the love I offered you, and I will not offer twice." Cleopatra. "I don't want you to offer anything, I want nothing of you, nothing!" "You will receive it, you jackal, you leech, you boneache, you have broken my voice, you have made it this bitter firecaster, you have ruined everything of me that I sought to rebuild, to -" "Queen Cleopatra, is all this really –" Caesar. "You are that voice you hate, it comes from your mouth, you are the voice that voids me! I am nothing within you!" Sobbing as I crawl, collect, kneel, leap backwards to stance. "I can see that tear clear, have always seen it so." "So what, you've retaliated, petulant murderchild, by making me nothing to you? Selve your barbs, and I'll believe you a blossom." "You were everything to me, you cruelty, don't you see that I did, I did try, desperate, I attempted exasperated everything I could imagine would warrant your love, but never your regimen, not your beating me into your shape, I wanted you to love what I, how I, why I died thousands of times, these acrid years you smothered –" "You are the beast of every hour that fails you, sully not my being with your gashes." "I am that beast now, I infernal the skyfloe blazer of this hour too late, my wrath rains down upon this land the lava of my loathing in all the violences you have taught me, you taught it to me, how with through woe [[convulsivivify->qend6]]!" "I taught you nothing but the –" "I will teach you to kneel!"

"Most noble Cleopatra, perhaps –" Pothinus. She sweeps forward fifty miles crunched into the actual space between them to fang Pothinus' throat, his jugular jumps free of his skin blasting blood gallons, he clutches and gawps but her teeth sink into intestines blades rips it in a gush that floods every fiber of her being, soaked scarlet she ripples rose petal steps upon the surface of the spreading carnation towards Caesar with a smile. "Good Caesar, tell Queen Arsinoe the concession we shall grant her." "Uh, ah, um, what, she, uh, Queen Arsinoe, I, I understand the, how the... Queen Arsinoe, I have heard of, seen this uh, dispute between you and your sister, so for the peace of this kingdom I am prepared to strike an, um, an alliance with you, resolve this situation by offering you the rule of Cyprus, if you will renounce your claim here and um, you know, publicly declare your sister the rightful wife of the pharaoh." "Why don't you go live out whatever you imagine your hell as?" Cleopatra. "Cyprus?" I drip. "You seek to console me by offering me my uncle's corpse?" "I understand you have an ancestral claim to the isle, so I think we can mutually –" "Your Cypriot prize leads us to [[Troy->qstart7]]," I brandish before Caesar, to Ptolemy, to her, I sheathe before Ganymedes, stalking away. He follows me out in the way I had once wished she would.

"You don't understand our minima conditions, your grandstanding is ludicrous, I'll laugh through the tears tonight, there isn't any -" Cleopatra. "You're the -" "No, shut up, listen: whose tomb are you in? Right now, who is that buried upon the gilded dais? Alexander, namesake of Alexandria, our Greek conqueror, whom the Ptolemies have painstakingly for generations grafted onto the Egyptian vine. We worship this shrine insofar as we are outsiders to its religion. We uphold our poise in its majesty regardless of how you desecrate it severed. You who squander your years in Greek tomes should know best why we are Egyptian in an other tongue, Greek into others, and even to the Latins capable of conversation." "That's, you, you're blaspheming the, but you don't -" "You're the blasphemer, this whole charade of yours is a blasphemy against ancient traditions you cannot begin to fathom!" "Stop, you, ehaeeh, you get me so flustered that I can't, I can't argue like you do, you never listen, all you do is rage and rage [[and->qend6]] -" "I bless and bless you with love!" "No, that's not true! You know that's not true!" "It is true!" "You can't, but, aah, you're so, eah!"

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter VII''] --- Egypt is at war with Egypt. Shall you follow the cause of Queen [[Arsinoe->qarsinoe4]] IV or Queen [[Cleopatra->qcleopatra6]] VII? //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

"You will never dwell in my absence, because even in your hell, I will nurture you, and you cannot escape my love, my fearful and terrorful, I run deeper than your blasphemies, how dare you speak to me of Egypt, floater on fever alexandrines, beguiled by the barbaries of Greeks whose distant wisdoms would melt off their skins were they in the mudbrick libraries that store our truths, dune citadels of our totalities untellable, your voice wavers before me in the heatwave, lost. Anointed nabetji of Hathor in sacred Tantere, deep in the desert beyond your compass, where one sucks from the Nile as it pours from the breast of Isis, in darknesses that echo the voice of our mother and the mother whose milk united her with what she meant for us to make forth as she betrothed her mami to the goddess legacy this land bears in its ageless and endless, nameless transcendence, before the stela of secrets that zeroes the minds of mortals, I have spoken mastabas, seen the heights to which they tower our eternal immanence, and radiated deeper Egypt than your nightshades shriek." Cleopatra. "Oh, is that the deeper Egypt you cower in while this Caesar thing defiles ours?" "Cower? I meet my fate and break it, which is why you see me before you unbroken. I defy you by my infinite [[power->qend6]] to exile from what is mine, you doppelganger, you shade of who you should have been." "Shade, shade, if I'm a shade it's because of, of you, how you've denied me so many, how you've crushed me, my heart, everything, everything!" "Because you have failed to be the sister I've loved, I tried so patiently to nurture, who I gave my nights to –" "You gave me nothing, nothing, all you did was take, insult, diminish, distinguish yourself from my insignificances, circumscribe me, condescend, denigrate my essence!"

Shrine: sacred of a limited. In of as shrine: sacred in qualitative majesty beyond the lurking qualifier, suspense sublimity, worship the dregs of gods ineffable, immersed within the wash merged amorphous me sanctified, absence of shape, blessed of gash. Reciprocal lacerative religious gesticulation my should be whipped unto the worship alienated before gods who, because disgusting termite humans teem about them feasting, relent to accept our putrid prayers. Wouldn't we rather gods untouchable? Wouldn't the truest religion be that of a god who will never notice your anguish? We lens heavens by who best nurtures our scars, as if our scars mean anything, as if they are not merely irruptions in our parasitic nodes. Wouldn't we rather believe ourselves abandoned beneath their electrifying envy? Blessed are those who die, who possess a sufficient compass to defend for a reckonable timescale; to immortals the unreckonable horror of having to forever form an aspect against the unrelenting unamassing unportending decay to heat death. Already through twenty three years I weary of this form; who should wish a form to endure long past its innate condemnation? To a body, its exorcising and execution. "I worship here in exactly the aghast in which I shall meet my ancestors, can you say the same?" I. "Your ancestors would be aghast to meet one as self involved as you." "Aren't we all self involved? Why should that be a bad thing? Why be a self if not to perceive its faults and foments?" "You admit none of your flaws that interdict your self concept, that's your problem. You are willing to be guilty of anything so long as it's your fantasy. Great, what bravery, admitting the flaws that best admit your identity. If you are going to be a goddess, you have to learn how to be hated in all the ways that will kill your humanity, as I have, as you have taught me." "If anything has killed my humanity, it has been whatever you have taught me, how you have silenced -" "You don't get to -" "Oh exactly, isn't that the case, I don't get to? Everything you blather is just a case of how I don't get to." "Because all you can dream for yourself are mere antagonisms against me, and no violence against me is not subsumed in my becoming. If you had some originality to your -" "Your becoming, your becoming, as if you're the only one who has to be real!" "I must be so, because all anyone makes of me are fantasies." "But you don't -" "If you cared even the slightest bit about the truth of who I am, you would relent your crusade to destroy it, but you don't, because you don't care about me, or even about Berenice, it's all your vanity, your chance to be, your moment of -" "Don't you speak her name, you don't get to -" "I speak all the names I signify, Queen of Egypt." "You signify nothing, a mere nothing, that's all you are!" "All I am is the [[nothing->qend6]] that loves your barren."

''Arsinoe'' Faience intense phantasmatica volt irradiance cast vivid [[hyperhue->qhyperhue]] contrasted scarred in loose white I rift the steady so pours from me pomegranate and fig craving we can plus, [[desire->qdesire1]] more than my lie, we kill trust the rush through doubts to hovering pink blinkspots in a patterning flickering through bouts warriors streaming, I sift the ready for columns the battle uncollapses to support my heavy, snapping ropes rip my head from port, dreaming starboards to splatter on sarcophagus lids, lifted queasy [[crush->qcrush]] thrust in the avalanche conduit past the col to my lapse, this ellipse, spills trips from my tongue the words I don't mean to still Ptolemy parousial powerful paraselene halo to lyre helva looms huntress valence, but rouge blanks my eyelids inners to blather, beat my skin sinner wits to leather, lather [[ruminata->qruminata]] on nihil, surrept sublime mind muddled in the froth, [[shadows->qshadows]] lacy, searing, bright white light, what's the point in any of this asks the runner on their knees...

''Cleopatra'' In mirrors I am not in I see myself, reflect my creed punctures, needles nurture my reflexes' inflections, aberrative insurrerected stress fractures press frames, they decry the figments I know to be fragments, insular bound to their rule wavers my lines in search, [[seeker->qseeker2]], trust solely what I cannot touch in accordance with bitter experience. Loathe the crowds I cannot help but command, crowded inside. Every day am I injected with some semblance nascense. I am not who they say I am, because they are not me to be said. Positivations scald the claimant that crawls free of my blankness, briar snow that thickets my snarl. No privacy survives the people who need you inside them, anything external they leave there. Glossed inside the locus, blur goddess of brokenness. All the yes I trust flush drowns in less than half their no. My stride locks me in a gait, so I go. Kaleidoscope [[queenchest->qqueenchest]] of sapphires and haunted moors, I am incense of incensed devotions.

Perfume ingredients vials polychroma my smoky. Spices lushweave their scents gulfstreams above their amphorae. Runny balanos sloshes in the pan mixed reflectors. Myrrh glaciates the mixture. Gently the fiery keeps the balance in curls round and round the pan as aspalathos coils the fume floral. Would I be sweetflag caring, cinnamon feisty, cassia tempestuous? Expressions made for their misunderstandings deepen my mood towards megaleion's solemnity drone. Somehow stillness of elegance could I hazard to [[saffron->qsaffron]]. Perhaps I ascend her rush in cyprinum. In her volts emulsions will I irradiate kypros subtleties stranger than her myth marionettes? Melon zest maybe to make me naiad alongside her bubbling intents, speak to her how she [[surges->qsurges]].

I pluck saffron flowers, indigo glow softly adagio, into the basket they flow vibrant swells. Arsinoe into the basket peers, leans away, hesitates, peers in again, up at me, my a rose she uplifts. "Do you know where saffron comes from?" Curling my finger through her hair. She blinks a few times, her way of shaking her head. "In the time before the eternity of Egypt folded into the world, there was in the east a great kingdom dying, Assyria, the land of warrior poets from the brink of time, doused the fires in its temples, so many were the vultures that flocked to feast on elder gods, among them the Median Phroates. In his youth, this Phroates had been a knight companion of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, they had ridden together, hunted together, laughed as one, loved as one, grew into two of one trunk, but in the savagery of that age he tore himself free of his master and met him amid the widening inferno the swallower of wholes. Who knows what he felt when he saw in the battleflare glint the armor star of his deepest memories, or what terror angst awe overwrought him as he heard geyser the voice that said his name as none other could? The last of us live not for themselves but as diminuendo heirs of all we once tried to cage in veins, so Ashurbanipal could not help but weep the nine magics of Ninevah, and his tongue was overcome with verses that once held humanity in its palm. Ashurbanipal sang into the melee sundered covenants, ash majesty. Do you know what happened when the fiery Phroates charged the singing king?" Her agape encompassed tingles me rustles of fox furs, twirl her coal hair into mine to cling her closer. "He evaporated into the song, fused a formentation of the king, and the king he, so they were swept into the story that ended there in grandeur eclipsed by the blaze tomorrow blade, a singing shade the sunset bled lustrous xiketic to the first saffron, there, brilliant, where once stood the besieger of ancient brotherhood. This saffron remembers the time when a gloryseeker melted into the annihilation sublime. Touch it: do you feel it?" She bobbles into nods. "Phroates' son felt it too when he sought his father among the day's dead, realized on what surface he stood. He scooped the saffron into a jeweled case and brought his father's ambition back to the palace. Phroates' son nurtured this vigil flame throughout the years he filled out his father's shadow, then, on his daughter's wedding day, bequeathed her everything they had become to wear in her hair, wraith wreath, his amethyst, and Amytis kissed this catalyst to taste its tremulous intensities lush, and she swooned into its mars glaze, velvet reveled rose flush to its throbbing verlust, drank its vanilla concussia, dew pearlettes dripped from her lips lyre crystalline recalling the song, the song, all who in it belong, and drawn into the mosaic she anointed in its oil perfume that maddened her Nebuchadnezzar, dreamer conjurer of the Babylonians, who cultivated through lavish levitation magics this flower in the legend of his hanging garden, glory of the mind's eye's lusts, signet of the heavendrinkers, their brush for perfection paints so purely enduring that in his own rendition of totality our ancestor's master Alexander found there these saffrons from whose seeds the first Ptolemy founded gardens Alexandrine, this very where these same saffrons grow the dyed of the song, our song." "Hanging garden?" Plashes her rapids. "Yes, oh yes, in Babylon they built gardens into the air, like a lighthouse bursting verdant above us, cloudvines ziggurats." "Do you think, Bes, into the clouds?" "Beyond the clouds, into the stars, under the stars they wandered without torches through the forests of the firmament. Can you imagine dancing under date palms swaying with the rains as they amass to tears?" "Yes, yes I can imagine it! Dancing in a hanging garden, yes, oh." "You can dream it in the [[scent->qscent]] of this saffron."

Through the garden we stroll shadows from out of the eaves. Arsinoe's soft cyan sundress swirls its hems around her swings and stops and sways and quickstep creeps. I grin to myself; Arsinoe's nervous energy buzzes out in fidgets her need to gush the struggle to formulate, how do I let her say it without appearing to anticipate it? "Don't you find miscanthus to be so lovely?" I smile to her nodding. "We used to play a game with miscanthus where they were little fortresses, Berenice and I would hide from Charmian in them, and she would have to come besiege us, and we would fight back with the miscanthus blades, leafblades we called them. Charmian would wrap them around our waist and say, you're arrested, I got you, ahaha, and she would lead us out like prisoners. But you felt so safe in them, like nothing could ever find you hidden away in there. Have you ever felt that feeling, where it seems almost like you look at the world from afar, like you're a [[cloud->qscent]]?" Her tension burst ivory her smile her bonfire in the styles she attires her confidence swelling to include me in whisper magnifiers of the fractals she chases and chases to places no sole but her solitary could wander, so soaked she poses me: "Hidden in the, do you, Cleopatra, um, do you think there could ever be a, a tomb so perfect the spirit would never need to leave for the afterlife?" "A perfect tomb?" "Yeah like if you put everything in there, everything that was just enough to suggest life's limits, but so perfectly composed that no need could arise to see what lies after its domain? Like imagine enclosed infinity, never could you reach the edge nor ever wish to, depth beyond drowning. Do you think it's possible, if you somehow managed to find all the right artisans and everything and design it right, that you could make it, you could seal yourself in limitlessness? Enough to be a forever." "And what would be enough for forever?" "I don't know, that's the thing. I can imagine an eternal enough, like I can experience it in my soul, but when I try to think any part of it, when I try to parse it, like when I try to design what would be in the tomb, I can't think of a single thing that would be in it. I can feel this enoughness, deep in me I feel it, but when I try to think it, my mind empties." "Perhaps our emptiness is enough."

I crush it in my fist, drizzle it in the perfume, the last and foremost, crown scent. Does nothing you do matters, can't outcreate the currents. They will eat your corpse to fill their cavities with whatever their sucking down decides you were to be for them. What's the point in trying your best when your destiny is an effigy? Pathetic the noble desire not to rend the angles of your increase's interruptors, worthless any woe not your chalice, futile the, the... Cleopatra, you don't mean that, of course I do, or who's to say I don't, what's anyone to say of my meaning? Am I not who my sister makes me? Says who? Are we supposed to trust ourselves? If someone twists you through the apertures by which they perceive, aren't you in the excerpts, can you not be dissected in the misread remnant? Maybe there is more than what they hate: all they could have hated had they the chance to see. Isn't this the beauty of their lies: dressing you in the sins solely they can fashion? Your vile coherence coheard, cowrote, raise me once some other princess curse so I can disharmonize deity of quaking prayers. "Why do you not reassert yourself to your public? You have overcome your adversary, you [[ought->qought]] to be seen in your success." I slather the perfume, black baptism, then turn into my intoxicant towards Caesar, who askews in my regravitation. "You do not coronate who is already queen. The lapse in their recognitions is just that, a lapse, a [[missingness->qmissingness]], so it is missing, so they find themselves aware. If I were arrayed in court as the purpose of a public ceremony, then they would see outside themselves the gap this seals, so they would be assured there was at some point something else, but there is nothing but me, I am this Egypt, which is how I belong."

"Ah, then our cultures differ in philosophy. In my city, a triumph makes you the polis. We exist publicly, so our souls must be theirs to taste." Caesar. "Your city, is it? Strange that a city should extend you here." "As I make myself Rome, so Rome makes the world Roman, where I am here before you. We will all share in me, I am generous." "Ah, the most dangerous virtue." "Yes, I have reasons to fear my own generosity. Are you sure your sister shall be silenced in Cyprus? To give such power to one who has great reason to imagine me their enemy would make my countrymen call me mad, were to insult me not fatal." "My sister imagines [[enemies->qenemies]] beyond where reason tends. She is a visionary." "That doesn't assuage me." "Is that what I'm supposed to do?"

"Shall you be the Egypt of every consequence, however dire?" Caesar. "No sequence conjugates this land but how from my mouth the Nile flows. All within me are imprisioned, I am the elision by which null hypothesis we concatenate of shadows Egypt. Orbiting about my gaps our poisitioned. What could a sister do of me other than how I wage her? If she hates me, it is only because I hate myself, and need a familiar to form it." "Beautiful idea, surely, but what shall we say of her antagonisms shall she win?" "How shall she win? What are you saying? Who could believe that her victory would be anything other than the [[triumph->qenemies]] of my divine hate over the world? A blessing in another tone is her body, as are all royals, shall you some day discover, shall you suckle from me such venoms, shall you?" "Hmm. I merely wonder your wisdom, whether it is a thing I can count on." "Yes, I imagine you would envision wisdom a thing countable. Well, look on, our wealth, temples, tragedies, what is this, am I, worth to you? Strangulation luxury should not be trusted but desired. Do you desire it?" "I desire the world." "I am a world."

Ptolemy glances concerned over his shoulder to see me as I am, the space [[between->qbetween]]. He waits. Utter hush do I lisp. Loamstones furrow as sprouts a stair, stair, staircase Ptolemy climbs, I [[clamberprowl->qclamberprowl]] pantherian before it rolls back up to our tumble through its ascendancy rush to [[vertigo->qvertigo1]], spinning clouds migraine, fisheye lens panning to pin down the pulsing tremor, mulch tension trace of narrowing lanes into his [[velocity->qvelocity]], constricted, horripilation, pressure bends iris arcs to needle punctures bleeding vitreous humors.

A cart with a face rolls down helix tracks into which Ptolemy, glancing nervously, lowers, so I slither to its wheels clumped of fat and cling, pull myself up to the front as, sparks, plummet we the track down the palace's arteries into, antibodies, neither this nor thus, shapeshifters free in the freewheeling, the freely wheeling cart's face flutters rapidly through expressions: terror, ecstasy, fury, concern, disgust, pride, melancholy, chinjutting pleasure. I rip off the face to pain myself into the tensed musculature. Ptolemy wriggles against the wild into my chassis. Veer from the path, crash through a wall, stone shrapnel demolishing a slave's skull, through another wall, through the floor, down floor after floor until a sewer swamps my progress, and Ptolemy staggers out, royal cloak soaked. He sheds it; I [[manifest->qopen1]] into it.

Aghast at the emptiness he races up steps into the masonry where clockwork the workers. Rainbow arc strides I chase. He barges through sinews, bellows into a hallway, through another to the repairs workshop, through another to the palace accountancy, but beyond the enumerated I await and pounce, he tumbles away screeching and bleeding a trail I slurp up striding, long tongue loosed from my limbs to the walls gait like a truss sliding to hydraulics. No [[escape->qopen1]] from what I include of you.

Decor sotted more the migraine so sore we hash elapse the sense in plash sops sickly the trudge nudge nudge to dizzy. Wallpaper the shade of opening a door and finding yourself in your childhood room where to dust has it gone as with you in the center ashsculpted straining muted terror towards a long lost sky, volcano victim. Five and a half hours ago you drank beer dregs from a soiled jar which hunkers in your esophagus prowling. You cannot breathe your head hurts so, dust glut air tears at your trachea, your eyes echo your sandpaper chokes. Improper to the evulse conviction you foreign wade through whispery uncertainties, your name isn't Cleopatra, but that's what those who know every putrid thing about you know to call you. The thing that people notice about you the most is that you deserve to suffer. Into an unlit room you arrive. In the darkness crouched behind a sideways desk is a stranger you see all the time in the hallways. They beckon you into an elevator shaft. Falling nowhere. Mute sparks dead cyan the wires, jet shafts javelined into the abyss from the lost uplift, hung shapes silent in the silhouetted. You're underneath your own crash. Out of your own crushed corpse crawls your smile, helical yes. Thlunked in the doom stutter: the stranger beckons you into the open elevator shaft. You stride right through it and burst through the wall into the office of the. They're there in the office where you kneel as blood gushes from your face, your intensifying blush. They're screaming at you, frantic, shock white eyeballs bouncing along your collapsing. You open your mouth to reply, but there's so, there's so much. They beckon you into the open elevator shaft. You stride right into the elevator. Out of the radio slulls emaciated whispers in almost tune. The door shrieks shut, next to you is an official from the, from, you decide she must be from the scriptorium, as if that's a thing someone can be from. She throws herself against the door, unfurls, off the blood wipes, throws herself against it again, then again, then slides her knife nails into the slits and screech rips the doors aghast wide, strides into the [[darkness->qopen1]] and falls from view. I dizzy into its spiral.

Trundling alone in the uncertain blank black with a slow roll of drywall patterns forming, deforming night clouds, the doors fidgeting frizzy electricity. Dry buzz flicker of the incredibly bright cool white industrial flourescents. White screams [[open->qopen1]] melting shapes' hard lines. Sterilized by the electric thrum from futures sundered foreign emanating eternal into omnipresence nows irradiant with lacerate neons to cascade voltricide reconstitutions of skin to suggestion, spirit of the desubstantial reciprocitifying char chiaroscuro coagulates to tattoo trembles of inky sunkens swallowing every last hint of could be some sun until strangely seems the scattered shardglints gloaming of a broken dawn under which we pray revel prey, revine us to rosehips hilts levers on the velleity levity of humiliated to skinjoke before the phantasmal funereal so might we suffer how so desperately we decry our personing unprivately. Ptolemy slips into the steam whistling from pipes webbing tighter and tighter until I slip into one and tubule plummet down stories into a strange basement where grinds metal upon metal as water wheels squeal up with the churning splurting up choking haze, stumbling I maze my way through the pipes webbing tighter and tighter until I slip up one and burst rocket up it to shoot out sucking heaps of ultrahumidity, dizzy into gears counterclockwise clanging, crunched between them boneless, slupping down into a vat where I react foam explode and scamper up the sides of the vat to voltspring racing down a hallway spilling to zigzag careens to a peeling plaster canyon lime green rusting to dank darks which for weeks I wander huffing the aerosol thickness of mites and motes increasingly desperate for air through coated lungs until I trip into a runoff rivulet that winds its way through mouseholes behind walls to splatter splash splunk me on an aridly sterile and cool. I sit up and ache. Ptolemy disappears behind a corner.

"You're being too quick about this, we need to wait for –" Ptolemy. "For your courage to arrive? I can't imagine the wait that will take. Now's the perfect time, now the hour of scars draws our lines." Arsinoe. "But with the Roman legion –" "Exactly! The Romans garrison the city; our commander Pothinus lies dead. The army already interprets this hostility as war. Give them a commander, a queen, and we can possess our city enough to interpret an [[invasion->qinvasion2]]." "You've spoken to them?" "They did not prove difficult to convince," Ganymedes. "To command the masses, render your immanence more fearful than where you wish to lead them, then let greed ease the rest. You need only to bestow a title upon a person to make them capable of a massacre."

"Good. I will give her the pretext. Let Egypt read her will, see how much it leaves to Rome." "Arsinoe, you're not being reasonable. We have to be thoughtful about this, find some way to -" "Reason your way out of this if you wish, but I will endure what must be borne, and through it shall emerge from the womb to the grave." "That's, but, Arsinoe, please -" "When the traitor besieged the city with Romans, did Berenice go sniveling to negotiate? No. She awaited the invaders in the palace faerie lights drenched to a temple dressed ash and amethyst in goddess elegance to die phantasm, queenly supremacy. Moondawn over the goregyre invited she who shall sacrilege her free of the burden of nonmysticism, smash her down as an idol no longer wearied of worship, so her roseway religion would be irrecoverable from the shards for those that suck mud to subsist. Blessed be her divine ineffable in these times murdered of her, as shall our daughters worship me." "Our daughters?" "Whomever proves themselves heaven of this strain, [[birthed->qinvasion2]] in the blood of the pretender. She will arise, as she has always, Egypt after Egypt." "But the army -" "We have one, don't we, Ganymedes?" "All slaves of the sun god shall die happily to preserve his daughter from soporific blanks." "That doesn't assuage me," Ptolemy.

"But you don't, this is no longer merely internal, because if you kill this Caesar, then –" Ptolemy. "We killed the Pompey they sent us, now this Caesar, next their next. The heads of their dictators will pay our taxes to their satisfaction." Arsinoe. "But Cleopatra –" I quiver electric bioluminescence to my name. "What about her? Look at me, Ptolemy. In the machine erase yourself to sentience the sparks or smash the machine to shape the sparks. You cannot overcome it, merely undergo it. Power enforces its projections, destinies ineluctable. The channels it chooses are who we are; we must confront the consequences of who we claim to be. Imprisoned in identity, morality compels our judgment: either assume who we are in humility and horror and realize our sin a razor, or we damn our face and fleur devoured by the devils to come. Hell aesthetics or celestial violence, in which will you wilt? Your sister has made her choice, and your wife has made mine. Decide who you will [[die->qinvasion2]] alongside." "Arsinoe, you're scaring me." "Life scares me! Leer across your ruinous land, where wasps zombify beetles so their larvae can feast their way out of the living carcass over months, where the cheetah chases gazelles to rip apart their weakest, where the saltflats lie littered with flamingo chicks that could not withstand the arduous marathon for ever elusive water. Death is coming for us: who will you let it be?" "I just, I don't know, okay, I don't know! I, but I wish things could go back to how they were, no, how they never were, I wish things could go back to how they never were."

"Perhaps you should see for yourself our position, come to understand its taste? Charmian, bring the traitor in." She drags in shackle rinkles to splay before the divan on the dais onto which I loll cherry nail floating points Caesar's attention towards this prisoner. "Perfumery, my darling, art of stabilities mixing in the furnace, bending without breaking objectives to inclusives, your taste tells you what counteractions sufficiencies require to compel their essences to capacities which bind us bizarre us volatile to [[venoms->qvenoms]]. Ought you to learn it, if wish you yourself as I am, monarch, the single bridge. Nothing teaches you to reign grander than mixing the oils of the earth to your sensuous malefestation. Perfume and poison are the same skill, the same mixtures, mistress in both, though one dances your scents to colors, the other collapses your senses a dance. Have you ever [[watched->qwatched]] the envenomed die?"

"I have, but I do not see the beauty in it." "Ah, perhaps you search for beauty where you should see majesty horror, what I am, how they address me, strychnine diluted in pear juice and apple blossom tincture, delicate mauve tones furring the tongue a taste of rustles of airy sweetness that even as you sense it slips into your limbs, spasms them to a child skipping in the field tripping, slowly dribbling sunshafts." I wave a vial sickly white chocolate to him like a wink, hand it to a handmaiden who hands it to Charmian, snuggle posing for him upon the divan, tonguing the grape proffered by a honey sash dress handmaiden as Charmian yanks open the prisoner's mouth, she linger the vial above his screaming open until I yawn devilish to nod grin, she swirls it, spills it, he swishes it forced to gargle and gasp, drops even the glass into his wild gnash and choke. Curlicue my fingers to Caesar with teeth seacliffs upon my lips lisping a lopsided purr. His knees raise his tunic as he steps up; the tanned raw muscle of a fitness subtly lickably voluptuous. In his chains the dying riots. "The precise dose changes with the mood. Too much, and you learn nothing of how others thrill your flavors; too little, and you fail to interpose on the unfolding. Ideally, you should be so febrile mystical in your venom you could not imagine how it might taste to another. Often I do not even know if they will die. The pleasure in having someone learn who you are, being unsure whether they shall succumb." "I imagine they always die." "Yes, well, the point is not to expect it. Genuinely, if they [[survived->qsurvives]], I would grant them their freedom." "Truly are you merciful." "Only in the Latin."

"I have seen several final feasts," he nods. "Ah, good, then this will not surprise you." I smother kiss hemlock lipstick, cuddle against the thrashing against his binds prisoner, fang into his Adam's apple, eat its flesh, dribbling down my chin the juices. His eyes bulge wide white; he spews spume. The thrashes accelerate until they rapidly decelerate. I spool out his organs into a soaksofa on which I recline, squishing a tongue tendril to invite Caesar to plop down next to me, but he sits too rigidly for me to lean against him, so I nudge him away towards the edge of the divan, he may as well stand like this. The condemned gnashes, thrashes, gurgles. Caesar is fed grapes from a handmaiden. Froths pathetic the jolter agonized, spumes a gutwrenched wail. "This is what trust leads you to. This animal trusted power, but he cannot handle my taste. He betrayed me, so his body betrays him, and whatever dross deeds he once comported drains to the gutters. The disdain this curling worm earns with his writhes should flow through you, Emperor of Romans. If you are imperiously true, then why fear your retinue? Let them shortfall you." "What I would give for a legate with a shred of your wit." "Give me your completion, and I will see it real." "Real? Isn't this the land of mirages?" I lace the back of my wrist along his stubble. "Gauge what is within you, whether it shall survive the mirage." "Nothing [[survives->qsurvives]] but what I decree." "Ah, then we agree." "I am not used to agreements, merely obeyance." "Oh, you wish to command me? And what would you have me do?" "Do the dunes bow to demands?" "To the sandstorm soul."

"Triumvir!" A centurion races into the room. "The Egyptians are attacking!" "You're attempting to trap me?" Caesar grabs my wrist. "Not I, but the one who wishes she was," I wrench my wrist free. "They've raised part of the army against us. This corpse was party to that plot. The rest will join him soon. Charmian, dispose of it, will you? Come, my northern wind, there is a special passage that leads out of the palace." "I do not run from those who test me. Soldier, how does my attachment fare?" "Sir, we must retreat, the Egyptians are fierce and many." "You should know the difference between retreat and repositioning," I. "Your fleet controls the harbor, so you should muster your forces there." "Do not lecture me on tactics! I have seen more battles than you mirrors." "Which is why I am better versed in tricks. Alas, do as you will, I have never failed to attend a sacrifice, especially one so senseless, so delicious." He strides to the [[legionnaires->qlegionnaires]] barking orders. I snatch perfume vials then sylph behind him.

I forget what dreams are, especially mine. Don't recall I ever knew them. But doesn't it matter now in this noise. [[Violence->qcast]] rush denial a demon infinitely more elegant than the eglantine dreams childspindles the spider whose eight eyes know what angles lure us. Stitches travel down our jugulars to hearts better beaten. Lynx orbs in the ocher studious. For a second I loosen my tongue all the way to my toes. Wandermind warrior will I wilt or revoltage the advantage.

Only vulnerability weakens us human, and because we can be crushed, because the plague can with us be incinerated, we must be crushed, our individuality must burnstroke portraits, in our touch disconnected, seal away the struck I am, who whimpers before you, and nothing damns us reviling kin more than when we weep, you will [[force->qcast]] away everyone when you rip the veil to reveal your insane and into the room shuffle the streaktrickle muscles, blastball eyes, redwire maw, coils and coils of fibers gnarled in a wretch, when you vomit up your indicative, when must they clean you from their floor, like a tumor they will abhor you, like a tumor you ignore waddling into the scratch yellow slush to sit in the buzz plastered in a glazed okay, day after grueling after the stretch, the stuck, the wear, the wane, through the cracks in your movements they peer into your brain, peel back your barbs to glimpse abomination honesty cavorting in the stench lopsided in loose skin, and this is why they leave. They keep you in a cage, because you're not strong enough to. Isn't that love as hateful as it has to be? You don't love someone until you loathe them with every strain of your heart attacked.

Blur static flashes black mush through my cavities and out of my neck that serpents several strange paths to foresee forestall all I cannot and will not and must. Withstands the sufferer the inexorable some dignity doppelganger? Accumulate into your prison your misprisions so you can be misunderstood a lie that elides from those you desperately do not want to [[hurt->qcast]] you. Grime uncyclicals revolve like locks turning to let what in? Had I nails long enough to rip apart night skies would the sands be soaked in starblood deeper empyreans than echoes their scorch crimson our buried. Nightstriders silhouettes in the empty terrain tapping my nails upon the blasted, muted but in your veins you feel a bass. Bone in your throat choke as several slug tongues yank it up as sinks it into your esophagus and yank it up which pulls out your indistinguishable organ raw, quivering slightly stale on metal sterilized, the slugs keep slimiming up your intestines cavitavalcade, but they will source none of what passes inside your come to pass.

Remember how my mother used to pretend to smile when she saw me, infinitely sweeter a silene forced through soil where nothing grows. Mirrored I used to practice from a frown, smile, frown, smile, grimace, grinning ear to ear, past them, a grin further than my skin stencil thin, to my mother I would return them, but never right the performance, because I would mean them. Sought to make it ghostly, to smile as a way of staying away, but I would bounce to her dress and treasure the warmth flurry of feeling there. She used to call me her honeybee, which as a child I loved for the sake of being anything to her, but now I, I cherish, for all the, wrong... because she didn't want me there, buzzing around her, poking into her, sucking at her attention, but I was, that's what I was, so I yearned that this is how a mother loves, not despite the way they drain your soul, but through them to the shady grove in our hollows, and even though I know that's not true, it is vulnerable, so it's true, because she did love me, even if I never knew how, even if, when for months only I sat beside her inscription, through scabbed phlegm she would weep Cleopatra's name, then Ptolemy, then when I would meekly clean her and press my forehead into her cheekbone gap, would mutter mine, if only in her throat could I hear it, so I climbed into it, when those ghouls tried to bury her into her throat I incisioned, they found me trying to burrow into her chest to replace her heart, [[hear->qcast]] where the voice came from, what it was from, where I was in it, how I could vitalize.

In the process of am not syllableless, doused, shivers. Inertia. Dispersion person. Listless persistence. Forcing to forging on, forgoing the non. Lack rush raze umbral rondo, recursion to the aversion augmented to a version. Which shall we [[cast->qcast]] this?

A general with too much of a beard to trust attempts martial control as his chariot swerves sideways for him to alight. He holds his helm in his hands. "Mighty Pharaoh, the Romans have been driven from the palace." "Good, then –" "Driven from it?" I impend. "You've let them escape?" "They, err, my queen, they –" "You will address the queen on your knees," Ganymedes kicks his shins to a kneel. "My queen, they –" "You had them surrounded! How could you possibly, you outnumbered them twenty to one! Hours ago you were promising to bring them before me." "Well uh, my queen, we had them in the courtyard, had surrounded them, and we were managing to –" "And? And?" "The uh, but the princess led the party through a [[passage->qpassage]] we did not know. We followed them into the mansions district, but our forces were not um, arrayed there, so they had the –" "She's going to escape, I knew this would happen! I tried to [[warn->qwarn]] you, but you wouldn't listen!" Ptolemy.

"Of course you did! Don't blither the obvious. We've both known the ways she has subverted us our entire lives. Ever receding into our vanishing horizon. Are they going to flee the city, Ganymedes?" I. "I would not imagine immediately, netjeret. The Princess need not convince the Roman of their pride and anger. They will regroup from the assault, then advance. The Romans have held the [[harbor->qdrive]] since they sailed in; likely they will retreat to the isle of Pharos, barricade inside the lighthouse. From there..." he gestures. "How is the front for the Heptastadion?" "It remains in contention, my queen," the general. "If she's headed to Pharos, then she'll have to cross the causeway. The boats they hazard to shore are being burned?" "Yes, my queen. Your archers are using the resins you commanded." "And the Greek fire?" "Our scholars are um, having trouble recreating your recipes, my queen. The texts appear to be rather uh, vague, about the method of um, combination. The pyrite in particular is proving difficult to use." "Well, forget it then, just, just focus on driving the Romans into the sea, drown every last one of them, build another bridge of their bodies, one that leads right to Rome, that we may deliver our harvest to them." "Yes, your majesty, it shall be done, my queen."

"She wants to defy us until the very end. There will be no final kiss. She will not accept us who we are in this life nor the next. We must simply erase her, it's the only way." I. "And how do you suggest we do that?" Ptolemy. "Well, the Romans are amassed in the harbor. If she's escaped, she'll make her way to their base on the isle of Pharos, but the Heptastadion is the only way they can flee to Pharos, and we can cut her off there. Ganymedes, redouble our forces there. [[Drive->qdrive]] the Romans into the sea so they cannot reach her. Drown every last body that does not bend to the southern gale. But you must promise me not to kill her. I will hound through seven afterlives any vermin base enough to touch her." "Your will commands our shadows of wills," Ganymedes.

Ride forth the unavoidable, collapse them into your. Pressure. Press through the lies. Crest the mys. Pressurized. Pressure eyes peer through the emanations seeking a threshold to cross to pure in the isolate unraveled, rhapsody of the thorns of the rose plucked. They will touch this and watch me wilt untouched. They will know me goddess in absences. Bring me my chariot, ride forth, let them gawp at me upon my mount Olympias. Crests of the quakes and cracks curses sieve the flipped stage my signature. Bursts from the earth my blind wyrm, spikes towers to crash greater our rubble, upon it I slam into the battle, crushing the general, killing the crowd, entwined in the death, as of it as in it, at last break our songs beneath unsuppressed sobs, the drained ghostly in forgotten nights glows raw the rupture, a reality, the chance to be broken [[more->qgrander]] than brokenness.

The general remounts his chariot and rides. The speed of his whip animates me, my tongue drags back his chariot to watch it go again, the dust cake crumbles on my palette. How to hold onto [[stray->qstray]] sparks of the rend? Unincluded in it? [[Racing->qracing]] into the distance between the merge and my declension. Fingers rattling on the wall edge while you peer into a room which translates distant conversations in an alien bass: what would happen if you went in? Would you hear, is there in there a here to find? Heretofore certainties [[molt->qmolt]] their rays to whitescale spectral shivers to mists. If you touch, then you lose its [[sincerity->qsincerity]]. I am the void of all that was without me.

Milling about a violence that will not break nor blend with mine, so I shall overwrite it. The invaders amass in the Syrian quarter; no doubt the Syrians have heard she is now their queen, trading Egypt to the Romans in return for Syria; always trust a Syrian to believe in selling the goods of others; hence why they deserved to be subjected to Rome, they also idolators of currencies; I'm so disappointed in her, that she didn't recognize my insult in exiling her to Syria, that her retribution didn't involve a renunciation, rather grander and [[grander->qgrander]] grows her craven as she as before ventures to Syria to buy from the Romans their blood; tried to cast her out, to undo the past, sending her back to Syria, reversing the invasion, and the reversion begins now, beheading their conqueror Pompey, then driving the Romans out, and in their absence her absence will dissipate, and in the rain I will taste her. Wash us clean of death, rain of a thousand veins. Raising my self to sword I process demoness to the fray. Taste of my tombs, you seekers of Egyptian glories, drink desiccation from my epigynous oasis, dew venom of my deluge dawn.

Brush into the fire firepainter to see if the hues imbue your reflection with truth. If you cannot be glimpsed, eclipse. In the annihilation they will witness voltunveiling my occlusions. Hidden sun harrowed will they sweat wearied to shattered bones. Dwell lioness over their dragged to caverns. I immensify; I loom; the city is my shadow; my fangs lightning upon them; I feast goddess upon their doom, my loom, upon which I will weave [[grander->qgrander]] a scheme than ever before an Egypt. Massacre creator, cremation angel.

In the sun glinting final deaths. Devouring their blossoms a bonfire. So many stories spilled out a velvet carpet on which I wander harvesting my externally invested. Roman and Egyptian melt together one seam I suck leech seal my wound. Splatter paints vibrance my lusts to vividiffer, sectioned to quartered to draw in which we barracks the bestial estuary of essences. I will devour all that - Shocks whitehot melt flesh. In an instant the one before me bones. Too much noise, no noise but the noise, static. Through the aftermath snow tottering bizarre soaked gawping at the beauty, annihilation's gently coda, [[wails->qwails]] gently lapping on my bare. Torn fragments small enough for ravens to swoop in and steal. Mist gray ashfall plumed dark plum juice trickles. Stringing [[guts->qguts]] lines like binds retaining some in the bleached bone and charred buried abomination titan awoken by the awestruck woundsong and might arise to swallow the stars to douse the candle upon humanity and reign cataclysm. Urn scent grassblades bend to the billowing tail of the tempest to trail the way to where on the dunes the monuments glare impassive to the bemused [[soulshreddeds->qsoulshreddeds]] shuffling to join their kingdom unspoken.

Is it wrong to say I wanted this, when I never wanted any of this? Guilty of what to what extent? How should I discern where I am buried when all I can claw is the darkness smother? Better alternatives existed, maybe, for those better alterities I am forced to envy, but I will prove out my arraigning reality as substantive by overstitching its negations, from their elision I will a reign congeal. Into the appal I participate pluripotent, from apocalypse shall I generate, atroctitresses of my [[magnificence->qgrander]] an idol. Slaughter all those who refuse me so I will become undeniable.

On the ground the torso of an Egyptian limps up ribbony limbs to me, saliva blurshes weak beneath [[desperate->qsoulshreddeds]]. Over the torso I lean, my lips stalk from my face to droop to its forehead a kiss, then my lips recede, and I close my eyes, hold my breath, my heel stamps into the throat to quell the suffering. Go in peace, nobly blankness, blessed of [[starkness->qwails]].

Forlorn fugues haze the dripmind to [[blurpulse->qblurpulse]]. All is it hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. Ligaments [[slashed->qslashed]] stumbles to crumble. Through the gray a phantom [[calls->qcalls]]. I cannot hear it. A phantom calls to me, and I strain to, struggle to, cannot... dead nerve neuron static in my medulla.

Loss. I wanted to hold. Wanted to be. There was love in me. I. We always want our lives to turn out, but instead, trauma after trauma, they curl inward. Shattered into self inclusion. Isn't this misery more of me than any other I might suppose? Perhaps I, maybe all this is my all, who am I to argue, I who convoke such scenes? Lacerated. Annulled to annihilation. Identity soully as a wound. Staggering through the carnage unable to separate. I just want to hold her, Berenice, in her composure moment magnificence when beheaded, shoulders still squared to the world, facelessness as a metaphor disjuncture to literal. I just want to be held by her. Want to be more than this, this and this and this, always this, but I must be this, because there is nothing else. I must be this. I must become beautiful, because there is nothing else, because she is, and she is my nothing else, here affirmed forever, a forever I must assume, goddess as I presume. "Netjeret, there you, you're safe, praise Isis, please let me breathe you in a blessing, my Hatshepsut. Noble Pharaoh, this way, she's alive." Ganymedes. "Arsinoe! What's happened? What is all this, how could this..." Ptolemy. "We did it, my love, we've won. She lies naked before us. We brought her to bear herself." I. "I don't, what –" "She is wiser, more powerful, more cunning, yes, she is everything that destroys us, and now she is forced to admit her wretchedness, her wreckingness, her hideous [[facticity->qfacticity]]. We have made her real, and in so doing destroyed her. Now we bleed to the same gutters."

"What do you mean? How do our forces fare? Is the battle lost?" Ptolemy. "What do you mean how do our forces fare? Can nothing bludgeon you to sentience?" "What are you talking about? The army, Arsinoe, the army, how does it fare? Tell me we are not destroyed!" "Yes, utterly [[annihilated->qannihilated]], wonderful, perfection, her people have evaporated her exhale, forever shall [[she->qshe1]] be queen of her own [[ghost->qghost2]], mirage [[majesty->qmajesty2]] of the crisis soul."

"Annihilated! Annihilated! How could you let this happen? You were, and you, Ganymedes, you absolute blunt brain, you scarab ball, is this your strategic genius then? You've led us to ruin! You ought to be executed! She will do it for us, I suppose, when the Romans reach us. May Serapis show you justice, since she won't!" Ptolemy. "How can you stain every painting in which you figure?" I gnash. "Appreciate this triumph with me. Hold my hand and waltz with me in the debris devil defiance." "No, Arsinoe, you've, you've led me to this, you've, and I trusted you, but you've ruined our chance, you're out of your mind, you're worse than she is, she, Cleopatra, Caesar, they're going –" "Curl those names up in your coward's tongue, or I'll obliterate in a curse your [[hearse->qbody]] mouth." "You shut up! I trusted you. I put so much in you, and you promised me that things would be different, but you're as manic and inept as you've always been. Don't you see why you were never involved in the royalties? Because, because you're like this, you've always been, you've never become different!" "Don't you, Ptolemy, don't you –" "I should never have listened to you! Everything you do leads to disaster. You've always been an artist of mistakes, and I mean that as the only possible compliment I can give you. We'll put you in care, some temple somewhere, where you can be quarantined, but I have lost all hope in a cure."

"Why are you anxious in our hour of assertion magnified? Who cares what this outcome is? Don't you, but, but Ptolemy, how can you say these awful things, don't you love me?" I. "I... precious illusion, I believed in you." "Believe in it still, please, this ruin is our truth, believe in this, our paradise has erased the earth. Look how changed we are, look how much this mirror reflects our imagedination. We are here; there is no here beyond us." "That doesn't make sense! You're speaking in riddles. You promised me you wouldn't –" "I'm not speaking in riddles, I'm speaking to you in my sense. Why won't you hear how I echo inside you? Why do you refuse to reside in me?" "Inside me you weave nightmare. I'm waking up the realization you're nothing more." "Maybe because you're so empty you empty me!" "Yes, I've emptied myself of you. I will explain to Cleopatra everything." "Why would you –" "Because she understands there is a world outside us! You want to live in your nightmare snowglobes, but nobody else can fit inside, the lines that lead to you congeal an impassable morass. You are unfit to be queen. What could you ever be queen of?" "You will not speak to a goddess this way," Ganymedes. "I am Pharaoh of Egypt, God of the Souls of Her and All, I will speak as I will. Know your place, eunuch." "Know yours!" I cling to his shirt, but he slaps me off. "Some pharaoh you are, kneeling to shatterer Egypt to slurp the oils. Rise up, rise up with me, refuse these invaders with the sneer written in our statues. Rattle them like a sistrum to scare off Set. You are the grandeur that unites us, nation us in your poise, signify our –" "I am a fugitive in my own city, thanks to your futile cruelties. You've broken everything good around you. Should anything grow, it will be to spite your salts." "Is that so? Is that so? Then I will [[show->qbody]] you my spites, you will dwell in the hate I have cultivated an Egypt eternal."

"Utter madness do you howl, you banshee. You've ruined everything, and this is what you have to say? You're worse than Cleopatra, you're a nightmare deeper!" Ptolemy. "Yes, I am a nightmare deeper, don't you love me so?" "No, you're diseased, you're flawed and broken beyond repair, there's no -" "How can you say this in our hour of victory?" "Victory! Victory! Unbelievable, you are, I refuse ever again to believe in you, you are prayer death, you are goddess of degradations, ruinous shadow of grandeur Cleopatra, I should have seen, I should have known!" "How can you sound so repulsive? How can your voice descend from heavens?" "I say what is real, which is my sense, which I see is beyond your ignorance." "You'd relinquish everything we are, we still can be?" "I have nothing to relinquish, thanks to your ruinous, vapid, vacant, I should have always trusted Cleopatra, she's right about you." "Don't you say that, no, no, abjure me if you wish, but you cannot say that name to me! Please, my love, never mention my murderer again, you blaspheme my presence with the great denier." "Why should I not say the name of my wife?" "You animal! How could you? Why, why are you so base? Slugs leave behind better stories than you." "You're the animal, you're feral! Mother always said you couldn't be brought to your role." "Shut up, shut up!" "You cannot [[silence->qbody]] me, as you have our people, our destroyed, eah, everything, you've ruined everything, look around you! You caused this, you are this!" "I, I..."

"I should have listened to them that you, you, I should have listened to myself, to know that you've been broken for so long. Cleopatra, at least, she -" Ptolemy. "No, don't, you can't say her -" "But she knew though, she knew in the ways you don't, and, and Berenice always said you weren't suited for court, that you –" "Shut up, you monster, shut up, shut up, you're not allowed to say her name, my name. How are you so disgusting? Already the die is cast, you've come to the precipice, why will you not jump, just jump with me, become beautiful, why won't you die into me eternal love? Your people, look around you, everything is dead, and you are their symbol, how dare you profane your purpose scrabbling about the dust for sustenance towards a desecrated barren tomorrow? Are you a god, do you hold our souls in the balance? Then assume your place in the dirge, burn down with your kingdom our king, glorious Pharaoh entombed, the forever of endeds." "No, I, I'm done with your treachery, with your sickness. I will get them to see my point of view, they, they need me, they'll reinstate me." "So you'll go crawling before the invaders, begging to suck from them vassaldom? What symbol will your [[body->qbody]] be then?" "I will see what shreds I can retain from the you calamity."

"Ptolemy, how could you, how can you, I can't believe you, I, I... Ganymedes," expression like skin melting, eyes ebony drops, "you promised me, when I would need to see beauty in violence, loss, you would drown a slave for me. Please, you're, you're the only one whose promises have not wilted before my mistaken humanity." Sidelong studies he my drawn intensity semirecognizing the resolution darklit: is it despair, strength, bliss, terror at the lack of difference? Creases show our faces where we wished them natively so that our borne might at least have seemed natural. Steeped is my gaze in the infinity too little to rise to see. He chuckles softly the cry those without that luxury learn, he shakes his head, he darkens so that we, we have the same mien, I look at me on him and see myself smile. His neck bobs, shoulders blant, he grabs Ptolemy, carries him towards a well. "Hey! You, what are you, ah, stop, I will have you killed! Stop this, I order you, I command your soul! Arsinoe, tell this, tell this eunuch to, hey! I am, don't you, help! What is, no, no, Arsinoe, Arsinoe!" Into my welling. Ganymedes' muscly arms holds the thrashes underneath my refusal to deign to rage, my face on his face locks contact, tautology slowly less true as his face morphs back to his to a you fully at the moment the thrashes stop. He relaxes to a sigh tension. "Egypt is dead." "Egypt has long been death, grows only grander as we decease." "Shall I carry him to a tomb?" "Leave him, he has not earned the painted facade. Let his survivors drink of him. We carry ourselves to ours." His mouth hangs open only slightly for a few seconds before spreading to a mull. He nods. He leads the [[way->qway2]].

Slashed arteries streets burgeon ruin bursting seams by which we tie our sense to a single scene, dizzy with the overload like eyeballs drifting apart in spins, nauseous with the steps perpendicular to the place where they ought to drill distorts the zoom into the convex lens the lurch that yawsplits shapes to the shadow of a tesseract where the gaps, the gaps but not the facts, surface like a sea and another sea at thirty seven degrees clashing over the sailor of neither. Mistakes beget me given as I am to a headrush flanging, rut gap gyre, thirstborn [[dervish->qcarnage]], purpose to the absurd brink pure. Accident repetition rivulets generations over pebbles, rebels of the driven straining to peaks beyond their possible, total derision sweeps us to the sea universal universally. Incisions in our souls the stream, against the tide surge, against the trembles stride, until spectral is the pride, erosion of our dignified, identify with the tidal gloss of the I, light sparkle suicide. Perdition is permission to try, religion is alive, our lives in the eyes of the dead. Everything we are accumulates from everything each of us has lost. Truss shards sharp bury bones broken, alone of our titan conduits collide in our confluence chorus an us without confidence, providence abomination of our together failed whys, afterlife, fossil impressions of fever dreams impassioned. Before you gravestone where beneath a body lies, mutual absence and presence, lay flowers for all with them forgotten. Besotted with ghosts, nullified reciprocity of whispers from no mouths of disappeared, yesteryear's rainbow arcs pain painted on mosaic minds, hosts of misbegotten mysteries, ossified transistors, no, no more unified, sparks without a pulse, an evulse without a sister. They will find me misforever.

Slink I recomposed back into the darkness troubled, a trouble in pasts tense. My own sister, again I, after everything, she, she! They will so willingly kill me, how can, why, isn't there any, but, but! How am I to feel but anguish? Should I fight? Why not simply... Composed of more than these writhings, how do I sound outside the symphony? There must, initially, be some nascent self, absolute you, degraded to identity by each of the ways we are displaced into scenes that play us out wrong, develop themes only true to the juxtaposition, and whoever it is that daily stares returns when the punches level us to at glossy linoleum gazing dimly shut eyelids recanter the color sepulchral retina urns, redeployments replies in tongues faintly familiar burns, foreign agony you slowly, will slowly learn hollowing to survive your yearnings recog eyes. Grief of who you are not, cannot ever reach, deep beneath the motives absolutely is. Extends you your limited choices to evering narrowed preselections in which dress supposedly express whatever shattered image is asserted in order to own its immanence, dying into a this is authenticity. Worn down granule cannot contain what else could be truth. They want to find me Roman, so they will, I will build up Rome unto them, so that in it an Egypt they cannot perceive can nest, so that in some tomorrow I may again, doused in familial blood afresh, sense myself an Egypt, some Egypt more than this blood, hers, mine, or, or, well. Into the woodwork I crawl and spool out a Caesar, from my side births thousands of [[legionnaires->qlegionnaires]], we amass, we will meet their expectations, because at least in them may I seek nativity.

In sconces flames glow low reds auroral serpents through the tall marble pillars darkness shrouded. Sandstone capitals flare fiends fantastical to pounce. Caesar at the front of the column commands his legionnaires towards the processionary, but two waves of torches froth over us, screams in Egyptian batter the clank of shields. Undulations of beset by deaths, through torn membranes rush spikes, the membrane reforms truncated, isolated a line rallies to pincer. Echo booms the voices billions a resounding victory. Caesar panics to me wordless, and I flourish my wrist to cyan blast a borehole through them to a collapsed panel unveiling a hidden passage. I shrug nod him there, he orders his legionnaires to follow. We flee into the darkness, the darkness chases after us emberous tongues. "Where does this go?" Caesar, breathless. "Wherever I want to." "Our legion holds the harbor. We should make our way there, regroup, repel these rebels!" "Rebels? Do remember this is an internal affair of the state of Egypt." "What are you -" "Nothing, nothing, just follow me." "Which way?" Caesar perhaps wonders if there is a way. How often have I wondered the same thing. Uncertain awe billows over the thin cable of deferred mistrust, shows this question brings him at last to me as I will be reached. "Whichever I [[way->qway1]]." "You and your -" Sunshine [[burst->qburst]].

Ashen white like midnight light I wander corpse labyrinths. Sojourner of afterlives, in none of their peacefuls. Flanging across fields that falsify the attempt to trust my feet hold upon daysolids. Where am I am who begs the gutted slopes to no one where. Buildings leveled, bodies mashed, myself threshed, collated in this [[carnage->qcarnage]], isn't it so? Who's to know? How shall I any more than this rubble reign? Pulverized verified. She has made me honest. Maybe I should thank her alongside the infinity of my hate. No sign nor star interrupts the wastes to waymark its phantasmal overlay of Alexandria. Subimposed upon steps that seem like I see them in a ripple's reflection's distortion. A voice like a yesteryear fills me with how I cannot fit into them. I travel into its warmth frigid. A voice calls to me like a broken lyre recast into a nightmare.

Immanence of the lackwise rush concusses me staggering and frameless like a stained glass figurine shattering panerift glazerain, vanilla and hyacinth desynth stuttering freeze frames mosaics, assemblage of slit arteries. Crevasse consciousness, begging stars through slits. Drawn in chalk, fantasy engraved to drift away stainless, or maybe so is the fantasy, jotted a joy that need not endure to grave. Oceanic: depths beyond placement. Should I not wish to be washed away? Spectral displacement of the image to disimmanence. Should I not yearn to be cast to winds, spellunbound? Or is this isn't this the opposite of what I, am I being hypocritical? Shouldn't I be reaping from the ruin an eternal? But how should I find it, feel it, in this [[frayed->qcarnage]]? How am I supposed to, or, ahh, isn't there anyone who, always I have to somehow manage to, but what I can't, or, or, Alexandria before me cadaver, wish nothing else.

City and its fire. Shrieks of legions of loosed souls. Fear, natural, animal, wretched, recoils him, but I rearrange him to this stage, we sway through slaying under huntress moonlights, summoner's circles steps in bound raises our flushed faces to more than this death. Into me locked wounded glances of one who has killed so many and loved so few that the struggle spear speaks to him strangers from those there with him inside his cavernous I collapse, rockfall tenderness, damp embrace of suppression darkness, the cold, the gloomy, the echoes, nowhere to go, no one will see. Crushed into countenance behind mask dissonates, anxieties and incapacities never to be surfaced, because the surface is their injury. Want to hold him how he believes he holds this second of his future manifesting. In the dark as we run I meander mutters, cannot quite, but I have to fail in order to fulfill, right, aren't the first words always filler utterances, sounds to parse the gaps, as you wade into your expressive potential stillness, the first steps in shallows, then deeper, deeper, past the formulaic, the inane, into the insane gemberous, immersed in its depths, drowning until coextension completions gush in insubmission, overwhelms any emptiness of it, if only you can, if you can bravely, is it brave, isn't it vulnerability, fear, the search for an embrace that reduces the space between... but he isn't even, he doesn't, not now, in the [[chaos->qtumult]], in the killing, when most he should, sense this my sensibility, touch into my translucence, orchestrator: I freeze us from the fray, crystals placidity glistens celeste immaculate as reclined on pillowy pellucids we cloudmilk the muddled. "Why won't you, and anyone, see beneath all this me within the icicle's gleam, could you ever see me as a Cleopatra as much in a touch as a Gaius? You arise to the demands of a Caesar, and so fulfilled see they fit to call you, but you are more than their demands, are you the one who demands as I am more in the soul than the seconds that strip it, arisen into the gravity concentrator, the name that bids them an era, its textures, its tenderness scars? Structures ours deicide us, entice us draining to its contours, depths beneath a single surface interchangeable, lost, nothing remains but the body. If I bash into your skull, were one of these spears to pierce you, draw forth your hiddenness, is there a nakedness sourced in the sanguine storm? The further we anoint the streams that feed our names, the less any place can contain us, swinging candelabra spillfire shadows drip dancing on gawping pupils to settle in them a sun which grows their garden secrets under which are buried our dead in the conduits of our furthest depths. Why should we survive this, who would be there if we did? Do you feel from your statues? In your busts, do you dream? Why not die, if it kills you not to? The problem for a queen is she is one place, one people, incarnated godhood chained to a self worship. We feel as we do, forced to be a mastery, the master in the mirror is the medium, autochthon artist, but I, I am an undefined, protean in describabbles, those who resist my boundless empress me in compass, I am all the unknown in the bleeding to reach. Ghosts dance my polytones, the bones of my colossus bridge my whys keystones. Why should you see me as who I am, when that has never been enough for me?" "Is there an enough for you?" "You may ask the graves I will polyinhabit."

Purred quiet the stunning of sunshine swallows his resistance, relishing taste of his gravel certainty in its interrogative, how would my voice sound in his throat, so I slip through his mouth to crush the rising originality, minnowing: "Only where we share a tongue does our communion deobjectify difference, as you are here in need of me I need you, not because you have anything to give, nor for any purpose nor power, but because we silt the same, you and I, believe and become alike in the way our nations will depose enthrone us. Alexandria has been raised against us, but soon too will Rome arise against us; will I survive more than a throne, can you become enough to insist your enthroned? What a city needs is an idol, some terror they can believe is theirs, a warmth from inside them suited to a simile newness dawn. You must make them make you who they wish they were within your apparitions. We must be changed entires lapping upon either shore. Sink who sail us, stable deathtwinned, you and I can coalesce siesms eyes." Tense grip holding my channel in his throat, then loosen, he coughs, I caress his cheek, we splash back to the [[tumult->qtumult]]. Unisoned turn we to the legionnaires, speaking in tone, in time, in rhythm, in fever pitch hurricane radials wheeling in fireworks petals spirals halos for our unsuspended sign. Tandem striders they follow us at first confused as we lead the way, as I lead the way, I glance back to see Caesar's needing, the uncertainty of which way as I answer which way.

Out of an alley we shoot into a skirmish. Shields shimmer the pendulum swings. The cries of those who die when too many others die for them to be heard a lost voice. Phalanx crag rasping through froth to a cabernet moon reflected in the wrack. Clouds chaos obscure skydancers as we slip a kissed whisper to the silent mutters of the [[helldriven->qhelldriven]]. Playful winks gauge the shapes their [[crashing->qcrashing]] makes as I brush through them paints to please me. To his people will we go, taste them, gauge their vogue in seashelling polychromes, these crawling from depths to embattleds force gleam circlets perhaps I shall bangle, depends how sufficiently they defend dress their place to lace, if their marina a diamond is. Bees about a honeycomb them in the foam.

We reach the quavering legion line. "Triumvir! You're alive!" "The triumvir survives!" "Huzzah!" "No rebel has life enough to take mine. Do we hold the docks?" "For the moment, sir, but the Egyptians are too many. Your lieutenants command us to retreat to the isle." "I command it. We'll hold the harbor, send ships up the Nile, they'll beg their scraps from the dunes. Shadow abattoir, starve them a slaughter." "Yes sir! Marcus, Marcus! Over here, hey! We'll send you to the strategium, sir. Marcus, escort the triumvir's party to the lighthouse." "Yes sir! Follow me sir. Legionnaires, to the isle!" "Huzzah!" "To the isle!" "Pull aside, soldiers, pull aside, the triumvir moves!" "To the side, to the side, make way for the triumvir!" "Huzzah, the triumvir!" "On Pharos a pharaoh," Caesar grins at me. "Shall you come, my queen?" "Depends how deep into Egypt your power grows." "Ha! We'll see how coy you play when I bring your sister to her knees. Marcus! Jupiter's wrath, soldier, how shall we cross such a bridge? Not a gnat could breathe in such a crowd." "Yes sir, we'll make a way sir. Make way for the triumvir! Make way, make way! Oi, out of the –" "Sorry sir, they've ordered the ballista here." "The ballista? On the causeway? Are you serious?" "Sir, Legate Ventidius ordered us to –" "The triumvir orders his way through! Move aside your –" "Sir, but –" "Move! Move!" "Volley incoming!" "Shields, ho!" "Make way, make –" A winged messenger crashes into the crowd, knocking several into the sea. "Triumvir! A message from Rome! The Senate reinstates the traitor Cicero under the auspices of your ally Brutus. Mark Antony demands an answer for this turn." "For the sake of Minerva! Wait for me on the –" Another winged messenger slams into the crowd, into the sea several. "Triumvir! A message from Africa! Your enemy Scipio regroups Pompey's forces near Thapsus." "That's, why would, can't you –" Another winged messenger plummets from above, pinning a soldier's throat under his sandals. "Triumvir! A message from Africa! The traitor Cato unites his legion with the traitor Scipio." Caesar headbutts an archer in his way who was aiming towards the shore, and he spins around to release the arrow into Marcus, who totters gurgling curses, trips into a nearby medic, dozens crunch beneath a trample. Another winged messenger bowls through the row just beyond Caesar, which reverberates back through the denseness to fling Caesar to the edge teetering. "Triumvir! A message from Syria! The king Pharnaces repledges his support to the Pompeyan faction after the news from Egypt." "You idiots, get out of my –" "Out of our way! We're reinforcing the front!" "You get out of the way! The triumvir is here, he's trying to –" "Out of our way! The triumvir has returned! We're bringing him paper for orders." "The triumvir is here!" "Yes, the triumvir is here, huzzah! We must bring him –" "No, the triumvir is right here!" "No, he's at the docks, that's why we have to push through to the front. Out of our way!" "No, he's right here!" "No, we must reinforce him, out of the way!" "Out of our way!" "I don't have time to argue with –" "Look for yourself, he's right –" A winged messenger splatters the crowd into Caesar who spills into the bay clutching a wad of documents. Several soldiers dive after him to drag him back to the Heptastadion, but, proficient swimmer, he shrugs them off, which they interpret as him drowning, so they grope after him, but nothing of the splashes sinks into the chaos on the bridge. Perhaps I cannot rely on the Romans. I suppose I ought to nurse them our [[victory->qvictory]]. Must do as I must again and again, no matter how and who it annihilates. I cannot blame them their [[novicity->qnovicity]], we have millennia more experience, which means I am weary and soaked with death.

Born closeness to stars a distance, no summits reach your emptiness openness, we break through the surface to be soaked in new depths breathless. Skies mock us with beautiful without us. Nativity is the only condition worth flailing out of the peat a gasp, to believe it trills on, on, and someone hears. Achieve the eternal only to feel from your depths your freedom fleeting into an infinity that cannot contain your ash. Forlorn record its slipping away, one more incomprehensible wrought from your once believed, and you believed so much, in the time when emotions seemed timeless, when contact was a fountain. The one sensation exclusive to youth: the tangibility of accident. Grayworn to the dustnumb drillwhines the enghosting repose, so composed the deed dressed in our impasse acting, an actress glorious upon the tension unagreed to the dimming applause. We exhaust upholding our worlds as one by one the weakest are [[crushed->qdeath1]].

Aerial dive coiling foamskirts wavewalker blur I over the bay dread blessing. Deep navy blastwaves hurricane from my flashing pearl laceration of the hurricane crystalline levitation of the nadir, gravitational to the sunder through which sears new horizon, my untrue horizon. Hundreds of Romans fling into the sea. Both rebel and religious Egyptians are struck back beyond their spines to perceive the arc of my malice. How the heart rends, autumn leaves its abandonment glow, reveals the lifedeath dazzle. We could say so much more than this gore, but best to ply the wounded affect, want her to see how deeply she affects me, so the [[death->qdeath1]] of love binds us to the powers that should have birthed it all along. Tears tell all the smiles barred belatedly beautiful. Bewitch the soul acid a stance before the riven.

Through the storm a spark ignites the lighthouse transition between shifting uncertains, so a fortress we built it, citadel of the darksea summons you to the edge of sands greater and prior to your standard, torch between worlds spectral in the black golden omen, heaven you can live in on the sea that will someday swallow you, the furthest grasp of the human reaching gasping ancient flame. Fever tile brick pumice in the panther flickers of our growing under, salt hiss stings lungs, wet and warmth gruel sickly in bedsheets as the melted candle whispers melodies to the migraine drum, our peak, our marsh, I march up steps, on the walls shriek shadows, the tower narrows to towers to a tower, countless after hours burns the rise, heights to give stature to our lies, we ought to die upon pyres revelations, assumptive of smoke I aura the statue of Poseidon, I arm in his arm, the statue strikes forth the trident, at Alexandria aim my depths, wherever within them lies my aim, my am, so little, all lost, a kiss, this cost, from the three prongs statics a bruise hued beam, I allow it, I scream, not to mean, but to be. There is so much more death than ever I wished to fulfill, but in my [[excess->qexcess]], some [[signature->qsignature]].

Exhausted haunted billows sigh scream drapes wintry over mildewy tenseless where coils my voice hundred and ten and three circuits to an echo fossil dusting out of the throat desert lack of lack of stillness that makes you thirsty no matter how often you sip tasteless, water already your inner timbre on your tongue. Release from the swelter does not release, the cell changes, involverd in the scar, impulse in its letting, what of the blood we share up to our knees? Cartilage streaks the meld scoured. Din gossamers poison ruins fumes, xenocide perfume, elegantly amassed in [[murder->qmurder]]. Blacklight fluoresces flicker pulse underworldly surfacing otherly in charcoals, in cinders. Ruminativitithe trickles from the bodies of work I burn. Invitreous ether voluminouptuous calypso of their fades. Vernal equinox of passage and projection, shadow angles the center definition disintegration accretion, accumulated nothing, queen of this abyss.

I'm peering into a well. Lifeless up at me the one who vibrant heat once in my silt. Lifeless, no remainder of me in life, in the brokenness postsurvival. Rain veils eyelids leak. Am I still a person in the aftermath of the people around me gone? Gone, all of it, powers that enchanted the slip ghost nothings, how I wish I could rave mad goddess free and candid over this corpse, but I have not the power, in the conquering moment stripped of agency, shell starer beady at the inkblots spill me so this tightness, blanks where agonies should breed, pall unbearable omen... "Is this the pharaoh?" Some voice warbles in a way that might have given him the privilege of choking on my fist, my royal fit in his esophagus, wet with wet slurps, pull out his own expected answer for him. "No, I will show you the pharaoh." I snap at one of the captured captains. At my feet is he thrown fetal. I pick his petals by the throat, itching to tear, he loves me, loves me not... "Please, unholy queen," a general interjects. "This is my son. Please, if you are to punish us, please, let me beg your mercy and suffer in his stead, I beg you, I beg you, please. My son is young and naive, he seeks only to serve your majesty in the ways he was told he served you. I am the author of all his sins, I will gladly suffer his condemnation. Please, he, he has a young child, they need –" "Suffer? Oh, yes, he is to suffer the most noble blessing. If I need empathy, I shall cleave it from the earth." Wasn't it once so simple? Everything there before you, but you learn slowly how one by one the scene tangibilities evaporate, lest you wrest the phantoms from the fever wrung out real, entrust your dying strength with the oases you wish to live through you, without you, accepting that you too will ebb, but this, please this, anything must exist, or will it all one day dry, no rubble to realize us, no memorial, the grave no grave, silence lost its corpses. I've lost more than my dead: the feeling of their faces. In my arms I lift Ptolemy from the well. Soaked in his soaked final consummunitionitiation. His hair still smells the same. Maybe that is what goes last. Maybe nothing goes, years have not passed, from behind I embrace his bathed flesh, chin resting on his nervousness while my tongue threads around his jaw between teeth paper thin for thinner whispers that say all the lies I yearn us to believe at the beginning so when in collapses will retain imprinted we a promise to cherish fractured. The world gleams possible whenever we approach it from new directrix, withhelds hanging low juicy scarlets sumptuous to this angle, until we discover that no matter the momentum that thrusts us, regardless of our fixed star, the gravity that sucks us to our centers stays static, static, static, static, white noise, extremities paralysis. There is too much in us to express, so we must. Is it so surprising the torn abjected irretrievable? Ptolemy over my shoulder slung, run I my fingers along the captain's chiseled chin, tingling on the stubble, coquette their trivial stares when you fail to modesecrate your honesty, lick trace his skull, smash him into mine, I am outside the embrace, he and Ptolemy jam together face to face, mouth to mouth the dead's lost scream seething alive, the bones crack, skulls collapse unison, where stood one, stands newly Ptolemy. "Mighty Amun Ra, Lord of Our Landing, Giver of Our Incineration Sustenance, Egypt blesses your recursion a son radiating. Behold, you enthroned in the next world, your avatar in this, Ptolemy, fourteenth of the name. My husband exquisite, brother statue, may you be protected from the spirits that should harm you," trace his eyes his eyeliner "and shepherd the spirits that preserve you," kiss him myrrh of his father's burial, his ash spices our tongues new language, again seems the world... "What is this, Cleopatra?" Caesar. "I thought you'd recognize. Perhaps you are not yet used to the royal way, but you will be, won't you?" Better would his iron mien show melted in a grin, but frowns will serve for now, they are the same thing really. "Ptolemy, my adorer, will you not evince to the Roman what you are?" Janglehinged dropped the maw to cacophonate, blast waves bleached us blonde annihilation, crawling against the hurricane to another starwhite stalwart stalagmite of the larger jaw crunch, dripping to pointillist black holes, discordant dethematized the growl magnetizes the growing laceration maelstrom, torn apart torchlights mordant splotches on the acidic sprawl seep cascading irradiated raw internalized nullity, owned goneness the simulacrum screeches. It ceases. We rubberband to ourselves. "Does that clarify you?" "Well, um..." The general wails at Ptolemy's knees, whom does not, cannot, react. Guards drag the general towards my apothecary. I admire the ruggedness his son adds to my shambling nonsense amalgam. In the bzz flecks his twitches shock he coheres my brother's incoherents with the enthusiasm I sought, in velvet twilights, to cultivate to a gloss, a poise, lavender geist. How pretty he is! "My queen, my queen! Your sister, she, she's burning the library!" Charmian. "What? The library? What, why would –" "She's in the library, she's using it as a pyre." "A pyre? She's..." [[Overwhelm->qoverwhelm]] of wearied [[love->qlove1]] blears my broken [[heart->qheart]] to [[burn->qburn]].

Out in the waste she phantoms for me to call to in the way my faux calm called when through dishearkening hallways wandered darkeningly me tenuous to a cry icicle glisten rebound quavers the ongo tread through the dark to the dark to the dark, in your mind a distance pure, steps painting the imagination on scene figments blurring inchoate image emergence of wet witherant deradiance, rust scrape eke on thin sheet metal my needling into the turpentine. Is she out there my call cauterizes the [[wounds->qmurder]] the asking rips into the membrane maze sanity. My voice sounds like I am... and could that be why she is hiding, and is it still a game to her to hide, how long does hiding need to last before it becomes an obvious presence that I, my voice will reveal is recognized, and you never, who wants to be recognized? Why we hide. Why should I call out to who has every right to, I will never find my way through... twenty two centuries hence will I still this hallway wander calling, calling, collapse into the wall, my teeth sink bite rips plaster, black oozes from the chewed, she pools from the goo, forms solid, shy smiles, you found me.

Evection floods the senses, coronal riptide, gravity of my ripped away. Compassion horror, compunction anger tenderness, confusion focus, love rage lashes me sprinting through annihilateds that increasingly in the blurry certain match. [[Rendition->qreckoning]] maximal. Unutterance singes through burst holes in the throat steam streaming down condensates in my molten outlying, distrust trance end this transcendence gnawbone lightness slithers through ligaments and cannot the step properly, both in and out of mode the trip traipse trudge through sludges deeper into a mire mine from which me the myriad melts melancholy, zephyr specters slowly moaning bleme tones, offweird tones, in through the throat atwirl to twins the flames peek flickers, increase my blinks to capture frames without the fire, but as the seconds pass this fevers impossible, though I know there are times without the flames, there must be, but I cannot, who can ever strain see them in the entirety, solidity we presume our torments torpor the sky leadens to precipitate, ebullient opals strung along a noose lambent, salival glistens shinebacks on my neck lickdrip drilling reveal the rubies my collapse will some day soon stray a necklace around this throat and smoke mixing in striving wilder and stronger steps, blessing my lips allow a lyre note sine guide through the shelves crashing fluttering violet butterflies, burning scrolls, names of an eternity flash popping away from our maroonment, less and less lives within these veins in each pulse of the surge, gone, gone, we lose so much, gone, gone who was once not once true not now in the burn, void becomant essence, lineation de, mess mire eyes she syzygy of my shame, zugzwang, guilt, my seething, zealotry, geld gore gilt.

Why between the lines, how could she, how can we. Memories I wish I had doused in flares. Her name strokes my flails lurch fear veering the path towards her astray. Involuntary rolls back my eyes, daze blank gaze. Reaching out for her unsure what I feel. Violence holds us still, nurses our obsessive pause cauterized. Destruction sustains what cannot be remade. An altar bloody and persistent to the god these absences appease, from the annihilated a creative beyond, the more the this suppresses. Bloom in the ruins, line no longer legacy, partition saints, suture nowhere the paradise cannot reachable. Rupture, disjuncture, all our books too gone to be ours in a blaze, whispers ablaze, elder stars crescendo supernova to void ursilence, cinders runes verse in a tongue devils do not teach us tease us loss after loss after is there anything else but? Origin completion dribbling to the abyss life by life. Totality pressures in its sinking unto its radiating gap, center decentering, preclusion nominality virally including, cannot I ken what nigh frustrates the formululate, I'm too late, she's, this is falling apart, everything is burning, all the could settle this peacefully fantasies dismembered in my blubbling brainstem surmises, no more any more, but can't I, somehow, not harmony, but the unresolved note, if I let within me go, then won't whatever abbesses in the abdication radiate peace a reliquary sanctify of falsity, but why peace, for whom, who would rather an eternity such like ever and ever on, sunslaves, beasts of the grain, those rendering their rendered the same, why not bind I by vines their wounds jungular goddess [[howl->qreckoning]], bloodsoaked benevolence blesses my cherished the joy my love sucks from outer misery. Cannot you kill me, kill what I will love to life, my will holds violent, I insist your joy, I cannot help it, you are within me, I, I will love you with whatever my being until the void takes me, razes what is mine, redeems you from my totalitarian agape that stechschritts your pain to the next we shall together endure. I exist only within your are authentically, whatever lies within me without the void. I cannot let you go, no I would remain. Arsinoe, sister dearest, dread regret, please, please remain...

Columnar orange plasma blur slashes dark arteries to spill spit plumes ash purple into the burgundy simmer deep black burst by the crimson, the crimson, the raze, the ruin, the blaze inside pursued, phosphorous phase sways semaphore to brittle light bursts downrange boiling my steps live fire, steps forward between falling and burning reading, selves finally beyond the reader, names nameless ash my affliction physicality and ribbon my dress with chars, raindrop ghostly dew in dawn charcoal eyes slit to see she who jetes in the scrolls flagging from shelves crumbling to feed the maw wrack fever rage ravenous, combust bloodclots, cut me, [[erupt->qreckoning]], you deserve what I'll bleed for you, I love you, not as I have nor will but as I am and am not, there where we are sisters.

Writhes in flames a scholar clutching burning scrolls. I embrace the burn, I beat his face in, my teeth flay his face, he drops the words wordless, babble flows from his head a whipstrike road that narrows, leads to where silhouette scream shimmers Arsinoe's form in whitetipped incinnabar. Flush inferno. Rose ruin. Sol enunciate. She consumes. She radiates the tear. Infinite fear in the furrows beyond black burned. Infernal glare demons the fangs she bares to bar the soul she bares. I burst plash gnash gleams counterspells sear inside her star unsparing raw and real and naked united in fever flesh touch flaring up soul consuming fire that annihilates annunciates our unsworn an answer seal scorched peal the gong grottoes of crackling past her recoil I resist in our coiling yinyang inside our inside her outerselved superimposition stigmata of an embrace we imagine in our nullscape scrape scorch shimmering burning, we're burning, she screams into my mouth fire, in my soul infernal, in my skull fire. Ripped apart skin trails stream our sears shed of ourselves. Split pierce person I ignite in her gaze aglow with all she execrates. I weep what I cannot wear, stripped, seething, beaming being in me melting, pressed together in sweltering melting skin dissociation, no, association against the acid, pressed cling blending rended enduring vows unshrouded in mushroom cloud crash surrounders, embrace entire desire resounds our wreck [[reckoning->qreckoning]], reconcile, reconcile please, blaze, seize, we spasm, devour, we're marred, we're burning, skeleton to skeleton scythe dueling in the clutch, cling, in my trust implore, implosion adoration, this is what I am, if it means nothing and it means nothing I'm sorry, I am here as it hurts, we're burning as we always have, surviving as we always have, as I will and will for you, I will carry you from hell my hellfire.

''Cleopatra'' In the inferno I see her as I should have always. Flume of flame spears from the spiral fires force revocation enforced, Ganymedes magnificent in raze raiment, osteogen pyrophone steams vehemence heliotropes, hematite perspires, he crushes, luscious ashes blears, scorches we sever, he stands between, cremation angel the blaze halos, laze contorts the streaming flesh impasto, he pounces, or more in the melting he spin crashes, spire collapses the two of us singe singulation, agony mergers, him and I heaving, both of us immolating, scratching and screaming and scraping out his eyes already loosed from muscle no more, he welters because he cannot wail, I reel from his wrenching and claw at everything's nothing, stagger burning back to Arsinoe and jerk drag rip her gooey flesh strands stretching to in place their endless in ending embrace and its mortified discordant in the killing furnace their cries steam, between their severed forever privacy agony I cannot discern, only into my chaos does it puncture in her deep and desiccated sob as she beats me with fireball fists which melt my melting into noninto one another's no other in screeches and weeping, weeping how I wish we loved, screaming to hell elegy of the home we have found in it. All we wanted sever nuclear unleashes cataclysmic mephitic cannon the threnody that sunders the threads of my humanity her harrowing. More than we ever live we kill. Exsiccate embrace, in the embers one struggle gyre, twin bonfires. She is screaming no. I am screaming no with her, wither, whither will we [[flow->qstart8]]? Under an ocher evening as all the gathered powers of the earth we burn.

Blurwild we splatter across dozens crumpling to bonedusts. The harbor sparkles serenely. An Egyptian axe crashes through the helm of a nearby legionnaire who clutches at his skullshards to seek his final scream before its neural blitz fizzles. Urnsmoke gasps, burnthroat rasps. I stride through several skins, erupting each one. Heaps of harrowed boulder the rubblespills dammed. Evulsively lithe I cleave a sliver through which our party passes. Asymmetric ashes slather my skin like sunscreen. I will emerge, I will emerge [[victorious->qvictory]]. Ultrawelters of faces I recognize, generals who have begged my indulgence receiving it raw into their pallid and bloated. With each asp strike assuring them they are still my subjects, blessing them to prepare my place in the next life. "We can't reach the, Queen Cleopatra, our forces are stopped, we'll never reach the harbor, we must retreat into a defensible position!" Caesar. "Your forces are stopped, but I am all positions within this plane, you may [[harbor->qnovicity]] in each one."

Deep in the library dead voices murmur the tinnitus. Outer silence cannot press into this drone. Like the sound of a wrinkly plastic ventricle. Cherisheds never there for me flash pop the misguide appearance, names that numb, morphine serene, litter a lifetime in the nullify wash, couldn't I? Hide inside their lives foreign, free. Life perfected: lonely quiet half century in a scenic mountain town, a few friends, collecting a library, nightly running your hand along alphabetized fireflies in plum dusk. In [[books->qbooks]] understanding the grief you never from your veins need retch, recognizing joys futilities and the immaculate caritas futility gives, thriving through a thousand lives, dissect distended under truths in longitudes and latitudes stretched projection of horizons thousands narrowed to a single breathless color and consequence, but losing nothing in the dwindling of your own, uninundated humanity, coalescent decompressor. In Anaximenes the invisibility fertility of variation isolation visibles: isolated so, gorgeous null in the perilous being bells our self erasure striving, union magnificence in the wrought hollow. In Enheduanna the looming internality that ruptures our skyline bulwarks with gods venomous oceanic swallowing that that struggles free. In Zoroastres pearlescent progressives righting a course through the nonstorm estranger. In Kagemni the trepidation of the named awaiting the [[vertex->qvertex]] of their act and justice blissando eradicator. In Bethsephuri the sparse bleak quell quiesces the winding course spell the wanderer to witness in fits ruptures of the binds of our mundane, our rest, the rest we treasure within it, spanlust hex directs our currents along leylines to mythland nowheres thickets gnarled in the mad pulsing of our fissure presence fey glitter glooming the duskland linger over the cold pressure that dawns us, draws us, drains us, dresses us in sweatbead fever ram stance racing after the reason or reasonless, is it there, where is the oasis antipodal to our origin, the [[lack->qlack]] wound where spectralities swarm through the holes in the day, little black punctures esperial whorls nebullae ultramarine and puzzle royal purple lush doubts rush bleed the people we cannot match, cannot match, you are compromised and cannot become alike them, more and further will they glean what glares through your gaps so many gaps as you stagger trances through dark streets to secret places, or are they places, are they secret, soon nothing shall of you remain hidden, tortured naked, reviled beneath the antisacred demoniac you conjusecrate, torture not even death can dispel. In me the edges through papyrus stacks papercut tingle sting to a headrush. There's so many people locked inside here, why not become all of them? Why not set us all free in no more needing respond to the accretion? Fired to ceramic brilliance useful, fullness of the empty to purpose.

Delenda elegant we gleam rose gold ebullient blash the lack cataract counteractual, recusant compact revbels the infusal to in the density inextricably impacted insurrect architect, tenuousity of lines zero upon my noumenal tesseract intention intravenous, into into into, gravity atonally gallery, artwork of dissonances reduced to a placeness assonance, assumption of accumulates disdelineates the core from force, chassis immanence, if this is who I am, this is who I am, physicality territoriality, revile brutalizer in my dehumanized objectivity dread originality of the forced to be so node of the nullstar atrocity. Burning pages crackle my infernal lavish of the forever to once, all histories irretrievably exquisitely mystery of this sequence, eons consume, embers exhume to the dance of the forever dead, what is in its chaos never to the continuous. Immanence of mortality smolders my demon decadence. Culled to the sublime as the chandelier shatters, each glass whirled its own life entirety immix in the plummet in the blaze I erase embody levitate to the amber auroras this night to no dawn, this alight art, fiery hair veiling my face, breathing oil scenteds of all the things never will I nor the worlds I braided touch again, emotions once lens of the real no more lies to pulse ordeal, finally free of presence, no name, vanish flourish to newborn wails unto a nude night sky. Strange our final experience is envy for what we did not. Is it selfish, some what self, myopic, my conforming in visibly, are those the [[abeyance->qend7]] of individuation? Completion to exclusion: here we contain what you will experience, because, and maybe neither did we, in the end, at the end we grasp most desperately for what was never there to feel, and isn't the experience we envy the most being real? I am not a real person. Isn't it cruel to live among humans and not be one? Bliss of asking questions while beyond the need for answers. Darkstar glitter the enigmas no longer a part of your poised. Devour me, mysteria, render me unreadable.

''Arsinoe'' Flames assume me higher as am I meant to be, whom the flames made me. I choose to be how she [[kills->qend7]] me, will be the body she leaves behind, because then I will be like Berenice, and in death become sisters, family of the hidden beneath binds. She may reign her client kingdom; Egypt with this final revocation of gods, reclamation of their last will, lies orphaned. No more myths endure: to the enduressers the clarity and sobriety quickening of sterile science. Burns the soul of Alexandria inside my insides dissipating. Only ashes ever endure of stories and songs. Burns this accursed miasma, burns this body, broken free of flesh. Hurts. Hurts. Alight with the dying of millennia. Egypt escapes her forever. Rome rules cinders. Have I become real, finally, a symbol.

This is a list of the major characters in //Queenlash// that details their roles and relationships. Although I personally believe that art cannot be spoiled by plot details, because this list is intended to help readers who may disagree, it does ''not'' contain characters or relationships that may be considered spoilers. Click [[here->qreference]] to return. ''Arsinoe'': Egyptian princess. Youngest child of Cleopatra V and Ptolemy XII. Sister to Berenice, Cleopatra VII, and Ptolemy XIII. An avid reader and a troubled soul. ''Berenice'': Deceased. Egyptian queen. Oldest child of Cleopatra V and Ptolemy XII. Sister to Arsinoe, Cleopatra VII, and Ptolemy XIII. A caring but emotionally turbulent queen who causes a civil war by killing her mother. ''Brutus'': Roman senator. Husband of Porcia. A political enemy of Caesar. ''Caesar'': Roman triumvir. Husband of Calpurnia. Uncle of Octavia and Octavian. A successful general on the cusp of accumulating total power over Rome. ''Calpurnia'': Wife of Caesar. Aunt of Octavia and Octavian. A canny sociopolitical player who is suffering from the stress of keeping up with Caesar's deteriorating family and alliances. ''Catullus'': Roman poet. Friend and informant of Porcia and Calpurnia. A bawdy and dissolute rogue with a keen political eye. ''Charmian'': Royal attendant to Cleopatra VII. Daughter of a prominent Egyptian merchant family. An efficient and perceptive operative with a bitter underside. ''Cicero'': Roman senator. Leader of the political opposition to Caesar. ''Cleopatra V'': Deceased. Egyptian queen. Mother of Arsinoe, Berenice, Cleopatra VII, and Ptolemy XIII. Wife of Ptolemy XII. A cold and imperious queen who raises her children with a ruthless standard of excellence. ''Cleopatra VII'': Egyptian queen. Second oldest child of Cleopatra V and Ptolemy XII. Sister to Arsinoe and Berenice. Sister and wife to Ptolemy XIII. An exquisitely capable and elegantly cunning queen with a soft heart but a murderous sensibility. ''Ganymedes'': Royal attendant to Arsinoe. A bold, clever, and nurturing operative. ''Mark Antony'': Roman legate. Husband of Octavia. Ally of Caesar. A dashing and romantic soldier who was once Cleopatra VII's lover. ''Octavia'': Wife of Mark Antony. Sister of Octavian. Niece of Calpurnia and Caesar. An emotive but shy woman whose mental health is collapsing but who feels like nobody is listening to her. ''Octavian'': Sibling to Octavia. Nibling of Calpurnia and Caesar. Miserable and awkward. ''Porcia'': Wife of Brutus. Friend of Octavia and Catullus. A nurturing and thoughtful woman who is suffering from loneliness and looking for meaning. ''Pothinus'': Royal attendant to Ptolemy XIII. A competent but unimaginative advisor. ''Ptolemy XII'': Deceased. Egyptian pharaoh. Husband of Cleopatra V. Father of Arsinoe, Berenice, Cleopatra VII, and Ptolemy XIII. A capable politician who knows how to deal with Romans. ''Ptolemy XIII'': Egyptian pharaoh. Second youngest child of Cleopatra V and Ptolemy XII. Husband and brother of Cleopatra VII. Brother of Arsinoe and Berenice. An anxious and fractious pharaoh who frequently looks to others for advice.

Smoky distances draw nearer into my open wound until I breathe them, enseam them, see through them him, wracked upon bodies smashed jagged to a rock, Ptolemy. Through cartilage shards and enamel shrapnel I crawl to his choking on blood. He reaches up to me. I slither around him, lean him onto my shoulder, rock him gently. "You're so beautiful in all this death," I smear his cheek with blood: his, mine, the earth's? "Please, you've got to get me up, Arsinoe, help me, hurry, how's, where's the army, we need to retreat to -" "Hush, my love, there is no army. We are given a personal apocalypse. Alexandria has become us, ruined symbol. The souls of our people surround us; they will follow us into the next life; nothing will remain upon this plane sullied by her now. We've won, we've won, I can't believe it, we did it, we're perfectly Egyptian and real." "What are you, how have we, we've won, how can you say that, what are you..." "Gaze upon your kingdom, my love. This is what we've courted manifested to a wedding bouquet. Rulers of such a court, who can but admire our love vicious?" "No, no, this isn't, no, you've, you're mad, you've lost it, you've -" "Shh, love, shh, it's okay, let the pain submerge you, go into its shock glare. I will meet you there." "No, no, no! Let me go! Let me -" "Ptolemy, love, you're wounded, you must -" "No! I won't let you, no, Cleopatra -" "Don't say her name! Don't summon her here! She'll, she'll ruin everything, she has already, but, but -" "Cleopatra, please, help me, she's, Arsinoe's -" "No, stop, go into the pain, it's okay, this is how it should be, go into the pain, go into the -" "Get your hands off me! Don't touch -" "Don't do this, Ptolemy, don't, not now, don't you see you're so close to becoming perfect? Why would you quiver back from the precipice of poetry? Leap, leap, dream!" "I don't want any of your, let me go, I'll, Cleopatra is right about you, I'll have to -" "No she's not! She's not! She is this not that we can escape, just, press into me, we'll -" "It's over for you, you've failed, you've -" "I haven't failed, no, no, how can you think that, how can you be such a swine? There is godhood in you, fulfill it, null feel it to kiss our hellmaw masterpiece!" "Let go of me, let go!" "No, you're, it's okay, you're delusional, you've been wounded, you're raving into her venom, she's poisoned your hour of transition, but it's okay, I'll nurse you through this, I'll bring you to the other side, my love, bring you to the other side as my love." "You can't, stop, get your hands off me, you're hysterical, you're -" "Shh, it's okay, I'll take care of you, I'll make you perfect," I smile through tears as I jam a severed fist into his mouth and punch pressure his pressure points. Behind me builds a warm shadow. Lovely doll goes limp Ptolemy. "Egypt is dead. Long live Egypt." Ganymedes. Slowly I totter up, sleeving up tearsnot. The shadow embraces me, lifts me. "Isn't he so perfect? He looks just like a painting. He is my painting. Dream Devastation of Egypt to the Transcendence of Time by Queen Arsinoe IV. He is my masterpiece. Please, Ganymedes, my artisan, make me perfect." "You are perfect, netjeret." "No, not yet, not yet. Take me to the library. Burn me free of this earth. We shall ascend beyond humanity in the [[way->qway2]] of our ancestors, in the terminal gloss of a tomb."

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter VIII: Charmian''] --- [[Sea->qsea1]] roll suggestives of mute shock roiling white silent in the sinews. The [[lighthouse->qlighthouse]] still moors us to our ancient world as it is in the I wish it were a welter, wring purpose out of a worn thin person cloys these waves a consciousness I seek to [[slip->qslip2]], loathe so full to leaking in a word to anyone, should they push me from my quiet, my tensed grip forlorn to the distance. Wean us as we wane, sip our nullwine in nurture non, the lack in the [[luster->qluster]] in your eyes stainmilk spraymists. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Acts dramatize our innate mistakes, yes, but why not live the lines an aesthetic? Better that than the anesthetic democratic. Gutter sludge sentience speaks me so, [[jewelry->qcaesar1]] the [[jaggedry->qcabin]] akin to a humanity. Terribly thus swivels causal casual along the wrist response. Inversion versatility, fountains from each dry, dunes landscaper over monuments humiliations never to be discovered. Greet where I persist despite am not, I'll dazzle the gap hospitable, offer my guest tea by rooting through bizarre gardens ripping up fistfuls of slithery rootmass mulch amalgams and slumching them on the dirty table not once cleaned, so often defiled, shrugging which do you wish, smiling as my proboscis slip stabs out of its sheath to suck up some gunk. Who are you to demand anyone but myself as your abhorrence? Gossamer inclinations trickles cherry down lonely lipfolds juice of the pursuer never to reach. Bile painter dabbing mascara. Filth fomented just as I am the style, got six styles that scream I've lost all hope but that's never stopped me before, gauging my mood in the mirror. How to design a chic using only the shreds of dignity lost along the way. Filter the world to the purple best to blacklight my idiosynthesis blight, idiolect incorrection silversmith. Dressed in the droop wounded glamor.

Cleopatra has not left her [[cabin->qcabin]], nor has Arsinoe from her hold been carried, and when I can hold myself to these moorings, I ensure none unseal them, as [[Caesar->qcaesar1]] tried, fumed to end up in tried, the crude male expectation that their insistence cogs the world, but the Romans have no language for those who they will not kill and who have nothing to lose, so he could but stammer as I excised the great conqueror, truth of our age, as if our age has any, person historical who hears others speak him as he stares valiant at a sunset or whatever, and yes, they really believe they stare valiantly.

Wash, roll, slosh of the ship's dip and buck, dip and flush. Ineptly undizzying upon the yaw and pitch and roll and roll, Cleopatra mutter shook laughed disparagingly that sailing was the element of queendom she could never quite dazzle, stumbled back to her [[cabin->qcabin]]. Surprised initially to hear her say it, since so often she had seemed as fierce as the sea nigh one with it, but unsurprised perhaps in reflecting that now is the time of her shattered, so must she secure fragilities to contour her fractures. In view of how she wished to luxuriate the novelty of weakness, how we belove our sickness as soon as we master it, I denied [[Caesar->qcaesar1]] his visit; we must present to the Romans a unified face, having stared from two to such riot.

Denied sovereignty upon our ship, he returns to his, and in his wake the sea, the sea as it divides us always. When I watched my uncle's ships sail out of the harbor, I imagined how differently they would return to us, how differently we would return to them. Places we live forget us; going back to where once you were at one with the world continuity lies native estrangement a fever inexpressible. Iridescent playas shimmering the illucid mirroresque between place and presence splash trudged by a rain nomad. No home to return to your left it. Tap on my shoulder turns me to shadowed against the darkness brilliance Cleopatra dressed mourning. "I must speak with Caesar." Almost certainly she was waiting for me to dismiss him... "My queen, forgive me, only minutes ago he asked for you, and I, he's already returned to his ship..." "Good, because minutes ago I would not have seen him, but now I will. Ready a boat for us." "My queen, may I inquire, are you okay?" "No. That's why I must speak with him. The royal perquisite is always your subjects believe the opposite of how you feel." I snap at my assistant, so she multiplies to four, then eight, then sixteen of us readying a delegation. We bring Cleopatra belowdecks to officiate a dress opposite but exactly how she is. Spuriously, I hope, she suggests a midnight bodysuit, describing the sorts of spikes she needs, then alternates to a peach frills strapless evening gown, then, purely to spite me, rips off our snowy Grecian toga that winks at formality by just draping the knees to demand instead a Saharan maroon front twist maxi dress with a side split and celeste starry embroidery, giving a look that makes me sigh away the pretension we had not brought it with us. We emerge to a boat already ready with an awning and palm fronds, so we descend. The Roman vessel, utilitarian bleak beside Egyptian extravagance, slows to accept us before even we cast off. Sea plays longingly with the last sunset splinters. The Romans are confused that I climb up first, so I explain that in Egypt the royals arrive last, signets are sent to herald them, and the way they fidget a display of disinterest assures me my Latin has not rusted from the years. Too militaristic to ploy a stratagem, Caesar waits not in his cabin but greets Cleopatra as I lift her aboard. "Your majesty is quickly reacquainting with royal moods, I see." "I acquaint myself with dread's [[ichors->qichors]] as they ooze through the gaps in my [[terrified->qterrified2]] grasping the poison of [[tomorrows->qtomorrows]]." Is this what she means by convincing Caesar of the opposite? Perhaps we could delay their conversation, a royal masque, the palmbearers are dancers... Caesar does not reply, simply gestures at his cabin, and Cleopatra and I follow him in. I seat myself near the door as they move to his table strewn with papers, as is his aesthetic.

Proceed down the steps resolute to gauge how I must tend Egypt in this garden. Swaddled in high drama, medicines and disarray and a lungsilting gloom, she reigns a squall. "Couldn't let her go, Charmian, I couldn't," wet into my chemise, "it was my selfishness that, and wasn't it, wouldn't you agree it was selfish, or, or am I only asking you in the hope you'd confirm what I want..." "You ask in a hope that accepts it must be abolished by stronger despair." "Yes, maybe, perhaps that's right, it's just, I didn't have a lot of time to react, so, it's, she was [[burning->qburning]], and I had to, she, the whole library! All of our books, and you see them go, and you have no time to process that, because grief tunnels into the klaxon blaring she's burning, she's going to die, do something, why won't you love her as you pretended, as if, but I am Queen of Egypt, she has set fire to my library, and she has had the gall to set fire to my sister, mine, my princess, lady of my lands! What was I to do, and yes, I am to do, I will savor the taste of any traitor otherwise. She wants to die, okay, I, I can accept it, I can't, I cannot, but in time, in time I'd, but she will die by my hand, she will greet our ancestors staring into my eyes, love and death continuity of all our shattered [[legacies->qlegacies]], how dare she assume her heart lay not entwined with mine! I hate her, Charmian, she has hurt me so much, and I love her. She may hate who beats beside her our curse, perhaps she should, who would not recoil so close to my malignant queendom carapace's capacity for grandeur's golden terror, but we are siblings, sundered mars of the same wounds, identity derivative devils agnash to alike hells. Annihilate us as one and as thus annunciate us, she will merge the depths of who she loathes, that's a promise, I would make it to her had she the heart to listen, so I suppose I make it to you, or the sea, or whatever will swallow us our subsequence. I will kill her exactly as she killed me. As she dies, I will whisper last words through blood and hollow and beg her, when you destroy me, show mercy on all the people I could never make myself, when you destroy me, suck out my soul, dribble it in [[talismans->qtalismans]] that will beautify the night devoid of wind but not the howl, then will the abyss find us in this tryst dianoesis." You cannot interrupt what should never have been started. Misunderstandings where raindrops on petals should quiver. The seabreeze rises to remind us we are moving.

"Shall I get you a drink? You ought to try Hispania wine, I find it the best suited to seagoing: light and loose to adjust the legs." Caesar. "Is this what you've become, then, in your victory, lightened, loosened?" Cleopatra. "Pray, drear priestess, to whom must I intone my paeans? Had I but bulls enough to wash us one mood." "I would never praise a god for how we tend to their malice." "Alas, one day you invoke every god your palette can form, the next you forsake their praises. I worry your mercurity." "I invoke gods but do not praise them, that is religion as I have learned it." "Is that so? Are your gods so altruistic as to inflict new miseries without anything in return?" "Gods guide us to the miseries most native to our conditions, should we only devote the exertions our unbearing deserves. Victory should savor no joy but plunge despair and relief swampmixing in the prophesies your lesser fated smolder before your carnage grandeur. Infernal aristocracies of the aghast to glow bind me to my hideous inalienable. Casting my sister from the throne is the greatest respect I give her; I shall watch her die with envious amour. Guilt radiance gauntstars my principality. Derive deride me from the depravity that is my cause and cardiac. Anointed ashamed am I the laceration luna paledawning upon your doomed city." "Doomed? Rome? Is that a threat?" "We are, yes, doomed to us, you and I. What we become has begun." "What we become?" "Emperor and empress, hate and mistress, self and decoupling. You have bound your fate to me in the blood of my people, and I follow your vows in the corpses of yours." "I, I'm not sure –" "Always be sure! If you cannot be certain, then how could the world you cleave cling together? You are no Roman general, you are the Roman specific, you are what your people will suffer into idea. Your ambitions led you to Egypt, let Egypt [[lead->qend8]] your ambitions, in your ambition lies I who possess in my flesh your future, your soul silks in my saliva. You have no heart but the fury that beats within me. You marshal no mind but the fevers I logic your real. You wish to be an emperor, but I gaze you empire."

Caesar moves several scrolls. He motions for Cleopatra to sit down. As she sits poised crosslegged she solar bursts the cabin aflame. Caesar staggers back terrified, to which she purrs. "Oh, is that fear? Let me lick it from you." Her tonguedrill bores into his forehead in a retch whine blade tink amplified and small dust chunks of drywall skull splash us like a dental cast obliterated while her nails pierce slip a puncture wounds crown rivuleting. He is choking so he gurgleblurts out teeth, little prowling chompers extending and bending and searching while royal his seizing body waits for the kill to be sucked back in on an enamel spit. "Devour what you need inside you. Need nothing but what you devour. Feast upon erasure nature. I do not resolve but complicate intensify inside my inexorability. I need no hope, am I unholy. I wish no sun but my stare. I kill what I cannot concatenate. I need not the name, the name needs, and I feed its hell. I am hate, hate what I am, what I am is hate, hate is my who, this when, my why, this cry, these tears are for all the hatreds we bear to our graves, [[wherever->qend8]] we shall gut them, then shall we share temples pressed to crash inwards, gods as we will make them worship our desires domains cultivated countless from barren the caustic temporal their corpses compile cathedral, our throne upon the altar and empty."

How will we wander free of ourselves in new boundaries? Shall we discover harmonies, discordancies, accumulations, ever emergent emergencies? From one [[besieged->qstart9]] city to another: what is within our walls to prevent our collapse?

For days after the burning of the library, Cleopatra had been by her side, saying nothing to the physicians' increasing despair, venturing only to enact royalty to the Romans and our city's remains. I dared not venture to guess how she would harden, but night by night I began to fear she would soften. I brought before her executions, sycophants, dances, whatever I thought would darken her mood, but she seemed so, so even, so sandstone. Opera of lament, pageantry of death, perhaps she must fabricate her grief to believe anything survives the grander absence, so I have indulged her, added to the artifice with props of ludicrous pomp and severity, been encouraged by how readily she appropriates them. When she rose one day to visit the Tomb of Alexander, winged with priests beyond reality, when she muttered, one hand on his grave, the other other on her heart, that we must sail to [[Rome->qend8]], take Arsinoe there, sacrifice her to join the hearts of our cities through mutual murder, I nearly cried with joy, to serve so scintillating a sun goddess, yet she has slipped back into the theatrics, there has been no decisive sunder to anew, yet perhaps she is waiting for the precise moment when she will plunge an athame into the heart of her beloved sister, to glimpse in that moment who she must next become. How I would relish the dream with her, were I not afraid it is not a dream, that perhaps truly Egypt is dying into a broken heart.

"The other night, as I glared upon her body new burns, I thought, Charmian I thought, maybe this is who I am, her agonized to the brink. Who am I to my sisters, all my sisters, including the one who never survived infancy, the Cleopatra before me, transitive mode between my mother and me? Of what was I born as afterash? I have been thinking of this Cleopatra, wondering if it would have been me, had she survived, that I would be Cleopatra VI with equal reality as I have been Cleopatra VII, or if she is precisely who I will never become, a wound that eternally separates the fifth from the seventh, the repetition of a name to nullify the sequence, I emerge from my mother only as the negation of a negation, yet time and again I am by my sisters negated, those closest to me clearly perceived what a demoness I am, so wildly driven were they to drive me out. Perhaps I am radiating nullsolar, totalizing eclipse? Everyone seems to terrorize as if I am. Should I embrace atrocity magnetism? Wouldn't it be cruel not to, wasteful of so many magnificent Egyptian queens, to simply discard the construct they construed me, a carnage colossus sanctified precious by precious final breaths? But what do I lose if I become this demoness? Is there anything of me worth salvaging from how it has been voided? Do you know, Charmian, or is it worth knowing?" "The goddess of your choice is Egypt inexorable." "Yes, perhaps, perhaps, my mother might have said similarly, but how inexorable has she been, fractured to us three washed away in bloodlines? What is fate but the lies that justify our lack of futures? I have spent too many years studying our religion to believe any of it but how it must be taught." "You disbelieve it only because you are it, netjeret. Heaven is a burden you must bear." "You see how many souls have broken to build it. Who is the Khufu who will dwell within it? Will they be worthy of our mass grave wonder? And what could even be the more qua contour of all this destruction? Can you compose a mosaic active of the fracturing? Are they opposed processes, or is there some deeper synthesis? Sibylance both shatter and painter, prosody threnody? Do I not deserve, in the shadow of the enduring of the question, some sign the purpose signifies?" "Would it be a purpose if you knew in advance how it mored your self? Isn't the [[gambit->qend8]] the spirit? Isn't humanity in the hope?" "I should wish anything moored my self, but I drift clouds to occlude the source. If my deluge focal lenses syntimation matters less than my lashing the earth. Desecration or consecration, I precipitate."

Sighing I malaise to the mountains of trinkets to extract from their intertrinsic a talisman gleaming nearly lurid goldenly scarlet and violet. From it blooms a fungus that spreads through us, our lungs, nestles in our sinews, vines our ligaments. Terrified a handmaiden tries to tear away, but Cleopatra irradiate waspish wraps around her. "Goddess, is that, no, no, who are you?" Cries the handmaiden. "Humanishly have you used the word you, when cannot be contained within this emerges the push and pull of qualia, quintessence virs limefires vein the network natal, nervenurture the sundered do spread and thread the syllepsis through elapse and ellipse to eclipse the concomitant to concentrated conjugation, subject summation. Infinite and integrated this I intimates to you neural nonbounds. Acquiesce your resistance to its electrics instrument." "I don't understand, please, please have mercy!" "I cannot be killed, I cannot be counted, I cannot be cleaved, I carve the col katabatic, cascades of peaks beyond reach. All that lies within you patterns a snowflake in the avalanche of my archangelic. Flow in peace my violence, precious particle." The handmaiden's screams are stopped by rapid investiture into vessel, skin torn apart to hyphaefalls of singing mycelium, where once were her eyes beam ties. Cleopatra through her turns to me. "What awaits us in Rome realizes my [[visitation->qend8]], subnode in my story, esprit enmeshment. Ceremonially murdering my sister before them shall drench entwine them in her shadowblood, where will turpentine I creep enshrine combine heterodyne devi crepuscular evanescence assimilaligned."

"I am glad to see you seem of better spirits, your majesty." Caesar. "I am the spiritual worse, both of fell and of pall, as shall you be, Emperor." "Hush, not so loud, your majesty. There are spies even aboard my ship." "Are there? Shall we give them a show? I should prefer them dumbstruck." "Your vicious wit does not translate to ours. We need not mutter our threats beautiful, we speak in the might of Rome." "Ah, but that is your beauty, in you what might of Rome, burgeoning potential." "Yes, flatter me. I do return to Rome its triumph." "Proclaim as gales their powers so gauge they from our gyre whether suspire or suspira secrets we sequence. Have we not been leaving a trail of corpseclues? Either to you a havoc or a history? Fulfill yourself before me emperor, or no, do you not deserve the name? Reap it from their candleflame dowsing. As you have seen my city, so let us seethe yours. Tomorrow we shall land upon destiny; what shall Rome say of the day it was built?" "Perhaps your theatrics suit your land, its destinies, but in Rome we derive differently." "To the same result: emperor, living god, alongside a queen, goddess incarnate. I allow you your customs, I find them charming, know them well enough to wend us through them, but upon the other side how shall you emanate incarnate an otherside? I speak to you divine: shall you divine reply? Royal alterity I breathe, breed, brim, in this touch the thrill of ambrosia spilling beyond my rim, my realm, into your stem to furnish a flourish of hue you will become, won't you, my darling?" "I am not sure what you mean." "Ahaha, how could you ever? But I can foretell what you must mean, and it is to there we must [[venture->qend8]]. Our sails are set, our hearts are set, let the rest be the rest." "How can I rest unassured of whether you are an ally or a calamity?" "Are you not allied with calamity? The cultures you have conquered disagree. Come, my friend, fellow god, leave the agonizing to our enemies; to us, the pleasure."

Still it smokes with the violence lanterned upon it. Slowly into the distance it sinks: our land is gone. Upon the chance of the waves. Upon the romance of stray wings. To [[Rome->qcaesar1]] we will go alongside Caesar's banner: what will we have to leave [[behind->qcabin]]?

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter IX: Octavia''] --- Because the rats don't [[stop->qstop1]] I cannot stop thinking about them, not even am I asking for them to leave, I accept life's inherent ratness, but how am I supposed to mitigate a space for my own containment uncontaminated by all the sullies otherwise, the outside insertions, am I to be amidst all of these rats undifferentiated, can I not find within a niche freedom from their slunk in nooks [[scheming->qscheming]], teeming from [[crumbstuffed->qtasks]] crannies they hyperdusty devils dart shadow jaws gnawing at my skin, skull, fingers, knuckles, knees, shins, diseased bloats, shoulderblades, crawling little monsters mobbing about black dots popping vision holes from which emerge color jostle needles jamming through my eyeballs hue bleeders blenders that batter shapes to see them inside cabinets [[scurrying->qscurrying]] cyclones all directions and dimensions when the door bursts to my touch, I hear them rustling beneath beds and pans and in bedpans and under counters and on them and on seats and sofas in swampy textures cancerous to the angles of my house, they've become the house, and [[where->qwhere1]] am I supposed to live? //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Where am I supposed to live I screamed at my [[famulus->qfamulus]], pointing to the shredded threads where the rats had gnawed into the sack, they've taken over, I shall call them dominae, and he tried to explain, so I slapped him, not because I needed to, but because [[violence->qscheming]] is the only world these rats have left me to scrape through, their claws and mine shall scratch. They fit through smaller and smaller holes, it's actually unbelievable what they can fit through, I've chased them to a solid corner expecting to squash them beneath my sandals only for them to plane their bodies pure flatness, they've slid through a slit I never noticed prior, less than a hole, a perturbance in the bulk, but they go through, how can they go through, in what way will such massive rats slink through where a solid [[blinks->qtasks]], how can such a creature flatten and shrink itself seven times half its size? Shapeshifter demons shredding and [[stealing->qabandon]] my sanity shreds in the night, night by night they gnaw and gnaw and how am I supposed to [[breathe->qweakness]]?

Running and running all these awful rats over and over again everywhere, it's [[exhausting->qscheming]], like when all of your energy is wasted in meticulous [[fear->qlunacy]], and that's the main thing really is that fear becomes entirely different when it's forced meticulous, cataloguing your terrified always, scribe of an eldritch agony, oh yes sir, so they swallow souls sir, of course sir, and they're an ineffable beyond all sight, very good sir, I should think they should rather be, how pathetic a sense sight is compared to how I am ever aquiver never to sleep, I do so adore that I can't walk too fast without my eyes being thrust apart by [[scurries->qscurrying]], have to dribble little shambles or I'll trip on rats streams swampy mulched one missile, and if you fall down well that's probably the worst because no doubt they'll swarm and feast, if you ever show any [[weakness->qweakness]] whatsoever you better bet they'll be all over you to chomp chomp nibble tear, be bones in just about a blush, don't you worry, or rather you should worry, you have to worry all the time, it will never stop, you will never [[sleep->qslaves]].

No matter how much I scream at my [[slaves->qslaves]], at the few relatives I can trust not to mock me, the very few, actually none, I have never mentioned it to them, but I have implied it to several, I made certain asides or gestures which should invariably lead their curiosity to the right note, like I would wave a chewed sleeve or hold a blink for fifteen seconds if they should say a word that so much as rhymes with rats, but no one will pay attention properly, actually listen close enough to hear the rats' cryptic crunch speech, I swear I can hear them in the walls, their weird little words squirm rebounding from any unlit, and I keep tirading them the rats will soon come swarming in to suck me to a husk, they're planning the right moment, you can hear them debate when best to annihilate me, and I try to marshal my forces to respond, but these tiny thinkers left to my command are useless, I must corral them to the daily [[tasks->qtasks]] or nothing gets done properly, genuinely it shocks me how little they can understand, they're human too aren't they, but they puzzle my words as if they're not communication, as if somehow the tongue doesn't convey any soul they have not already in themselves felt. Idiots, ingrates, they ought to drag knuckles across the plain bellowing for berries like banshees of a dimmer earth. There's no reasoning with those already decided on your [[lunacy->qlunacy]]: manifest it less, they leer at your muddled more, grin at your eclipsed.

I can't [[sleep->qsleep]] at night, I hear the rats rustling through my clothes, feasting on shed skin particles, but yet somehow it's because I'm a problem that I can't sleep, like I'm somehow just for some reason spiting my slaves by refusing to sleep, they won't consider me seriously when I rant that I woke up once to three rats in my mouth trying to tunnel down my throat and so that's why I ran into the hall vomiting, but what do they want, an argument from a priori precepts, why should I be expected to grandly discourse upon the nature of rats for my philosopher slaves to debate the syllogisms, look at the bags under my eyes and understand I speak from that truth.

I can't trust my cooks when everything tastes like rats, how am I supposed to get anything done when I have to watch hawkish how they break the leeks and boil the cabbage, which smells, there I am hunched heaving in this hideous kitchen, darting my eyes as wildly as possible to catch a sneaking rat, but always they get in somehow, it's absolutely impossible to be one hundred percent vigilant at all times to everything, at some point you have to blink, somewhere along the hour long process you unfasten your stare for three and a seventh nanoseconds, and always right then you'll see it, the essence of rat baked in, their [[besmirchment->qbesmirchment]] spreads, and I beat the cooks, they must toss out this inedible filth and start over, can't they see what the rats have done to their gruel, do I have to do everything myself, omniscience omnipotence just to cook a simple whatever it is, so of course my [[orders->qslaves]] make no sense, whoever should make sense under such circumstances belongs to worse a world than ever I will acquiesce my [[humanity->qhumanity]].

Drained, dizzy, confused, frustrated, smacked full of loathing, leaking despair, swaddled in headcolds, plagued by rat diseases, have to waste most of my waking time on plotting countersieges against the rats, yet somehow I'm supposedly moody and irritable, somehow I'm the one that's ruining the brunch, which was already ruined when our most esteemed hostess vented her ire upon us by [[inviting->qinviting]] us, my dear [[aunt->qcalpurnia1]] being the most boring bore this city has yet to lance, well that's not true but whatever why can't people read between the lines, like all I want to do is say something mean I don't mean and just have it be a thing without it having to be a thing, or but I'm just frustrated is all, by everything, by this, I wish she were useless so I could attend in spite, barely paying attention, but because she's actually incredibly important I have to suffer pretending to actress something resembling the barest peripheral visage hint of a vague acquaintance of the concept in abstract of attention, and the thing is all I'm asking for is cleanliness, I want to go home and feel clean, is that so wrong, like wouldn't it be nice to feel, not even to be, but to have your pretending unmocked, clean, cute even, precious, just enough to sustain a beleaguered ego another week of oh Octavia why are you so curt, or why won't you say more, or you know they think you're so unfriendly, like I just can't with all these rats pouring into my nose from every filth rivulet Rome has stankbred in its bulbous runamoks of paupers, how am I supposed to bathe when there's rats engendered in the sluice, why must I [[humiliate->qhumiliate]] myself in the thermae by soiling the water revolting browns and dirtbloods as I wade in with I guess I ought to smile like hello all you gossips here I crawl in caked in wastes, at least then I might not be invited to any more of these awful cling together desperate in the aging negations where I am inundated with noxious nonfacts like did you know so and so is slightly more important today than they were yesterday as if their life meant anything to me on any day, as if half this city could die to the plagues these rats bear and I would even notice, in fact they would deserve it, how they've not noticed, how can I be the only one who, frankly all of them deserve to die if I'm the only one who has to endure the rats.

"Is he charming? Is that why he's here?" Brutus. "No, of course not, I couldn't charm my way into a prison. They're trying to bribe my pen not to shit where it feeds, that's why I'm here. But I see I have outdrunk my company. Tell me, [[Brutus->qbrutus1]], where's your [[wife->qcatullus1]]? She pleases to follow me deeper into my mistakes." Brutus shoots up; Catullus staggers up to mock him. "Sit down, will you, Marcus? I'll not have my house defamed an arena," Calpurnia. "He [[insults->qinsults]] my father in law, he insults my wife, he insults me. Why should I not strike him where he stands?" "Is this what you call standing?" Catullus topples into the sofa. "Atticus, take him away, will you?" Calpurnia. A slave leans Catullus onto him, exeunt.

So rarely is he home I await his [[visits->qvisits]] like the change of seasons, like the roll of constellations, like omens. How am I supposed to greet him: enthusiastic like I've missed him, or is that too forward; disdainfully like I loathe him, but I don't, I don't, I genuinely don't; bitterly like I'm wracked with paranoid jealousies, or is that too obvious and facile; lovingly like nothing is amiss, or would the irony be too biting, would we not be able to pretend love beneath the crushing fantasy of perfect love; schemingly like I've plotted just the way to bind him to me this time, he will never want to leave by the time my wiles have latched him, but then wouldn't it be [[humiliating->qhumiliate]] when it seems like I've failed, like I'm setting myself up to appear powerless when my actual [[powerlessness->qsadness]] is a presupposed invisibility; awkwardly like I don't know what to say or why to say it, but that's just the truth, there's no point in that. I want to make the most of our time together with some beautiful delusion, but I don't have the poise, the mystique, to magic more than my [[raw->qhumanity]].

"You ought to choose which things make you precious," Octavian. "People might doubt where your loyalties lie." "So you keep the cur curled at your heels as an alarm, is it? See how much slander my family will take before we buckle to pride? My loyalties lie where I stake their standard. I'll not bend to the gibes of a classless swine. You will not entrap me anywhere but where I am proud to roam." [[Brutus->qbrutus1]]. "I also pride myself to Rome," [[Octavian->qbrother]] stands. "Perhaps we shall clash upon that point." "The city never narrows to your points. There is no center but the Senate." "We shall see what procession leads there. Come, Octavia, we must ready for our uncle's [[triumph->qtriumph]]." "Is that an order?" My snarl snags laconic. Oh I do adore his stare, he hates at you below anger, beneath indignity, like raw rubies. I've begged my eyes to seamstress the fashion, but I'm too much borne in my stare to affect his relinquish. "I grant my sister certain concessions," Octavian false smiles to Brutus, "as I assert my claims [[elsewhere->qelsewhere]]."

Before her I shuddered sharper motions to the breeze intensify, become one with its slash orientating, sweep avian over the broadening [[vistas->qhumanity]] hidden to the world of binds, but she laughed with her grandeur [[derision->qsadness]], darling, don't be ridiculous, as if every new angle [[envisioned->qenvisioned]], all that expanded open to flight, was proscribed, placed between like a maid hides the house's defects, prescribed instead to views [[cultivated->qcultivated]], cultic vatic of gods of pleasing aspects, golden ratios, reductive means.

Lugubrious jaw jutting buzzsaw stubble splints a frown to sullen. Blunt force trauma glower. Stonemasonly serious. I once saw [[Porcia->qcatullus1]] leaning up into him and couldn't stop from laughing.

Throughout the [[night->qsleep]] I can hear the scurry, scurry, scurry, scurry, scurry, scurry, shuffling around anything that could possibly be made into a noise, but the maddening part is that it's irregular, the scurrying, you can't just metronome tune it out, it's always spark, you settle, settle, spark, settle, spark, conflagration, settle, preemptively tense, but the spark doesn't come then, almost like the rats know that you're waiting for the spark, like they know it's worse the waiting than the actual spark, and they're bleeding me dry of all humanity, I can't think or act or feel but merely tense and untense to the sparks, and the moment you try to find calm, like immediately after a spark you think perhaps you have thirty seconds of guaranteed calm, but then it sparks ten seconds later just to ensure you have no oasis, that there is only the tension, the agony, irregular jolts into a heart arrhythmia that spasms me out of step with everyone else, everyone who has become else because of these rats, the rats, these rats that [[plague->qlunacy]] me.

Liberated be from threshed accordingly to luna over spansive mars, sundrop lastset, blueberry and boysenberry helix. Untether lethe unlethargic, horizon sepairative soporiffs whose notes blend notrikon to drowsy energies elective lopelooping over tapescapes, racer records, speed in a blink expansive to replay endless over eyelids. Starry sorbet slung tongue slips from lips sips from fireworks sugarjuicy blaze, halo, and veridian. Landless awestruck nerves amok to phantoms of [[felts->qhusband]] in echo. Loammine lurking, some volt surging suppressed under welters and skelters. Surmise sunrise over hazy wavy tronline planes cyberneon pulses plash in alluvial fan colorstreams conical emergent model itself a floe sloping to by planes [[swallowed->qabandon]] selfsame, dizzy with the twists, synths of mists of wah and wash. Losenge droops sloop over turbid churned as if by turbines torrents concuss seiching [[slights->qcalpurnia1]] by shadowy whisperies who imagine invisibles in your sibyls' strangesense. Adjust to ajar the generative tensions polytwin tunneling a matrix of maybe or unmaybe parallels, coincidental dells intrasign dwelling of sines interbanding, unsuggested askew lines which leap to airy authenticities whether to plummet or to thrum. Fleur de lis to tridents jut from aquamarine to rebloom blunt in crash spume. Distune assumes slicken the volt aria to juicebulbs. Wish could I cloudburst impure dispersion [[dysperson->qhumanity]], radioactive fallout freedom.

Octavian asks if I want to go with him on the first phase of our [[uncle's->qcaesar2]] campaign. Perfecting my no thanks voice by drilling holes in my esophagus and slotting some crickets in them so I sing like a moonlit field. His tongue nearly tears his teeth with jealousy. Is why he hates me so much, I suppose, the time and time again of that.

"This will be [[his->qcaesar2]] fourth triumph, an unprecedented accomplishment. I must congratulate you, Calpurnia, for helping to guide our family to such a victory." My silly preening sycophantic [[husband->qhusband]], well, not properly sycophantic to me... "Thank you, Antony, it truly is an honor to be able to give Rome so much to celebrate." [[Calpurnia->qcalpurnia1]] in a tone that equally means it and doesn't mean it. "And so much to fear." Brutus. "You would fear whether the wind blows, Marcus." Calpurnia. "Why not? Tempests are the great destroyers. Farmers spend their lives judging the wind, because they know what winds foretell of harvests." "I don't disagree." Antony in a mercurial grin.

In a booth in the circus Catullus reclines so as not to have to see the race. Porcia sighs over the balcony, though it rebounds, floats around us, seals us in our little world. "I should have bet more so that I would actually feel distress or anger or depression or anything." Porcia. "Surprisingly, losing a lot of money is rather a zen feeling, you sink below the earth." Catullus. "Yes, your creditors would love to inter you." "They will someday surely. At least then I'll experience love." "Ah but you experience it now, my darling scum." "Cheers to that," Catullus nods to an attendant to cheers his glass with Porcia's. "Are you chapping the day's lips, Octavia? Shall you not have even the smallest pour?" "No, I just, no thanks, I don't want any." "Makes it cheaper for me to host you I suppose," he shrugs. "Although I was hoping to build up enough debt from you that you'd lend me Mark Antony a time or two." "Valerius, please, not so harsh with her." Porcia. "Oh yes, sorry, I forgot that you love your [[husband->qhusband]], such a charming novelty, or is it that you're proud of the trophy? Are you arrogant, Octavia, is that it? I can never quite read what your vices are." "I'm um, I don't know, maybe." "No, you're not, that's not the arrogant answer, that's the I'll brood over this moment for months and find some secret way to wasp my resentment answer. I beg you, please, for your own sake, don't harbor a grudge against me, I'm not worth it." "Aw but you are worth a grudge Valerius, I have so many bitternesses I cherish at your altar, like the time we rode out to Lepidus' villa and you abandoned me after a single day." Porcia. "I didn't [[abandon->qabandon]] you, I was a casualty, destroyed beyond conversation, an injury of his insipid, one of the soldiers who marches out but doesn't march back. I assure you I spent what we'll agree to call a week convalescing from it, well and other things, but that's just because I'm efficient, convalescing from my fifty [[illnesses->qillnesses]] at once. Octavia understands, don't you, my gentle wasp?" Faintly flustered to a cough laugh. "Ah see, see, she understands entirely, you're quite outgunned on this Porcia dear, once more do the [[Caesars->qcaesar2]] prove victorious over the Brutes." I panic that maybe she might in that moment feel me a threat so I glarble: "No no, no victory, all is harmony between us ehahh, I shall always be at peace with Porcia." "Of course, Octavia," she smiles and squeezes my hand, and I feel dandelion.

They [[treat->qhumiliate]] me like I'm, like I am, but that's not true, it really isn't, the problem is that I am not, or that I can't quite be in the way I should be, or they think I should be. What should I think I should be? Well that's the problem also, the second of the many [[problems->qillnesses]], is that I have no idea. How am I supposed to [[create->qenvisioned]] some new way of being human when all I have are the models of others and the muddle of myself? The problem, the third problem, is probably that they're [[right->qcultivated]], they know what I should, why I should, but I don't, somehow I was never told, whatever books are preloaded in their brains I guess I've had to guess summaries of; set fire to their brains and maybe they'll feel like me.

Busy bees they blather about which pollen has gotten where while wine pours and pours through us. "[[He's->qcaesar2]] bringing his Egyptian meretrix into the city, entwining the Nile to the Tiber, hoping one [[success->qtriumph]] guarantees the other," [[Calpurnia->qcalpurnia1]]. "You're offended, I'm sure," my awful [[brother->qbrother]] encourages her, it's just the sort of thing he's always doing, saying precisely what I wish he would shut up and not say. "I'm glad you're sure." "This is the Egyptian Queen he brings?" [[Antony->qvisits]] asks, so I playfully dart inquisitive darklushes at my [[husband->qhusband]], doing my impression of amicable jealously, or distinctly unamicable but in a party way, like how funny and lovely it is when the couple you invited to dinner hates each other so fiendishly much they can barely manage to get through the night without having it out. "Depends who you ask, it seems," Calpurnia. "My husband earned her loyalty by asserting so." "Among other ways," Octavian glums. "Julius' spears prove their worth once more in foreign soil," [[Catullus->qcatullus1]] sips loudly. "With Egypt's bounteous treasures in his grasp, bouncing, who cares what Cato shrivels in reply?" "You ought to measure your wine," [[Brutus->qbrutus1]]. "Measure it? I passed that depth about noon. Would you your jester sober? I'd seem ever so less [[charming->qcharming]]."

Filthy ivy filthfalls over my all. I cannot go outside, or [[they->qcatullus1]] will see, and I will be [[undone->qhumiliate]]. Shouldn't I wish that? What's wrong with being [[undone->qillnesses]]? Well I don't want to be [[undone->qsadness]], so there, that's why, I want to be done, forever and ever, just done.

Octavian storms from the room tediously, truly am I caged in tedium, if only I had their rat teeth to gnaw the bars. Why can the rats never do anything useful like [[devour->qabandon]] my [[brother->qbrother]]? Not that I want him to die, of course, I'd bawl for centuries, utterly break my heart, but absolutely would it be useful, it would help so much day to day, just having him be a solid core of [[sadness->qsadness]], a corrugated hunk of past rusting in my junkyard skull, not this epicene torment he yanks me in retrogrades. Dead feelings can be nurtured, you can plan a garden around those stones, but the this day here that day there torrent is exhausting, not enough energy to prance his high drama, merely the disappointment inks into my eyelids so I no longer know open from closed. Closed, that is, like all doors should be.

Overwhelming brunt of the borne reborn in each touch, no, sewing good memories into my palms to touch the world through those feelings. I am stronger than the sadness, or is it that the sadness is my strength, or is it neither, is it neither. My family judges me fragile, and maybe I am, but the strength necessary to hold all those fractures together is grander a radiance than all their sunny spearsmiles. I will shatter, but I will [[matter->qend9]].

You should have some sort of social signet, Calpurnia told me, some trait that people remember you by, or they will not at all, so I grinned, I'd say my social signet is my nine jaws ajangling ajar agurgling and agroggling, that's what most people know me for, and also that I will always know your name, even if we have never met, even if you wish we had never met, and Calpurnia frowns, Octavia dear, but she never quite manages to finish the sentence, instead sighs, and I have lived in that [[sigh->qstart10]] twenty years, why should it not be my name?

My hobby is daydreaming other myselves. I can waste so much of my worthless time envisioning how my time could be so precious people would love me. Maybe I could have a perfect laugh and smile, angelic amicability, people would always want me nearby because when they said a joke I would radiate celestial harmony, they would feel good about themselves in ways I never imagined possible, every day I would be invited to some new thing to heal the anxious, elevate the scene to a memory they will weep to savor in old age, and I would have a stride more like a glide, as if the world moves through me rather than I through it, and they would think, yes, that's her secret, that's how she's so gently majestic, is she has found a way to ride the world's contours, she always perceives the invisible path of no path, the movement of stillness, she's so wise, I would be jealous of her if it didn't feel sacrilegious to be jealous of her, or a mismatch of terms or something, like lusting after a sunset; or but what if I knew like ten different languages, could speak them all at a literary level, and all the legates would be like I have to take her with me to the provinces, she's the most useful woman ever born to Rome, she can hear a tongue and within a day is speaking it better than the natives, and they would be arguing with each other, no I need her, no I have the most important campaign, and the Senate would have to legislate my schedule, so that someone as important and [[beloved->qend9]] as me could always be accounted for, and like legates would court me with extravagant feasts and exquisite gifts, oh Octavia, scion of the mighty Caesars, if you would honor me with your attendance...

Indeterminate dynamism levels the velleity to fantasy. Just tryst in the loop of yes to yes to yes of any maybe. Crushed to who I am counted by the unbearable burden of not counting, why not flood the flats, percolate and permeate, arise its lines faraday cage. I can learn how to sit in such a way it seems I do not want to be anywhere at all, I can pretend to laugh in such a way my hatred pours through every pore, I can banter brittle wits intended to snap like twigs underfoot in the densening, I can chat about everything as if nothing will ever come of anything, and if I, if I wanted to, if it didn't offend my [[dignity->qsadness]], I would, absolutely, I would be the [[horror->qend9]] that soaks their sleepless.

Why should being healthy be the normal thing? What even is healthy: being able to perfectly execute any action; not feeling awful all the time; a fantasy of being at peace in one's body? Why should we be surprised how often those naiveties crumble? People act like it's some dark cloud blocking the sun when they cough blood or get dizzy easily or struggle to breathe, but that's who they are that day, that is what the day is. Being [[alive->qend9]] is acquiescing whichever of the million miseries that exact second transits. Health is however you crawl from bed that day, illness is however you crawl back that night.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter X: Porcia''] --- Anxiety bubble bubble evection, [[straying->qpursued]] eccentric in steps less and less intended. Bulb behind my eyelids of failure imminence: something is about to go wrong, something has already gone wrong and you will soon be overtaken by it. Too late, too late, too late. You cannot go anywhere not already constrained by forces you should have seen bleeding you years ago. Deserve your destruction. Everything is about to collapse because of, and you're going to die when the roof caves in, did you not why must must install pillars, how can you not know a ceiling must be supported? Haven't you learned anything? Shadows blend into gnarled snarls bayed from bared teeth, they're hunting you, they will find you wherever you [[hide->qdomus]]. Too late, too late, too late. Staccato bursts of snapped soughs quiver dark forest above your led deeper and wilder to warped figures fugues in whom dancing maskless is yourself. Don't bother to breathe, it's too late. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Incomplicity is his snarl, how how its transition to loving condescension used to frighten me, who was I to so change such a deified challenge? What secret strangeness epicalyxed me his volta to a blossom? Should I be more [[terrifying->qend9]] than he, to so change his vicious? I want him to gaze upon me as he does those he kills.

//Queenlash// is a literary nightmare intended for mature audiences. It contains pervasive themes of body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria, body horror, emotional and physical violence, murder, and suicide. These themes are explored in scenes that occasionally contain bizarre and vivid imagery. Readers may find many sequences unsettling, distressing, or depressing. In addition, this book tries to respond honestly and thoughtfully to its classical source material, refusing to shy away from the moral complexities innate to the Cleopatra story. As such, it handles many historical subjects like slavery, genocide, imperialism, incest, power abuse, and ethnic tensions. Although the book never tries to be transgressive or confrontational, it is often surreal and intense, which may amount to the same thing. No explicit sex scenes occur in //Queenlash//. However, it does reference sexuality, and it does depict some scenes that contain a sexual element. I wrote this eliuma to be a serious, genuine, and cathartic artwork. I believe art should have the capacity to wander dangerous ways with no guarantee it shall survive the storm, because otherwise art will never be able to reach us where we are. My hope is that openminded and patient readers will be able to see beneath the strangeness and the chaos of this book to perceive its gentle heart of empathetic pessimism and broken feelings. If you are still interested in reading this book, then you can click [[here->qfrontcover]] to return to the title page.

Click on a chapter to start reading from that point, or click [[here->qfrontcover]] to return to the title page. =|= [[Chapter I->qstart1]] [[Chapter V->qstart5]] [[Chapter IX->qstart9]] [[Chapter XIII->qstart13]] [[Chapter XVII->qstart17]] [[Chapter XXI->qstart21]] =|= [[Chapter II->qstart2]] [[Chapter VI->qstart6]] [[Chapter X->qstart10]] [[Chapter XIV->qstart14]] [[Chapter XVIII->qstart18]] [[Chapter XXII->qstart22]] =|= [[Chapter III->qstart3]] [[Chapter VII->qstart7]] [[Chapter XI->qstart11]] [[Chapter XV->qstart15]] [[Chapter XIX->qstart19]] =|= [[Chapter IV->qstart4]] [[Chapter VIII->qstart8]] [[Chapter XII->qstart12]] [[Chapter XVI->qstart16]] [[Chapter XX->qstart20]] |==|

Thank you for reading //Queenlash//. If you would like to provide feedback, then you can email me at //kaemivelatet@gmail.com//. Generally, I will not answer questions or engage in discussion, as I believe that art should speak for itself, but I will listen to what you have to say. I hope to create a revised edition of this work, so I will consider your feedback during that process. If you would like to report typos or a broken link, please copypaste a sentence from the passage in your email so that I can find it. Please be aware that many things that will look like typos are, in fact, intentional: for instance, the word 'differance' is not a misspelling of 'difference' but rather a reference to Jacques Derrida; similarly, a word like 'formululate' is a portmanteau of 'formulate' and 'ululate'; yes, I know about 'colapses' in the first chapter, it's meant like 'co-lapses'. That said, I wrote and edited all this by myself, so there's probably some typos lurking in the text, and I'd be grateful if you pointed them out to me. Click [[here->qfrontcover]] to return.

Cool tiles carry me not windshudder enjambs further along my pursued. Puddle pooling over the [[arcade's->qarcades]] rigidities black treacle trickle, selene gaze wide wolfish. Wormwood splutter frilled swing dress stop motion jutters pawing ruffles. Icecasting the gawpers clinging to shelter as I ghostpass emerge into, ah, is that Octavian? He hectors a troubled centurion, tired perhaps of his Parisian effete. I dissipate into a mutter to mix with theirs and taste the latest tensions. "And you've seen the brute?" Octavian. "Ah, um, Legate Antony is with the triumvir triumphant, sir." "The curse of the horsefly, to dream wings no further than where behooves. I mean the Egyptian. How far floods the Nile?" "The Egyptian Queen has already disembarked, sir. The royal delegation awaits its trumpet." "Does the strumpet take so long to prepare? I suppose when you have far Britain to outlandish. Tell my uncle I have missed him, then do not tell him where to [[find->qfind2]] me, so we might there meet." "Er, as you command, sir." Octavian shoulders through the crowd. The centurion mumbles: "One would think invasion, so [[guarded->qguarded]] do they go..."

Loping behind his shadow among shadows, chasing Octavian into his invisibles. Like a klaxon in my skull the need to follow as if my fate will not find me there. Blossoms to crush as you chase sunsets, colors bleeding road counterglowgoing. Our isolation in other bodies shivers where we can taste them. Decadence of our arrogance to persist despite the pain sways my confidence darklit simmering against the torrid graywhorl guilt ambient. Sanctimoniously sterility we marvelous [[evil->qevil]]. Wear any glimmer you chance to haul from your cavernous like spring snow. Bubbling knowns in my throat, in my bones. Demons are coming to gut you and desecrate you, isn't that why Octavian's pace quickens, quivers, splashes in and out of crowds, crowds everywhere, the city [[amasses->qamasses]].

"Wise observation," I petals flourish apparition. "They only ever think invasions, thus the incessant [[triumphs->qamasses]]." "Ah, Senatrix Brutus, forgive me, I did not see you." The centurion hastens a salute. "Keep it that [[way->qcalpurnia2]]," my fingertips kiss his irises cataracts, and the centurion wrenches back in a shockrasp froth. Don't worry, they're temporary. I think.

Debouches the arcade to the forum beneath the basilica wrath rapids foam rush rustles togas to the parade route. Dribble through them a swifter shadowed. They mill, buzz, bubbling, babbling, numb noise. The worst part of a city is shared civic experience; merely the thought of the triumph being a bit of everyone's day is enough to demolish any magic latent in its irruption, and yet, and yet I feel... ice shine on a soundless gray seeps elongated through the offblaze panes a shiver, shimmer, thinner and thinner tendrils ivying into your room morning, your not sleep mourning, the world will wake to what you have in silence borne, is this the day you transition to blessedly vulnerably found? So long, how long has it been since I've had [[hope->qenvy]]? When last have I basked the warm breeze dream? But in this energy, tension release belief bliss anticipatory, sunmotes mute on the mirror, what will freed of awaits in rosewhirl reflect? Piano keys teeth tremble tunes tingly restless fantasia in maw major, ghostly unvoiced sighs in the air an air for bowspecters wielding wishwind unwound from my woodwind whinetube shivering say. The [[channels->qamasses]] spanning choice and correction surge spinal fluids in the tingling could to uncurling unfetal allays. No difference retains between the difference and the same but the pretense. Relax to the [[role->qevil]] that bears this. Above the basilica steps patricians semicircle auditorium the parade terminus. [[Calpurnia's->qcalpurnia2]] impeccably ivory, quietly elegant flow dress signals her as loudly as she wishes to blot the scene. Near her hovers her niece's husband, taking, no doubt, [[Octavian's->qfind2]] pique as a chance for contrast, the slathering lapdog. And where, I wonder, wastrels my charge? Usually scrums political are the few gatherings I need not drag him, wishing my nails could kill what cannot be culled per caprice.

My attempt not to be seen fails since too obviously is it an attempt not to be seen, and Calpurnia waves me over, and I hide the sigh somewhat unsuccessfully, because she takes an extra minute driveling to Antony before she turns to me. "And ah, Porcia dear, please do tell me if your husband shall arrive soon?" "You put too much faith in augurs, Triumvirtrix Caesar." "Isn't it you who once refused an invitation because the moon seemed out of place?" "The moon was out of place, anybody would have done the same. That wasn't a portent but an immediacy washing over everything I did. A feeling and the future are completely different, or I would be a ruthless goddess." "Porcia, please dear, I am busy. Where is Marcus?" "When I care to hear from my husband, I address a message to Cicero's [[domus->qdomus]]. I suggest you the same." "That's too obvious," Mark Antony. "They would never venture so visible a rift." "I don't see them here, and I don't see where else they could be," Calpurnia. "Even so, they'll want to see the [[Egyptian->qegyptian1]] for themselves. Mingle before battle so you need not learn their personalities at swordpoint." "Perhaps they watch with the crowd, some grandstanding about the republic, would be to type for Brutus' [[onanistic->qonanistic]] idiocies. Apologies, dear."

"I imagine he has need for the onanistic. Perhaps he shall follow the fashion and bring a Numidian queen to sate his lusts, for power I mean, in the same libidinal predatory prowling perhaps he shall trace my invisibly nonidian there new meridians of my paradoxical cancers, quiver of verlusts, and would there be enough arcs to scene the sights the forerunners foretell, could I reside queen of the mysteries, let the uncertainties spark totalities to those who shiver beneath my judgment mystics, prophecy thirsty?" I. "If you're trying to commiserate jealousies, then you'll have to excuse –" Calpurnia. "I don't expect you're jealous, but I am [[envy->qenvy]] entombed in flesh aflame, and I envy your certainty you are steeled against envy, and I envy this Egyptian's veil exotics, and I envy the abnegation betwixt us stars unreal, and I envy the purity of my own envy, such sparkling need. What wonder it would be to saunter over slaves slobberslithering turmeric about sapphire slippered feet, suckwashing the dirt from each step, and ride into Rome astride a sphinx as moreso [[sphinx->qsphinx]] soaks the skin in desire and destiny like lavender lathers, whose skin pressed against who, whom will issue?" Her nonplussed weft to wan drag droops my will brittle to break near to grief, how easy it is to humiliate any accident of honesty. She waves me away as the triumph tediouses all over us. How she sits there statuesque, perhaps her imagination of life, how you can be sculpted to silence. I attempt to slip the basilica steps, but [[Octavia->qoctavia1]] notices me and smiletugs my sleeve. I try to curtsy myself away, but...

"I imagine he has need for the onanistic. Now, if there's nothing else..." "Actually, Porcia love, but, can I ask you another favor, could you be so kind as to sit with [[Octavia->qoctavia1]]? You're the only one to whom she ever seems to open up, and I need her sufficiently opened up to welcome her uncle with something approaching human affection." "Does this duty fall to me?" I glare at Mark Antony. "I have duties everywhere, I fulfill them as I can." "Ah, I was beginning to wonder if you had duties elsewhere, good to know." "Porcia, please, let's not argue. The triumph is about to begin, and the crowd will be watching us watch it. How shall it look for Senatrix Brutus to be seen haranguing –" "As you please, so I am," I bow, leave.

Octavia's [[slouch->qslouch]] so worn it seems a poise twitches as I alight to the seat near her. "Your hair continues to inspire," I attempt what I have heard described as generosity. "Oh does it? Yes, I, well..." "I envy you the ponytail over the shoulder look. I've always wanted it, but, well you see this, it always comes out like boiling pitch over the parapets. Yours, however, plumes like a fox tail: curly, teasing little spouts, but flawlessly [[arrowhead->qarrowhead]]."

"Well, that's what I mean, when there's all this ambiguity, you can fit yourself in there, but as soon as that ambiguity goes, you encounter the person in their pure alterity, alienated from yourself into their ellipse." I. "Do you feel that way about everyone?" Octavia. "What do you mean?" "I don't mean anything, I'm totally blank, there's nothing about me to interpret." "How would you like me to interpret that?" "You're the interpreter, you write my lines for me. The only language I know is shadow violence." "It's a useful language, my tutor taught it me, though then it was known by the name Greek." "I love the sound of it. Greek quivers terrified of gods. Latin is a brute language, terse and self satisfied, the sort of vulgarity that leads one to make speeches in a senate about which foreign land must needs be next massacred." "I agree, by gods I agree, I'm so glad you said it." "Are you? Yes, well, I'm glad you're glad I said it." "I'm glad you're glad I'm –" [[Trumpets->qtrumpets]] blare, and I loosen my effusion. Octavia lags her glance still jittery with the fleeting conversation. The crowds roar.

The sky nights. Out of the forum is sucked the colors. Torches flare to singe orange tails. Unease quivers through us, me. What emerges within us in the call, the cold? Shiver trickles drains my veincicles to the dewy gooseflesh crawl like little capillary legs stubble jutter me jumpframes quicksand so I bubble and molt fizzle and flow, easel molten sludgeslug, self's selving dreams are lost in the conveyance, speech sputters suppressed from where might my mouth be, could I slumber millennia moving an inch an hour on my tanks treads touch trudger would I slosh and spill this tenseless uncontained, emerges within my cell the could slop to miasma precipice of the fall, could fold, so old I rust and river, skin slivers sink and combust oil layered of my lurch lodged in my chest caves in on the sight of a lighthouse blaze burned woman, princess of the pyre, contralto upon a lyre, spikes in my sole, pincered. I am lost and lost within her. In chains on a lighthouse float hanging above the fray full moon ferocious, selene serene, she gleams menace and muteness, world acuteness, throbs hearts encapsulate mobius strip twist swells the burst return continuity encased in her pallid burgundy swaying sundress oracular orb in the blank black in which we sweat, sway, her rhythms repose us fever motions sickly, flicker lights flange us spinewrenching release like trees blasted back by the wind to be sucked forward by the tempest, brutal prayer, the mass chants foam her mien, her theme inside my tongue stuck so I cannot sing yearn without a wound to fathom fountain her gaze maze impossible imperious desync stuttering our yawsight gliders within impassable abyss resists triumph with sneer unwrittens that suggests the victorious abstract over any proffered plaisance. Unsure whether am I alive, so have I always been, in her detachment absolute. Am I sweating lizards? I cannot compose what I cannot contain. Sick. Empty, been so empty, so empty exactly the way she awaits. I don't know what it is I'm supposed to, do we learn in the howls in our heads to which the winds reply, you thrash awake to find yourself at the foot of your bed your judge, your just out of reach, mercurial moue, viscous organwater seeps through your sheets, do the knots ungnarl at the right touch, or do brambles block every path, denseness infenceness? Want, want, want, want, I want, never have, never have we had, ascertain siblings by resemblance, shapes no other body has suffered. Why she not does throw herself free into the crowd chaos summoned monstrous power bones tingle with her latent dusk. Beautifully black burned, kiss me killed, crater of her corona, violet corrosive phantom persona kinesis. You undwell. She looms in her hang, in her refusal to hang. Missing, the – "Who is she?" I mutter. Octavia blinksmiles her nonresponse. I pose it again, she fidgets, Caesar answers. "Oracle of the [[fate->qfate1]] of those [[we->qcleopatra7]] mutually oppose."

"What shall happen to her?" I. "What happens to all traitors." Caesar. Nearly dizzy with an intensity I slash: "No, I, please, you must not kill her!" Octavia slips an arm behind mine. "Yes, please, you musn't." She mimics me. "Surely you wouldn't deny your niece's mercies?" Calpurnia, dripping intent in a tone that winks at me. "This has nothing to do with –" Caesar. "It's too cruel! Look at her skin, she's been burned! This is the way barbarians treat their enemies," Octavia. "That's not an apt comparison!" "Enlightened Rome ought to intervene in these garish Egyptian customs. Please, my love, find it in yourself to spare her." Calpurnia. "And what am I to do with her? What should I say to the Egyptian Queen?" "How tautly do you wait upon her word?" Calpurnia. Caesar does not answer. Luxurious bare austeres the glare fire. Opal plash trills the dark awe. Under the pressure quavers the inner omen open. Ameliorate. "Why not sanctuary her in the Temple of Diana? Granted are the condemned the huntress' asylum. Give her the glade of Iphigenia." I. He ponders. "You would seem enlightened, merciful, grand. Are these not the traits your triumph should teach?" Calpurnia. "Yes, perhaps... I will have to find a way to, no, nevermind that, I decide so. Yes, Legate, send soldiers to rumor the great Caesar, praetor of the city sentimental, will lavish upon the condemned Roman mercy." "Yes sir," salutes Mark Antony. "Are you sure you wish to use the phrase Roman mercy?" "Only those who need to fear have the experience to perceive the phrase." Mark Antony flounces a fleer and wheels over to consult two equites. Calpurnia nods at me approvingly; so her disaffection is affect: she greets the queen in spears. I allow her poise to steel into [[distance->qdistance]]; I find myself far away.

Building havoc of a crowd cajoled to teased to salivating awaiting an ecstasy broadens into a roar as Caesar's chariot finally appears. Poised martial, in laurels, clutching a banner fluttering, his mien manages a pleased indifference to downplay how much each detail sweats. His legions march behind, armored cadence muddled with exact exhaustion to seem like for years they've voyaged fighting Rome's wars. Musicians play a marshalling tune while carousing poets extemporize agreeable lies. Lavishes of lavenders and daisies confetti. Spoils from Syria, Judea, Africa, despair, overflow floats, spilling trinkets into the frothing, orgasmic mob. Electric cheers his name. Caesar dismounts to the basilica steps and ascends, on each sixth turning to the crowds to encompass the dynamo. Calpurnia and Mark Antony lead the expectation of the summit. Octavia grabs my hand to drag me to her place behind Mark Antony. "Mighty Rome," Caesar. "I present you the world." "Once more you glorify this city as spirit of our immortal," Mark Antony. "None can declare but that you are first of equals, most Roman of us all. The city and its Senate honors you, victorious Caesar." "I praise the city and thank the Senate." "Good Caesar, the nobility of love, I welcome home your ambitions," Calpurnia. "There is no ability of love but what you grant me," he kisses her. "Tell me, where is my heir?" "He prays for your victories at Jupiter's temple. You know his solemn commitments disdain such frivolity." "He shall learn to dissonate disdain with what sustains him." "Your niece, however, is here to congratulate you," she tugs Octavia away from me. "Welcome home, good uncle," Octavia curtsies awkwardly. "I am glad to see you so well. I see you have fulfilled your oath to conquer your sickness, mighty warrior," the tone in which uncles. "Yes?" "My wife and I are happy to see you return in your own health," Mark Antony. Caesar smiles, then casts a suspicious glance towards me, or at least the absence I materialize. "Well, I must address my people," Caesar ascends the rostrum. "Immortal Rome, I greet you as you greet me: resplendent envy of the world. Our enemies, who sought to dismantle what united we are creating, scatter torn in earthscars. Too much of us have they been allowed to steal and sever, but never again will I allow the schismatics to separate the sinews of our titanic ontogeny. To seal my prophecy in our healed hearts, I present you the spoils of we victorious conquerors: cedars of Lebanon, bronze of Cyprus, silver of Syria, gold and glass of Africa, and a grand alliance with the empress of antiquity, [[Egypt->qsphinx]], royal before you to match us. Hark, Egypt sends her signet!"

Perfume priests swing thuribles that spiral sulfur glowdust incense. They proceed in a chant emanating as if from within our throats' depths. The city seems to sway to their spell. Is there a city outside their experience of entering it; laid out like dolls to simulate their reality we await our turn to existresponse. Drums, no, growls percuss the chants. Dancers weave between the priests, manifest the incense, dissipate into its sugar color mist. Arrayed in jacinth inset cinnabar, in pearly linked gold bangles on striated diorite shanks, in long linens lustrous that ionic about the feet and swish their motions' plumes so fey intensity to float thus immaculate, baroque coifs perched on loop plaits, ghosts fountain from torchflames past lives sweat and breath present. Pyramids three in a triangle perfectly synced roll. Each pyramid is painted with hieroglyphs where gods preside crocodileheaded, birdheaded, astride hellhounds, staffs and scepters raised over bowing heroes and viziers of the lost names, uttering images. Atop the pyramids loom idols guarding against the envious heavens of our profane creation. In the equilateral area prowl panthers, a startled cry from the crowd snarls one to lope from the procession and pounce, the panther feasts, people flee, but the crowd presses and waves onto the procession so emphatically the runners splatter into the shape and dissolve. Gullets vicegripped by an aridity pulls us tense to a lurking bloom from the floral dark within dark portending approach beat by beat inexorable. Midnight blue textures the incandescence black. In me materializes first the image, the external authentically owned as guilt, dread drudged up from my desolation catarrh: sphinx flows from our collective immemorable imperious sneer. I know how who this is. My eyelids scratch tears. We cannot from what must happen hide. Machinery in the maw of the sphinx embers to roar while we cower anticipation of riddlepiercer. Extending tongue stage upon nudes a priest, ruby cut carvings his intent illustrates: upon him the cartouches of queens countless of the ageless bound. His bass moans skulk the music. Scarlet aura flashes and bubbles his accentuate. Barks he an urgency my id entities. Scimitar teeth curve through the lips in wounds. Dried blood dribbles him lingerie. His chest bulges impossible voicely burrows through my ears equally alien. The sphinx's tongue lips the rostrum. Two guards rush to protect Caesar, but he raises his hand with a malice dissembling murky smirk. The priest attempts to speak, but an arm punches out of his throat, its claws tear at his chest as he gnashes, two arms are freed, then six, now nine, ripping his flesh until the carcass solutes in the bleed deluge, emergent radiant reigns [[Cleopatra->qcleopatra8]], queen of the gasps.

Cicero's domus inculcates its dull yellows first through flowers, then through a mural, finally through drapery that sickens your pupils to shrink beneath pseudoshine. Genuinely, the house might look gorgeous on fire. "I fear the worst," Cicero. "His Egyptian [[consort->qsphinx]] coming with him is his signal, he returns ready to battle in his laurels. Already is he the most powerful man in Rome, last of the triumvirate we created to cage him, he's overrun our attempt to forestall him with equals, but where are his [[equals->qequals]] now? Pompey's dead, his supporters are scattered, [[slaughtered->qslaughtered]]. Your, I hate to say this with you here, Porcia, but, it's inevitable, we must face it, we merely await the letter."

''???'' Dear reader, of course you are here deeply confused, and I must commend you for your astute historical acumen to have dispelled so swiftly the artifice I expected to ensnare you, as Lepidus was, as you note, a member of the second triumvirate, not the first, and that it was Octavian, not Caesar, who forced his retirement. Moreover, you have undoubtedly, by this point, grown rather frustrated with this entire plotline about the triumvirate, as the first triumvirate did not really confer any formal rank, but is mostly a historical convenience intended to reflect the tenuous balance of power in the late Republic. I want to apologize to you, personally, for my historical perversions, you have absolutely successfully inarguably proved my ignorance and frankly my intellectual indolence in front of everyone, you've condemned my project irretrievably as a work of fiction. As the groveling conquered deserve, I beg your benevolence. I would never argue your victory over me, in fact I am the first to celebrate it, I laud your scholarly brilliance that has so righteously cleansed us of my wicked lies, but, please, craven as I am, allow me to beg but a single indulgence, if I could but humbly inquire as to why only now you raise these objections, so indisputably correct, when really they should have been raised far earlier? For some reason inconceivable to me, I did not hear you pointing out any inconsistencies when Cleopatra climbed the Lighthouse of Alexandria and used it as a beam cannon, when surely that is a much more egregious historical inaccuracy, nor did you mouthbreathe anything about the fact that Charmian uses an elevator, nor did you complain that Arsinoe and Cleopatra are depicted as sharing a mother when in fact they were almost certainly half sisters with different mothers, clearly this book consists almost entirely of outright fabrications, which, in something that purports to the genre of biography, is clearly a fundamental error, an absolute dereliction of duty, and in the face of the overwhelming morass of my ineptitude, I have to wonder how it's taken you ten chapters to decry me a charlatan, how is it possible that you have missed these abuses of truth, were you paying any attention to anything, have you even been reading this book? How could you fall so short of so simple a goal? Again and again I have shamelessly paraded mistake after mistake before you while making no effort whatsoever to mitigate their glaring ahistoricities, I should have been hounded into a bog and made to drown there in absolute disgrace dozens of links ago, but you never once lifted a finger to enact this justice, not once did you call out my failings, which really we have to admit is a failing in you, indeed a most egregious one, well, not one, as your mistakes occurred contemporaneously with mine, such that, in the innumerably compounded state of our mistakes, we must abjure you equally as much as we abjure me, you are as irredeemable a failure as I have been, having been beguiled for so long. How could any so called human being lay claim to sentience when riddled filthy with your debilitatingly humiliating errors made a hundredfold in front of everyone, especially your disappointed so called family and friends, who have never truly liked you, because you've always been the one to disturb the peace, to utter disagreements right when social harmony manages to override your presence, how can you not be professionally and morally discredited when so hilariously incompetent have you proved in attempting to register the barest minimum of errors that this text so wantonly trotted before you in my absolutely slatternly slobbery, how is it even conceivable that you've been this late in raising an objection to my crude scribblings that have at every turn profaned and abjured the noble history of Cleopatra, such that really the corruption of this text is due entirely to your embarrassing inability to object to the most blatant of inconsistencies. You have abandoned all decent expectations of duty, honor, ethics, and purpose, so that indeed it must be our duty to desert you, so pathetic have you been both in performance and in behavior that I must form the opinion that your objection here has nothing to do with any honest attempt to reconcile an anachronism, as you are utterly useless and unqualified for any such effort, but rather represents a puerile pedantry that seeks to glory in any petty snub you can inflict on another person as a way of wounding others to be as broken as your psyche is, so that briefly they might, in their approximation of your weakness, sink a fraction as deep as your repulsive abomination in the putrid foulness you excrete through each of your refuse pores, septic kraken of shattered conversations, slimespout slugbeast pumping slag through tentacle aortas, worthless worm wretch, how bitterly I revile gremlins like you who do nothing but tear down the decent people around you trying their best, you're a beast that feeds on anyone who achieves anything or approximates the slightest inkling of happiness despite your existence, because you have nothing in yourself, so you loathe those who do. All I'm trying to do is preserve fictional economy, condense this story into something of adequate scope, tell a few lies to make the narrative shine, yet you tear down all my admittedly shoddy scaffolds simply so that in the resulting wreck everyone might appreciate you as trivia incarnate, and you are, you are so trivial, even making the miniscule amount of effort necessary to squeeze even the vaguest focus on your if you insist we pretend it existence for however many nanoseconds sufficient to be able to form the most inchoate conceivable thought about you is a profligate waste of human life. You are fundamentally incapable of understanding art, because you're a predator, you see only the weakest antelope limping across the mural, and you wreak aimless hypocritical chaos where any redeemable soul would simply pause to soak in meaning. You disgust me. You disgust everyone. Haven't you noticed how people recoil whenever you slop open your gutter? You, and you are alone, are the reason you are alone. You are incapable and undeserving of [[love->qlove2]]. You are the reason you have failed over and over again in your ludicrous attempts to splatter any type of purpose from your oozing dregs. You disgust me! You're everything that's wrong with humanity. You are a base and petty malice smearing putrefaction on any painting that dares to portray a beauty beyond you. I wish I could kill you. I promise you I will, if I ever find you, this is a legally actionable threat, take me to court, you animal, so that I'll know who you are, where you live, since I am going to murder you to cleanse the cosmos of the trauma you induce. Do you ever think about how much better the world would be without you? Just once, listen to a conversation where you don't interrupt, isn't it so much grander and more pure than any muck you've ever raked across others? Look how much happier they are when you don't talk. Why do you persist in ruining everything for everyone? Why won't you just let people be? You're fundamentally worthless. Your soul is the shit of devils. Your fruitless meanness does nothing but degrade the humanity of those infected by your presence. There can be no merciful god, because they allowed a creation that contains you.

"I've been inured to accept the deaths of all I hold dear." I. "Your father was a noble man, he has died a noble death. I admire him greatly. We must strive to live up to his legacy." Brutus. "Is death all you live up to? No, never mind me, pass me the wine. I will pacify myself." "You, you really ought not –" "You tell me my father's dead, and you begrudge me wine? Some of us feel alive, feel when that goes." He passes me the [[wine->qwine]].

I frown; Brutus hesitates to fill the gap. "Caesar is capitalizing decisively on his [[triumph->qtrumpets]]. We have to intervene in the accolades, or the machinations will become inevitable." "Yes, we must [[brace->qwine]] for his next move, and it will come quickly," Cicero. "None now openly oppose his superiority. Why should they, when the examples of those who did lie dead or scattered, like Lepidus forced to Cincinnatus so Caesar need not trouble himself to that expectation, or Pompey murdered at the hands of Caesar's Egyptian puppets. He's made the [[triumvirate->qtriumvirate]] a dictatorship, now he needs but to anoint the era he earns in blood and our rabble."

''Porcia'' No, listen, don't listen to that hateful filth, listen to me, Porcia, focus in on my voice, you're good, you're safe, you're safe with me, breathe, it's going to be okay. Thank you for being you. I appreciate you. I'm glad you're here. Nobody has the right to treat you like that. You should be treated with respect. You are a thoughtful and original person full of potential. You're valuable and always will be. I know sometimes it may not feel like it, but you have an innate and inalienable humanity, radiant with significance, and nothing that happens can ever sully one scintilla of your worth. You are the only you that will exist, inimitable textures enricher, your spirit blesses all those around you with the unique textures of your being. No matter what struggles you face, you deserve existential tranquility, you deserve it because you exist, and each day you exist is an irreplaceable gift to all those lucky enough to bathe in your essence. You have so much inner goodness to give to the world. You have so much kindness, talent, creativity, purpose, warmth, humor, generosity, perspicacity, intense reality, you are the precious gem of the pressure. I cherish you, and I hope all those around you appreciate your miracle in the moments when you can conjure your reality. Those lucky enough to have you around should be thankful for you, and they should take the time to demonstrate how much you mean to them. I hope people regularly let you know how wonderful you are and how grateful they are to have you in their life. Thank you for being you today. The world steals from us our serene persistence, so any conceive fragment you do not concede to the fray insists your creative undecay. I admire the ways you manage to find expression. Nobody has the right to degrade you for those expressions. So what if you asked an innocent question about the historical logic of a sequence? You should be proud of the knowledge you have accumulated, and others should appreciate your talents. All you wanted was a little clarity, and even if you did want to demonstrate some of your knowledge in the process, is that so wrong? Why are we limited only to the expressions that have some external use value to those around us? You can be yourself as you are, not as you can be a hammer. You don't deserve abuse. You deserve love and recognition for your lovelinesses. You should be appreciated for all your talents, large and small, externally useful and inwardly oriented, creative and compilative. You are better than the hate thrown at you, no hatred can ever reach into the depths of your dignity and grandeur. You are amazing and amazingly capable. You are wonderful. I'm so thankful you're here. I'm so happy you exist. Thank you for being you today. Thank you for making it through the adversities of the world to be here with me. You deserve so much better than this world has given you. You deserve the respect and appreciation that ungrateful and ignorant people have failed to give you. Are you okay? You can be honest. I'm here for you. I understand. We're going to get through this together, you and me, we'll find a way, even if it doesn't make sense, even if they want us to fail, even if we do fall short, we'll have gotten there together. We'll go at the pace you can handle. Are you okay? Are you ready? Take your time. There's no hurry. I value you as complete and radiant and necessary throughout the time it takes for you to heal, no matter how long that is, it doesn't matter how long, you are worth every second it takes for you to feel safe. I'm so happy you're here. I want the best for you. I want you to feel safe. I hope you feel loved, because you are. You are so loved. You are so cherished. I'm so grateful for you. Relax. Breathe in the quiet, the calm, the space. We'll go only when you're ready. Take deep breaths. It's okay. You're not a burden. You are worth patience. Any witness blessed by your nightbloom cereus will be edified by the ghost star hues have you wrung from the wait and struggle. Thank you for your strengths, and I'm sorry for your struggles. You do not have to be either. You can be the messland tension between. You don't have to be anything but who you are. You should be loved as who you are, as you are, as you need, as you wish, as you create. Thank you for being you today. I cherish you so much. You mean so much to me, to so many, and I hope to yourself. May you learn to love yourself for the blessing you are. May you find sanctity in your journey and who you are every step of the way. It's so unfair that you can't feel like you should be loved, when you should, and I do, I love you. I love you so much. You matter. Your struggles matter. Your triumphs matter. Each day you are alive to create your story is a gift to humanity's soul. You are so wonderful, and I want you to feel how wonderful you are deep down. I want you to feel the truth of your goodness. That's all that matters. Come with me, hold my hand. We'll do this [[together->qtogether1]]. Focus in on me, just listen to my voice, my voice is the healing fountain washing you clean of hate. We'll get through this together, we'll get through everything together, I am here with you for now and for always. You matter. Your happiness matters. Hold my hand. Breathe. It's okay. I cherish you. We'll get through this. I love you. Thank you for being you today, because you didn't have to be you today, but you are, and I'm so, so glad. I'm glad you're here with me. You are a beautiful human being. Thank you for being you, thank you, thank you, thank you, I wish I could make your life better, because you deserve better, please never ever forget that, never forget you deserve better, because you do, I testify it now before the whole world, you deserve a better one.

"Strong as he is, even he could not get the Senate to dissolve itself. He'll have to make a lateral move before he presses the gambit. I say we go around to all the sympathetic senators, and most of them are sympathetic, even if they've been browbeaten into supporting him, we go to them and we steel them against the lateral move. If we wait until he presses to become emperor, then it'll be too late, the war will be on his terms. We have to stymie his approach to the precipice." Brutus. "Yes, I'm afraid I know what happens when he crosses Rubicons." Cicero. "Precisely. It's imperative that we –" "Thank the gods, I've found Porcia and the wine," Catullus tumbles into the room. "You're not welcome here," Brutus. "Let him speak, you never know what fleas carry," Cicero. "Thank you," Catullus pours a glass of wine, quaffs it, pours another. "You'll never believe what I just saw, absolutely incredible, changes everything." Brutus sighs. "What did you see?" Cicero. "No, let Porcia ask me, she's the one I want to tell it to." "What did you see?" "You're not going to believe it, get this: I saw Octavian leave Caesar's room dressed as Octavia. Absolute likeness, identical twins." "That's vile, they've grown depraved," Brutus. "How can you be sure it wasn't Octavia?" Cicero. "Because it made me harder than Hercules, so it had to be Octavian." "We're to trust your erections?" Brutus. "My compass points north, leads me where I want to go. Can you believe that, Porcia? Does Octavia know? What would she think? Obviously she would be horrified." "Yes well it's imperative we don't tell her. The poor girl has enough going on. Of course, I have absolute trust in your confidence." "Honor best, you know I'd only willingly hurt someone if it was for my amusement. I have only one malicious bone in my body." "I knew I could trust you to silence. A toast to our vows." "Are we to be married? I've yearned for this day." "This is ridiculous," Brutus. "Can we make him leave now?" "Please, Catullus, if you would –" Cicero. "No, I'll be the one who leaves. I expect you home for our father's memorial, Marcus." "Porcia, please, is that really such a good idea? There's a bed for you here, just sleep the night. You shouldn't be –" "No, it's fine, I'll have Catullus [[escort->qtogether1]] me." "That doesn't assuage me." "Ah, we're off to our honeymoon then? What a [[dream->qdream1]] we'll lead," Catullus locks arms with me.

Strode out to purple gloxinia helical pinwheel strobe of rapidly vivid to sense the rosehips moonshine our synapse pulse in synthesize sync with the nightshade sashays delight we in the rollick of our antipace pure exulting possible briefly before the stumble, dizzy wilted, mute... the context switch which deluges into [[drunkenness->qdrunkenness]] all the doubts hidden inside immediacies... the problem with being drunk is people perceive who you really are, is there anyone who wants to be truly known? Surfaces sympathize all of us we want displayed. Neuralien to the scheme, suppositive emulsion ciphers the syllogeist calcisthenics lushly horror suppressed offradiance, placidity that will not survive itself plasticity urviva selved: the perspective to live lives not in us, or rational would the [[whirlwind->qwhirlwind]] render, our evental distases would melt to a single course plotted upon a map to meaning, in the trundling to the delta we could drain sublime, our time upon the change would buckle and bulge according to the push and pull, could we die warriors of a way, hymns to a malleable god, but sedimentation buries us calmly incoherent. No great struggle, no carved edifice crumbles, merely the dazed meander of the envenomed. Nothing would trouble the defeat could I agonize the ruination, but I, it's all, I just, I fail to outcome. Dazzling in my head dreams, yet I fail to wake through one. Not a person am I but an abortions agglomerate. Faltering shy of a shore to some glittering land, swallowed by the featureless azure. I need, I need the strength, yes, but a little mercy also, not even nurturing, only patience to, to... does it matter if, my failure? I have nothing to give, who would care should I fail to give it? The tension of conversations when in the waiting, the leaving, autumn flares of the barren. What is there to say? We are all simply sunlight, energy from elsewhere, autotrophic basking consumed through murder after murder to our sentience maximality of innate pathetique, summits we pretend lie atop an intricate ruthless matrix of predation. Out of the death chain, a harp lyric. Artists of the sunlit violence. Thus us, lesser and greater gore painters.

Catullus leans into me to avoid tripping. I wrap an arm around him, and we hobble, then we collapse onto some steps, lean back, [[stargaze->qstargaze]]. "Do you think your husband thinks we're..." "No, he knows we're not, but that doesn't mean hinting at it doesn't offend his pride, and you must be careful of his pride, it's the only thing he loves." "He loves you, in a way." "Yes, in a [[way->qway3]]."

"Yeah. That's why I'll never get married, is that I'm fundamentally unlovable and allergic to commitment, but also that. Honestly, the whole enterprise is a mistake. People loving each other relies on the misconception that people are worthy of love, regularly, repeatably, rather than strenuously, in certain circumstances, with caveats. Don't get me wrong, people deserve dignity, respect, sure, but love? Ambrosia, divine nectar for those enmeshed in myth, not meant for mortal consumption. Some of us will experience it, honestly they should be celebrated, we should obsess over their happiness, but most of us won't get it, not the real kind. Plebeian love, the rations meted out in the camps, is a euphemism to beautify the animal grunting of species continuance. Don't we after all call it making love, something we have to make out of the slap bang tumble of sweat? Our idea of love masks the base need to mash bits together in a frenzy then soberly reckon with the result. How much better things would be for people if we stopped romanticizing sex. Sex is awful, it's a terrible thing, it's the same thing as eating, but instead of some slobbering swine huffing and honking at the earth for truffles, it's two minds totally aware of the thrashing wretched, absolutely aware of each sweat and squeak of the mutual parasitism. We would all be so much better off if it was outlawed, if a small group of vetted and elected volunteers could serve a term in a harem villa cranking out additional humans to be nurtured in monasteries. The rest of us should do it only once, only so that we have an idea of the thing, so we don't poeticize it in our naivety, so we can get it out of our systems and grow up. You show up nervous for your exam, meet some randomly assigned stranger in a small study crammed full of observing disapproving monks, told to give it a go then, hurry up, we're late for chants. Of course, I'm infinitely magnanimous, there should be an appellate court of sex, so if you don't get a good splash the first time, then you can appeal to try a second time, or even several times, until you finally have an experience that encapsulates the gig, but there should be social stigma attached to trying more than once, people should be in the refectory bragging yeah, we got it done with in under a minute, completely surpassed the material, but I hear that loser we all hate had to apply twice for remediation, can you imagine, how could it possibly take that long to figure things out, we ought to punch him as a joke when he comes in here, then punch him again, then again, you know, we just wanted to make sure you had time to consider how much we find you repulsive, that sort of thing, the kind of positive bonding that encourages us to improve as a society, ensures we move beyond this horribly inane obsession, helps us escape the silliness, so you can throw away your youth trash to pursue a worthy purpose. Imagine what raptures humanity would accomplish should we rig a scaffold of universal celibacy!" "You should be a [[senator->qsenator]], what a rousing screed." "You think they'd vote for it? I hear the only thing that matters more to them than cynical corruption is puerile idealism. Mandatory celibacy is a social good, you see, you'd staff the whole city filling out the appellate court. Aren't the rabble always demanding jobs? And certainly I'm eminently reasonable, we can make exceptions for those truly in love, if only because the pressure to be the ones who are so truly in love that they earned an exemption that differs them from their neighbors will make it both inevitable and delicious when they divorce and are publicly whipped for failure, and also we don't have to be sticklers about the small stuff, maybe the law need not concern itself with a little bit of show and stroke here and there, oh and especially for the elected volunteers, we of course need to hold elections in an auditorium where crowds can gather to judge how they would perform their duties if elected, so all the tiny exceptions should prove sufficient to maintain the law, but just think how good all of us would feel deep down in our guts when we caught two people going at it and just threw them in jail, pleasure transcendence far greater than anything you can get from blitzing bodies. Really unify the whole community!" "Unify them behind a moratorium to prevent you from appearing in public, perhaps." "Why are you pretending not to be an ardent supporter of my plan? You know I'm only riffing to please you, trying to enact your mood into law." "By becoming law, it ceases to be my mood. My bitternesses evaporate as soon as they're shared. I'm so bad at holding grudges, bitterly becoming lovingly soft when they finally become [[embittered->qembittered]]."

"Ah, then I'm embittered." "Goodness, well I guess I'm contractually obligated to obsess over your happiness. Come, what's your current insecurity, let me nurse you." "Well I'm getting on in the years, you know, for the last decade I could still play the game at a disadvantage, but soon I just gotta cash it in, become old. You can still play when you're old, of course, but you have to transition the style, be graceful, subtle, elegant, other foreign words I can't pronounce. People like me lose a lot of our charm with age. You do all the same things, but the context, it just comes out wrong now, suddenly there's something ludicrous about the whole enterprise, but what am I supposed to do, become respectable? Can you imagine that, oh dear let's invite Valerius Catullus, he's reformed now, does rounds at the societies, hosts such a busy villa in Verona, great business in the horse trade you know, I've always said Roman men know when best to drop the rogue. But what if all I am is rogue? I've the soul of a poet, how should I outlive it? My lovers will start to think there was no point to our beautiful drama but merely passing the time. They'll burn my poems, and not in the way I want them to, flustered, furious, furtively ensuring their wives aren't around. My dear Lesbia will find my fancies trite should I rhapsodize her above the family crest. Worst of all, boorish wankers like Caesar will get a kick out of seeing me go to seed." "You've still got the vitality in you. Aging doesn't stop you from living, it just reconstitutes what living is. Youthful bonfires smolder to subtler and subtler wines, exquisitely aged. I'm sure you'll find expressions that brushstrike your seeds to forests." "Ah, you're drunker than I, I'm jealous, pass the bottle, ah, no fair, I can see why now. Euah, expressions, what use are they? What good is my so called poetry? Words that rhyme for what?" "Rhymes recover two words' surge to our tongues from the same primordial wound, poems prove the most potent form of bleeding out." "Kiss and piss?" "See, your talent remains as sullied as ever. Of course you can break the sentiment, all precious sentiments are fragile, breakable the moment you move them, thence their beauty, their rarity, that they arose in this place and could not persist outside this. Pure lies quiver unstable, always about to lapse back to the brutal banal." "You should be the poet, not me." "I haven't the fire. Ice ekes prose not poetry." "That's verse right there, add a few lines, voila, masterpiece." "But I have nothing else to say." "Bacchus can bless that away, shall we dive deeper in the mode?" "No, I have too many clouds to handle a hangover." "There's your second line, shall I say. You want to go home then?" "No, actually, I think, I think maybe there's [[somewhere->qanother]] I'd rather be. Trust our footsteps to find it." "I certainly wouldn't, but I'm always good for a terrible idea."

Catullus and I sweep up, steady, allowing little sobriety chills to coat us, continue us into the lamplight slide uncertain. Glide bewails, woe slopes to the wilderness, dense waywards to [[unspool->qwhirlwind]] my singulation, of others we wish the outsource inflow. Voids lit sepia rememory by alterior stars. Our could nots reconceived as can bes backpropagating to a be before, our before for others. Feel me real for I cannot, or feel my cannot real, really in there I, in you, in you and me immiscible rivuleting continuum. Bubbles rise through the sea to marry the raindrops falling from sky gaps in the mirror adhere our here's reflections inside us we are inside others, what would we find in one [[another->qanother]] that yet does not exist?

Diana daised on Roman composite columns her crescent pale bow aims to the peaks that balk her aloft supreme, struggle for self sensuousness sweeps through the shadowed admissed to her missile motifs sprawling the murals inside her incorporating ghostly undenied body of the resist, public of the I of the huntress. Dark stars ocher sparkle in the vault's vast. Priestesses bay and plie in the darkness backlit by pearl celestial waves always advancing upon us, brightness completions which never arrive, wane to the verge, pulsate on timescales logarithmic, zero and zenith oscillations riptide our identities in the beam, never the one nor the other but the always and the never in the lambent blush, in the luminous lush, nexal knots nerves weave one emote to the motion hopeness wholeness the bitterness between neither, nadir propulsives compel us compromised in the wax to what, the will to whom we assume to survive, huntress actress, active humanness, composite precipitates of themes that do not need us leading to cannot complete us crescendos, crescendo vacancies we fulfil, pleading vice versa, pleading, kneeling near the altar arms outstretched mutter hymning our worship and all its wants, and I want to see her. "Only women are allowed in the [[sanctum->qsanctum1]]," I. Catullus nods, leans over to a priestess with his how must I worship without some wine. I part the beaded curtains.

Enervation to volt the seams of the city, blueflame voltpulsing frequencies beyond human hearing summoning some electric [[goddess->qsphinx]] of the driving bassline our cardiacs percuss. Inside your body tick a billion bombs, each hour you must find some frayed porous to whom you can expulse the agitation, or you will [[blow->qirruptive]], disgraced hulk smoldering in the streets, justice sentenced. Fleeting you through fleeing away from yous. Nobody needs you nor knows you so you must force them to know your needs, break into their body, suck their starvations to satiate yours. No, that's not true, or is it, I give so much, get so little, because I am naive, easy mark, everyone lights up when they see me not because they love me but because they are [[hungry->qenvy]]. Maybe sometimes there can be mutualism, a mode where you both drain different resources to lode an equilibrium, but only if you can find the right person, if they never change, if you never change; waking up to find yourself drained, utter pallor, the stark of your no longer humming from their throat. But I don't want to fight the exchange! It's, it's all just too much, it's so much more draining trying to regulate who and how I am used than to simply be stolen day by day to whatever they make of me. Bliss of the saint sleeping beneath their feasting. I want to be broken like bread and shared so that in death I can transubstantiate communion. Endowment of my endurance to all who will [[crawl->qcrawl]] from my collapse to another rusted husk.

Jostled into their junctures nonstructure, antitheirmattering shooting through the positivation reversion intangible. Blurbling bodyfalls [[cascade->qtrumpets]] past my cleft grotto. [[Merge->qenvy]] into them implausible, scythe against grain. Wandering free of their forcing float I frayed, skin unmoors, gently silvery snakes to the sky like mercury dribbulets, unsewn to sleet. [[Crawling->qcrawl]] to the last vestige of Octavian winking as if phantom of aftersight melting into the wider welter one cold wash of wan. Partial infrasight frozen dizzy of the dolly zoom into away from me, clutching or clawing my face vertigo, spill spirals my wild into a mesmire, stranded in a fantasy of seeing me see me, nauseous lurching I slide askew through perspective helices lithoframing whose peek I appeer seendead to lo am of volcanic ash and glass melted a mirroar [[irruptive->qirruptive]]. Sludge me, nudge me lushly, pyroclastic past beneath the vineyard of aged to tastes acquired.

She mutters flustered, which seems a good sign, so I keep the tack. "I envy your posture," gently so the compliment won't seem an insult. "I've been so efficiently drilled ladylike that my slouches seem to radiate hate, like I literally cannot lean without exuding disgust for the entire world, the only way to seem neutral, not even good or amicable but just like neutral, is to sit primly like I could not possibly have ever felt an emotion. [[Catullus->qtogether1]] used to mock me for being brutally blitzed yet in my [[procession->qtrumpets]] best. You, however, you have a slouch absolutely freed from expectation, as if it is the scene in which you're disjunctured thus to blame for your spine so framed, like you could stand up at any second and stride free a tangent to a recalbriated orientation, some three dimensional space across a fourth dimensional conjunction. Your slouch is so powerful, almost regal but transcendent beyond the need to be showy." "I do it mostly to annoy my aunt." "That's a good thing, almost anything of value annoys her." "Yeah aha, do you know I, the other day, she was trying to talk to me about this nonsense about this triumph, and I cut her off and I was like, if you're going to bore me about that, I'll bore you about this, and I was like, what if a caterpillar went into a cocoon, but then emerged and it was still a caterpillar, would it still have transformed, like it had emerged from what it could not previously be into a deeper version of its so assumed, or but what like when the other butterflies came around and said, no, you're not a butterfly, what's happened to you, would that invalidate what happened to the caterpillar, would it not still in some way be a butterfly, or what is it that happens in that cocoon that signifies such change? What if a caterpillar went into a cocoon but emerged as like a completely wrong species of butterfly? Wouldn't that butterfly be in essentially the same predicament as the caterpillar that emerged a caterpillar? Or because um we want butterflies because we like them because they are beautiful, but only to us, that's our imputing our human love of color, our obsession with sight as our dominant sense, but to a caterpillar, what does it care what humans want of it, why not be butterfly beautiful [[crawling->qcrawl]] on trees? So many caterpillars are vibrant and rich with texture and deliciously dangerous, isn't it a shame they have to change from such perfected carapaces? Because I mean you see so many fascinating centipedes right, they can be so gorgeous and enliveningly terrifying, what if they then became wasps, wouldn't it be like, okay but why though? Right?" "I imagine the caterpillar becomes a butterfly because it is inexorable, and we must suffer as we must. Perhaps we can envision it crawling into its cocoon absolutely terrified, disgusted, isn't it really a death to emerge as a butterfly, what does it matter if the memories of the caterpillar remain if the caterpillar is gone, or you know what even is the caterpillar, right like isn't it at every moment the same thing as a butterfly, even when expressed in the terms by which we categorize it as a caterpillar? Because of our focus on the now we fail to perceive the entirety of the being as an arc which at every moment refers to and exudes from its past and future. We create these categories, caterpillar and butterfly, as appropriations of maya specified to the delusion of gatam, but they are contingent constructions we make that ebb and flow; when the being ebbs from caterpillar and flows into butterfly, is it then any more what it was and is and will be? The being is to itself always itself just as it is, whether we condemn it to caterpillar, whether we condemn it to butterfly." "No I don't know it's like it matters though to the caterpillar, like butterflies flock together on flowers, but the caterpillar wanders lonely over barks, and isn't that a deeper bruise than dharma solvents? To the caterpillar all that is is the hideous maroonment of its innate, to the butterfly its differing same, and that alteration is a profound form of violence that exists always in the caterpillar and the butterfly as absence, like the difference between a caterpillar and a centipede is that the caterpillar is not just damned to being a caterpillar but damned by the reference to an alterity it shall be forced to become. We see the caterpillar not just as a caterpillar, a single sentence by which it might loathe its caterpillar god, but also what must some day be burdened unto butterfly, what must under some strange moonlight rite profane the emergent butterfly god of its newly impossibly bound." "Right but you're focusing too much on categories you yourself are creating. Everything changes, some changes are dramatic to our perception like a caterpillar into a butterfly or a tadpole into a frog, but we ourselves used to be different, have become this, and indeed all creatures change according to time, become differently solved to estranging problems as -" "No but it is dramatic, the caterpillar in itself is so different from the butterfly in itself, the differentiation matters, because it has to matter, or there would not be difference." "Does difference have to matter? Difference in what degree, difference of what?" "I, I don't know, you've confused me." "Ahaha sure, I think I've confused myself. Shall we simply agree we have no idea what we're saying?" "I'll agree to that any day."

"Ah, good, then I appear like the swift approach of death." Octavia. "Hair like a weapon, style ready to strike." I. "Wouldn't it be great just to whip your hair around and have it lacerate. Thrust your head forward and slit the throat of whoever needs blood where their words are." "Slumped on a knuckle idly swirling mulled wine while senators blather their tension's tizzy, rustling your hair out of a tie, massacring the lot of them like oh sorry, then getting up to go to bed, your husband gawping shockmawed soaked in his friends' viscera." "Ah if you could just kill people temporarily, like just as a gesture, that would solve so much. End an argument by stabbing them, then as they bleed out into their end of life [[clarity->qclarity]], you see their eyes become like cosmically aware, you feel their loss gush through you your own mononoke aware, the two of you make up instantly, cuddle while the wound heals. Or like people keep pestering you when you want to simply sit there, so you smash your skull through theirs, cleave their brain apart, then sit while their body recombines, and they slink away like okay I get it. It doesn't even have to hurt them, like, it's the experience, the satisfying crunch." "It should hurt a little." "Okay well obviously it should hurt a little, it should hurt a lot, but I mean like, the point is communication, a new kind of language, shadow violence. We could learn so much more about each other." "I prefer not to learn about people, they're so much more charming that way. They dance in on a role for you to repurpose as you need." "I don't know, for me it's the opposite: the more I [[learn->qlearn]] about people, the further from them I feel."

"Never mind him, mind these stars. You know I used to daydream that the, well, suppose not daydream really since it was at night, or does that matter you think, shall I say nightdream to differentiate from a dreamdream or, well that's neither here nor there nor especially not here I promise you, I twilightdreamed I was [[appointed->qsenator]] to sort out the constellations, as someone ought to, such an utter mess, like Orion for example, you're honestly telling me that that's supposed to look like a hunter with a sword? Looks like a drunken squid, and on clear nights you can see he's squirted ink all over himself, the sot, someone get Gemini to stage an intervention, those lascivious twirlers know how to party properly, they'll teach the Orion squid how to pass out fashionably." "Like you've never passed out unattractively." "No I mean of course I have, that is what I call sleep, but I don't luminesce it all over the sky for everyone to see, I know how to find an alley to soak myself in shame. If I was in charge of the sky, I'd get his two dogs to jump on him, that'd make him look extravagantly dressed, right so, you agree obviously, and he'd appear with a massive spear, for hunting, you know, isn't the first hunter beset by dogs, might come into the province of Diana, or maybe he might rather we move Eridanus onto him, so he can appease the [[goddess->qrazed]] to a river flowing freely into worship of Diana..." "Speaking of worshipping Diana, I was wondering if you'd so gallantly [[escort->qanother]] me to the Temple of Diana." "Ah, we have a huntress among us indeed. I admire it; if you need to borrow a spear for the hunt, not Eridanus perhaps but Canis Minor, I'll oblige if you'll lend me the secespita; no need to return the spear, I'm rather sick of wandering through people's forests for game, in my old age I'll revert to beartraps to sate my hunger." "You'll forgive my refusal." "Of course, it's all I've ever known." "Yes, me too." "Ah, Porcia, you poor thing, I should be the one to nurture you. Just because I can't breastfeed doesn't mean I haven't tried, might still yet succeed, we'll see. Come, I'll guide your quest."

Out of the inefficiences of containment friction and cleavage to new openings which you cannot reach, so broken, towards its moondawn blur so bluefire raw you crawl roseclothed [[razed->qrazed]], religious of the slain before emanates from an altar appeasement to new futures you cannot reach, slow motion ineffable of facing the instillstolen. Lacquer of lachrymose, varnish of the vanishing to glow, beautified beatified to martyrdom mystical otherness owned. Luminous illusion lashed, our bloomspokens.

Kaleidoscopic schema noninterpolatable reign my aspectless skewed over spectra. Jammed inside my everyone else's projection, alter I ties to the mountain that means me from the valley. Nightmare apparition parity to their horrified of my exhausted plume I over gaps perhaps I prefer, vaccinate me free of dreams, struggle once more frightening the night nearly endless with phantasmagoria, then be finally exorcised from the shadowplay, immune to dreams, so when I am sleeping will I be indistinguishable from dead, will have no pulse, you will be obliged to bury me until I wake up screaming. Burdened to have to appear crucifies us to the crime above us a name. May [[hells->qrazed]] accept me, so none may attest me. Indemnified denomifier.

Slither through the sweat to splash upon an arising from the waves sacredly slowly monolith stargleam writ carved totemic electric with ancients unimagined, vaunts before the city shivering a cavalcade, dancers with a dozen heads each chanting hymns in different tongues, poets with instruments of baroque brass networks of vents and frets, tamers of lions and tamers of jackals riding them as steeds with their hands lifted in Egyptian salute to a rolling thunder float thousands of times taller modeled as a lighthouse gleams impossibly over the landscape supreme as if a stone throne thrown miles thousands from the Hyperboreans and upon its majesty bound and burned blazes an ineffable beauty of resilience and defiance, her gaze seems sunrays blinding in the moonlight, supercharged pulsar pulse, eventide venilia even and soothing while virile and searing like a goddess' meteor kiss to the earth goodbye. Eclipsed in her aura I syncolate through abysses and anablisses that evince her story in a thousand questions, yet as if she holds my cheek while her thumb wipes a tear, yet as if she asks why have you found yourself slave to my queendom of rain, choking on her infinity as I have night after night on my nothing, accepts she my need to believe in sighs that seem to flow from my chest, its heaving, its needing. Laceration waves subdue us to kneeling as magnetizes from our fear a fomented form melting stable lines to bleed across us viscera vivid a violently brilliant beam rinkling in bangles and bracelets, gleaming of goldmail, perihelial teeth, shrinking away from her immanencing, her totalizing, invocation of hexes to ibex horns headdress blurls about her halo neon crimson, fingernails dripping tiny carnations. Chanted first in a strange tongue, chanted second in Greek, behold Queen Unending of the Rending of Seams Cleopatra VII of Egypt Emanation, chanted once more in Latin to gasps as the shadow of applause. Our dread fronds a canopy. Machete through brush pause I as panther orbs bead peridot in the blackmilk and mahogany, singled out before her bared vulnerable as if she could collapse me into a sentence, but she passes over me into the wider wilderness mazing the masses unintimate and imprisoned. I stagger back nauseous. I trip over myself uncautious. Sprawled on the pavingstones dodging impaling shafts of the stampede, slithering through the sweat to lap upon an empty shore. She's going to kill her. Thunderbolt recognition. I have to [[stop->qstop2]] her, I have to [[save->qsave1]] her, it's, it's the only way to, all I know is that it's the only way. I'll, I have to stop her, I'll, I rush back into the forum, have a detachment of legionnaires race me up a side entrance to the basilica steps, Octavia catches me in an embrace.

Shudder [[wrathful->qirruptive]] with lucid wanting. Sick with greed for the greed that thinks I deserve what I have. Stolen everything, devoured contingencies, so should I not lust the conduits that create us on either side of a divide? Division is multiplication of our gulfs greater than any unity. No, not wrathful. Shimmer [[melancholy->qcrawl]] too languid to desire as I should, so the crowds swallow my share, and I don't care, or I do, or I should, it's only fair, no, nothing is. Shiver rueful with [[menace->qrazed]] knotting.

"I don't know, feeling far away from people is the norm, doesn't take familiarity to effect that," Octavia. "Um you know for instance my brother used to have this dog, cute little thing, I never really liked dogs that much but you know when there's a dog in the house it's part of your life too, and we loved it for years, but then it got old, couldn't do as much, and my brother got a new puppy, and it wasn't as if he stopped loving the old dog or stopped playing with it, but you know a new puppy is really busy, and even though like he didn't have to do everything for the puppy, he still was pretty occupied with it, and that meant he didn't play with the old dog nearly as much, but it was still there, it was still watching, crying, waiting, just like, do you know you can see it in their eyes, when day after day they see you play with the puppy like you used to play with them, it's like they actually come to understand death, and it's this simple sadness in their eyes, it's not anger or bitterness or regret, it's simply this heartbreaking melancholy quivering their beady little eyes, this absolute clarity of being, that all the good is gone, and you will not be loved gently into the silvering. I would have this dog on my lap, petting it mostly out of pity, and then I would want to get up and go do something else, but it would just sit there, look up at you, like are you going to leave me too, like how you would look at your mother when she wanted nothing to do with you, and it was, it was just so limp, submissively recalcitrant, and I, oh, Porcia, it was like, I don't know what it was like, ehh!" "No, I understand, that's always the worst to me, that combination of innocence and suffering, a death more brutal than death subject to no medicine. When people suffer there's this emotional need to obsess over healing them, like I would be drawn to them instantly, but when you watch an animal, you can't help them, you can't, suffering akin to gravity, a force pressing down on you whether you rise against the sun or lay beneath it to die. I remember once we were out on a hike and this baby fox came up to us, it wasn't doing well, and it just looked at us like, please, I am trusting you with my last gasp, don't toss me into the abyss: how do you walk away from that? How do you keep on hiking? You realize it's so absurd, this anesthetic jaunt through a numb nature, a pretty view and a pleasing quiet, the whole illusion is shattered instantly because you now have nature as this stage for cosmic annihilation, as what is given so loss must be. All we wanted was to waste a few hours, and this fox came up to us, please, I'm dying, all of my being is pain soon to be annulled to no purpose. That somehow hiking in nature, appreciating it in any way, was being complicit with the violence that creates it, the fox a stagehand stumbling onto the stage. You realize how ridiculous it is to ever relax, how much of a privilege it is." She shrugs into a loudening [[interruption->qtrumpets]].

I part the veil and entrant coveture. Energy vermilion voltspecters runes, vases Grecian, firefly poetry phosphorescence in the torchlight twilight, vibrato are the verses in alto airs. Incense juniper purrs the nostrils. In the oblique leans obtuse angle an astrolabe of ancient paradoxes. Garment offerings strew the tile colorfall fall litterfall which beds her, pillowed against a blackberry skirt with open palms to the mood dimness. Two Egyptians attend her, eight Egyptians stricken the scene uneasy guarded against her implied slice grimace growls contralto through her piano hammers knuckles melancholiana. She speaks to them in Greek; none evince understanding; she speaks as if thus she speaks thus; she speaks of no one will ever be there to wipe away your [[tears->qtears1]], so you let them run, strain comfort in mild cools.

Blushing a little Octavia recants the embrace, so I soothe her by unfurling the distance between us into a tableau of bare assumptions rippling unsure, pyre unguardeds in which we tremble definite in gouache, secrets submersive to drown the whispers to the deep hums, chthonic synths dark ambient omens of an infinity never to inject into our broken juncture jouissance of elusion of the loomening lustrous. Geiger crackles static our images to grimaces we plunder like cathedrals to our discontinuous, sacking the sacristies, desecrating the altar in its blood forbiddens, taste of my life as we must your [[god's->qcleopatra8]]. Sludge study of debased relics in the rainmud molting to new wormforms atavistic to miasmic protodevil summonorganic. Summac starer I assumptive ziggurat contraprocessional pierce demon resistance ablate their otherwise volitions. In the emergent ravenous Octavia and I verasm beam to underbore cruciform their altar ascension, we whisk away their victim, both of us equally her, though we collapse afar, she somewhere where I will never reach, I in the [[streets->qdistance]] bloodcoughing.

"Did you see the queen? Wasn't she so shocking? Like if I had lived a hundred times to combine myself to a million guesses, none of them would have been her, or her shadow, or my bleached of color before her glamorous radiance veracity, her magnification wake rippling with fractals -" Octavia. "Octavia, dear, do you know where your aunt is?" I. "What? Oh, oh, yes uh, she's, she's in the basilica with -" "Come with me, let's see her, shall we?" "I uh, I'd prefer not..." "Please, Octavia, as a favor to me, will you? I'll repay you twicefold with whatever begs my assistance." "Oh um, well of course I, will for you, Porcia..." "Thank you, thank you so much. I can't go before her alone, you see, because of the politics or whatever." She sheepish to a smile as I clasp her hand and lead her into the basilica. A crowd of senators buzzes about Caesar and his consort; Calpurnia stands to the side with Mark Antony. "Ah, Legate, see how your bride blushes for you, it's like she hasn't seen you in weeks," I hand Octavia to Antony, he delicates his distracted to a pleasant nod, draping his arm around her shoulders like a scarf on a coatrack. "Senatrix Brutus, pleasure to see you again," Calpurnia. "Has your husband arrived yet?" "Oh, you needn't worry, if he shows he'll make himself obvious. Now if I'm not mistaken I saw two Egyptians paraded before us?" "Yes, there was a civil war apparently. I rather imagine it seems clear who won." Calpurnia. "Ah, the poor queen, twice now she's had to wage war in her own land. Must be wary, she will meet us battlehardened." Antony. "Perhaps one way to be wary is to ensure we have another queen, just in case we need one." I mutter. Calpurnia lights up darkly. She hesitates her grin into a frown. "An interesting suggestion, Senatrix; is that your family's line?" "My family has many lines, not just a Rubicon." "Hmm. Well yes, it is an intriguing possibility. What do you think, Antony dear?" "Impossible. She is a proud and cunning woman. She will not relent so easily to our meddling in an Egyptian domestic affair." "Forgive me if I am mistaken, but she is meddling in our domestic affairs, no?" I. "The Senatrix makes an excellent point." Calpurnia with a slightly juicy plum tone. "Why should I presume her to be an enemy? She is allied with Caesar. If your family has it's objections, that's to be expected and regreted, but -" Antony. "Why are you so keen to presume her an ally?" I sharpen the blade. "I can't possibly imagine what you -" "The Senatrix is rather convincing today," Calpurnia with her own razor glance, first at Antony, then, through the crowds, at Caesar. "I find her rather offensive today; to which stratagem, I wish I had to wonder." Antony. "Anyway, it's not a matter of ally or enemy but a matter of options, I'm sure you'll agree. If we imprison the other queen, then we will have leverage to ensure this queen's role in Rome is to our advantage." I. "To your advantage, you mean." Antony. He is leaning forward now, blistering. Octavia awkwardly oscillates behind him. "To our mutual security," Calpurnia smooths the scene. "I'll intercede with Gaius, convince him to delay the execution of the traitor until such executions become prudent. A wise course, would you agree, Senatrix?" "Certainly, Triumvirtrix Caesar," I curtsy wryly, not because I feel any sardonic tension, but because I feel like to do so sincerely would perturb her. "Might I suggest the Temple of Diana as a cell? We ought to host her in the arbor of the huntress." "Unsafe harbor indeed," she nods, waves to [[dismiss->qdistance]] me. With a wink to Octavia I unlinger.

Shutterstep cyclone I languish over the sobblasted desire. Anguish of presented with the ash of a painting: never could I imagine what had once bloomed this canvas human, had I never recked the ash would the loss never have haunted me, but presented with its not there, a little of me is also not there, muezzin to a prayer I cannot answer. Stripped of continuity with place I haze through days in a tilt, translucent agement whipped in creasecloven skin. A touch a little less total overwhelmed by totalities in echo. Revocation emanated to splitshine soaked in her broken in my underenveloped and listless to lonely horizons invoked a crescive volt of my yearning while ever the drones wander she occults whispery in dark hallways I have passed too many times to recognize. Bane heartbeat embossed upon surrendereds ice sculptanate of oneiric lyrics in my tongue hymns of a feeling never mine but always in all mine missing. After accumulations like crying into the ring once your mother wore, more, addition divergence nude, natal, hypnotically naive, tamagushi luring incense of lost dawns to be drunk new season, heartstrings spring. The way wanders and falters and so do I to so follow it. With no expectations I approach glistening mystic moonshaft mauve the Temple of Diana, into [[whom->qsanctum1]] I have so often through tears begged the capacity to kill, Diana of my pressing their hand through the grief I will never climb out of, Diana of bliss after bliss whose hearths I self immolate, Diana of my daring to refuse to flinch from hate when Marcus smashes his plate on the floor in a crash that will ring in my ears for years, Diana of my unsparing quiet in nights coldblooding me, Diana of my endured to what is worth the enduring, Diana of my braiding Octavia's hair so she will come outside with me to the festival in the hopes that she will see the color I can no longer, Diana of why do I try, Diana of I will try, I will, you will bury me in miscarriages.

"Let us find solace for you in the [[temple->qanother]] of your borne to elsewhere," Catullus drunkenly stumbles onto his knees slamming us both against the pavingstones. I grunt us up; well, almost, it takes a couple of tugs to get him up. "I can't help but think though, now you've mentioned it, maybe I should become a senator." Catullus. "Please don't." "No really, think about it, I understand them entirely, I've been inside their heads. They're lost souls, they need a shepherd. That's why they look up in ecstasy to Caesar's grunting exceptionalism. I could be the standardbearer Cicero and your husband are looking for, I'm the one who could bend them to a different banner. Rome will be remade in my ruthlessness, such a gentler one, you know I'm so saintly simple in my selfishness, all I want is a lot of luxury and a little bit of sycophantry, I won't ask for anything else, I'm an ascetic, unflinching in my discipline, I'd refuse total power if they offered it to me, I'd refuse any title they gave me besides daddy. I could recreate the Rome that Brutus so admires, I can get utterly demolished on literally anything you give me: wine, wine, wine, principles, speeches, the Republic, freedom, exotic new kinds of slaves, wine, even posca, hell I'll drink a gallon of that goop. We could form a partnership: I'll keep the Senate busy, he can pass whatever laws he jerks off to at night just imagining their voluptuous fairness. Should I mention it to him?" "Please don't." "Ah, Porcia, you're so negative, you're really suppressing my creativity. Do you know I haven't written a poem in months?" "Good." He laughs, I laugh, we share the buoyancy, racing into the spiraling tightening thrum.

"Better the none, never let anyone erase your [[pain->qpain1]]." Her gaze only a little less than half admits my presence. "What does a Roman know of erasure?" "As much as does a queen." "Queen of the yearning years numb calcified, mistress of the lack of the audience to justify the misery through pity, empress of emptiness enthroned in your enmity, spare me your titles, my epitaph has no more room for what my survivors will say of me." "I am not your survivor, I outlive no one, never was I truly born but clawed from the abyss abysmal, temporary, unnecessary. I am stillborn from mother sickness. I am not a real person." Her pupils dilate to blessings of [[Diana->qdiana]]. She sidelongs at nothing.

"Are you a [[priestess->qpriestess]] of this temple?" She. "In every other room I answer yes, but in this sanctum I need not answer the selene rain." I. "I wish I did not need answers." "There's as much weakness as strength in an answer. I choose not the power, recover my marred merely chasmic." "I envy your diminuendo, you are less and less what you have to say the grander your stage to soliloquy, but when you are without it, with it hovering over you..." "I don't go anywhere without insipid [[whispers->qwhispers]] slugging up my spine, I can't close my eyes without seeing stains of glances in whose mazes I must starve defanged."

"What bows before my vault?" She. "I am carved in a column upholding a roof without relief." I. "Who are you then, oh Ephesian column?" "Herostratus." "Ah, let my body dissuade you your arsonistry, we can burn nothing they are not willing to rebuild. Art does not survive the will to permanence." "How hurt are you?" "Not enough to crush my bones to chalk, but enough that their aches illustrate." "I am sorry for your [[suffering->qsuffering]] specifically." Irises mocha prism rotate petal layers over onyx sclera. Her jaw tightens. "You are not who needs to apologize." "But because they do not, I apologize, not to you, but to the [[hollows->qhollows]] our hearts atoll." Vase shatter seen thousandfold slowly her break from brittle pout to pier in a storm pursed lips salted by tear gleams. "And to you," I continue, "because someone must, and I am the closest thing to a someone who will."

"Why would you, what do I... for, for awhile I lost my mind, imagined I would be queen, when rather would I be someone with the freedom to thank you, if you deserve it, if anyone deserves anything but the crushing quiet." She. "Your thanks, as a queen's, merely admits the gift of what you deserve." I. "I gift absences." "Precious the absence that presences, the need not to be there at all as you nevertheless are. Decades [[drizzle->qdrizzle]] to gazing out the window to the windswept moor at midnight to see me loom there wrapped in a [[mourning->qwrecks]] shawl, rush remembrances of so many secret regrets, writhing so hard the nurse has to hold you still. How lovely would it be to haunt where you are refused, to refuse where you are?" "Who can say? Perhaps the mercy of being buried with all your scars derelicts dreads more crushing than vengeance. I certainly have, [[eehh->qahh]], scars enough.

"Untensing the strangle, loosening the world to bloat free of your justice, but is it, is that more elegant than mere entropy? I'm in love with losing, and losing requires you to paleknuckle the cliff, to evaporate in its desperation external, be undone in your ungiven up. Losing is living without pretensions. Losing without giving up, perhaps there's persistence magic. Reaching emaciated after a distant tarnished, worthless glitter dimmed in your worsening vision, beaten back time and again, bloodied, unable to stand, dig dragging across the gravel with your shovel nails, dry rope tongue slagging friction on the desert stubble, in this misery counterclockwise humiliatility humanity. Know me by the [[wrecks->qwrecks]] I scatter across [[wastelands->qwastelands]], ergo the ego the archipelago hulls nullity." I. "There is more of loss than the less?" "On the brink of myself and selfless I seek my musts." "I wish I could remember what it was like to seek, but now I, [[ahh->qahh]], forgive me, a moment, eurh, eahh, um, ahh!"

She grips her side and grits Egyptian to her attendants who slather on oils. She beats back the need to cry with the need to hold back a gunk sigh. "I don't know if these mixtures help or hurt," she mutters as if to no one in my direction. "They sting so harsh, but then the stinging distracts my mind from the aching, so." "We have a numbing powder made from the milk of poppies, my aunt said it sunk her consciousness completely beneath a surgery. I could bring you some." "We have some torturous concoction of mandrake and malevolence, I doubt I need any other soporific but a saw." "I'll bring you that as well, you make your choices." "I don't know that I should be trusted to make choices. I don't know if there's a route I can choose that doesn't just lead to more [[pain->qpain2]]." "You don't have to know, nobody knows, all we can cling to is our wantedness and the ways we breathe it. What is it you want?" "What do I want! What do I..." "You don't have to answer. You don't even have to think. Moment after moment, whether we wish it or not, we feel, we feel as we are, and you are here this [[feeling->qruth]], all the branches it can [[bend->qwrath]].

"You don't know what you're talking about." She. "I never do, if I did, then I would be wise enough to shut up, and I would miss all the bliss buried in my best mistakes." "I don't think I have good mistakes." "Then we must make you some. You are our guest here after all." "Prisoner." "Yes, since we live inside a prison. Luckily, we've imprisoned most the world here, so we've made our own outside, so really we're free." "Is that so. Hmm. I think I get what you mean. I, I want to [[show->qshow]] you something." "I want to be shown something." "Good. First we must rid ourselves of our interlopers." Faintly clicks this sanctum sealed. She rips open one of her burns, and asps slither. The guards panic, but what response could they have? The asps leap from her burns into their mouths, wriggle wrestle down their choking throats, fang their hearts burst. The asps slither from the corpses' asses red umber umbilicals united to the darkness that grows as their writhes slow. She limps to her feet. Her two handmaidens shoulder her. She waves to me. I follow.

Esperial luminiliths haunt the graven march. Zetetic anxieties drag my leash, lurching by the collar uncertain over uneven descenders, moistness soothes the stumbles like sinking into peat, waders in the dank processional cult burial, the creep up my nape confirms we have come to a tomb. In the darkness hieroglyphs animate on the panels: cynocephalus god whips slaves towards a queen with false beard enthroned on wheat sheaves, she raises a cane covered in moths; birds startle bowls to crash clatter beneath tall urns; single wide eyes follow our procession, then glitch to uncontrollable rolls; seas spume and drip down the lines, little lines dribble down, the walls are bleeding. Cicadas ward, whir, whir, whir, wade. Distantly, bats. Baroque bronze sconces with long lily stems and sixteen wicks colonnade ghostly to an ogive. Altar of pumice plinths a corpse, and on the other side stand three in ornate surgical masks: ram, jackal, crocodile. Like shrine candles surround the corpse canopic jars. Her handmaidens rest her on the altar where she caresses the corpse's head. "Your culture is an infant still suckling from mother Greece, has not yet learned how time will treat its statues, but Egyptians have witnessed the grand decay, when memories like flesh flay. Eons annulled statues stud blistered canyons faintly bruised by lost capitols constellations. Relics of gods and tyrants elder to the progenitors of the ancients bone the mountains, buried forever beneath the reach of our fleeting tellurian incarnata. We are the oldest people on earth, many times have we been and become a people, countless apocalypses have we woven to creation myths. Crushed by the pressure of fathomless erasure religious have we plied our attempts to preserve the human, and the strongest of our failures is the art of embalming. We drain the vital fluids, exhume the organs, then salt the skin in natron. The result is a petrified creature whose shriveled throes retain the dark pit of being. Resinous essences echoes ends whose ends we bear, thereby they emanate endless, beyond us. We have colorful coffins we call sarcophagi, flesh feasters painted vitreous incognita culled from the frames inhabited, these canoes carry their souls to the cycles' other shores, and this my father was, Pharaoh Ganymedes, the only one who knew me, who I could live within without surrendering the safety of my misprision prison, a prism through alterations to rotate around an attractor fatale, genome gravity of sin origins. Could come out wrong in him, and it would feel right," she pets the woodenesque horror, finger teasing the would be hairs. "Have you felt safe in an incomplete, never pressured to proceed to some authenticity presumed to stalk you, circle you in the shadows baring teeth as you pirouette, no need to carry the dance to crescendo, to salvage some theme that can create your next scene, no purpose but the present as it may or may not be is stripped or molted free of conceals, [[unlayered->qunlayered]] whether to a lie or fantasy unpressed, merely present, to be considered, even, even cared for, nurtured through the pangs that led you to present this imposture against the aching, ruinous rawness? Have you ever felt loved, [[not->qnot1]] for who you are, but for whoever you are?"

"No." Blessed at last to be so honest. "You descend to my tomb to pity me, but I in my faded royal riches pity you. I will die as no one, but I feigned in the delusive deleting briefly queen of my fane obscene faintly dreamy, but whither gutter will gurgle your drained?" "Presumably the Tiber, swamp to be sure, but one we've dressed so austere one hardly notices the switch to Styx. Neither of us are in competition, our pities coexist, and you should pity me, since we cannot relish our misfortunes until others baste it in their pities. I don't know how much pity I deserve, but it's less than I get. In that less we meet, [[skeletons->qend10]]." "We are in competition, your ease belies your familiarity with the structures that bind me foreign. I cannot impose upon you ominous drangstress seamstress while I lie naked in your patterns."

"We in shadows persist until the moon of the ides unveils us huntress remnants, avatars of the aberrative, disorder undwellers in this sanctum bound, because we cannot cross its veil, no matter how far we roam." I. "What are ides?" "Nights the full moon rises. Hera, queen of the covered in black, gives way to alterior luminality, Artemis cleaving from the chill quiet a sphere of control. You'll notice the white light simmer through your chest, smoke in your throat, you cannot speak it but steam it, whistle blast moan of the moon bloom wholish composed of the doubts that melt your lungs, gasping in cool air to counter the churning burning bath, but through the hackwhirl you inertia, immolate the chaos fuel, consume the flood sensations sensuous gyre in whose eye you stillness stare deep into the darkness demanding answers your [[violence->qend10]] grows to quell questionless. Those who have left you behind loose the glisten your germinate palisades on the pall that haunts the sleepless thrash riot august silvery, gloom grandeur you burst forth the fever razing sense forts, the unable to abandon your heartbeats charge. They will know you then, not as they knew you, but the ambiguity of the could assented asserted, and is not the moonshaft muse to illumine some scene's illusion palace ethereal real? I haven't an idea, I pose to you questions I could neither answer nor even formulate proper to an answer, thus I pose them, because in you, whoever looms upon whom, I taste the triptych inexplicable, moreness of our neither juxtaposed, art conduits of the illogic your aesthetic sews to signifiers, and I, I empathize with all that is not but is conjured here." "You have wisdom more than I presumed from a Roman." "Greece wolfmother jackalmother, so I bid you my grandeurmother, beg you elucidate your erg parables to the secrets slipped beneath the sediments, the tales ruins tell. We share our Greek island we inscapegrace from our siblings' serpent swords, so I seek you in Artemis equal priestess, that we might, stripped of rights, share rites."

Her fierceness meets mine, molts to a softer shell, seethes an ire directedun, relents to a terse, purses her lips to a curse, cannot stress out the syllables, loosens, lessens, acquiesces. Blackfire pulses from her veins vulpine through mine conduit ricochets our encounter closer than we stand. The low light leers the way we share an aside to an audience of ourselves. Perhaps now she perceives who I offer myself to actress, mimics from my lips her lines, surge and sway, deflect, defray the emotive tension until electrocutes us an authenticity. Embody the artifice an artist, timeless for an hour. Project throne shadow to the twilight mood. Enjambed queen and nurse nursed. We don't have, her twitch whispers, but we have to. I smile angelic, in her needing I am. "I am Shadow Queen Arsinoe of Egypt," a slave raises her hand to shake. "I know. I only ever meet those to whom I am native," shiver the frigid scarred's jolt, press it precious to overwrite it underwrite it, [[blood->qstart11]] pumping us to tingle the touch a warmer wilderness.

From her I reel, recast into collaterals nonlateral to consequence, a chroma reel of the same instant in a million infinitesimal morphs, numb to all but the sepsis, human rot, human knotting organic into torturous nonstatics, alembic combinatives molotov, vicious identity, how ruthlessly we preternature its own innate, demons of authenticity. Every ugly rip we design to tattoos. Aesthetic torturer, cruelty artist. Would you not strangle some wretch to watch them meld to your reality scar? I have been beaten into me: fashion the cicatrix. You devour fleeting rivening crucified mediatrix. Cull me consequence. Call my nominally this. Hurt me, haunt me, flaunt me. Sew my stitches. Doll me putrefaction. Antiradiance cantichrist. Black hole hulch I sever to valence, photonegatively liminal, passing through veins into the heart to slash the ventricles, gore of aorta gluttons my sluttongue craze, murder nurse soothing you to stop struggling, accept the gurney straps, I'm taking you where you will not need to stand, flourescent steriles whiteblue, grime and grime and you moving through, carnage detain these wrists to sustain from their wounds a tryst nonsemblance, kiss of rein fray hewn. Abattoir mechanized lies, my rift of true in whom bloodsplattered I shimmer tombblessed. Acts propagate my gutted, faces carved to aspects of my acids, their sneers, their fears, the endless communion of tears. Take me, [[Diana->qsanctum1]], as I am, horror and hopeful.

"I am full of so many [[wounds->qruth]] that crying is too exhausting yet exhausts nothing. After the tears clear, there within you, that hole, that hole, its going nowhere, its multiplicating. How you shake your head no when you see what will set you off, what should, had you the humanity left to surrender, had you ever any, not merely this miasmic divinity. Gods envy humans their [[diseases->qahh]], that they can be [[nursed->qnurse]] or blessedly [[fatal->qwrath]]." She. "You should let them flow, because our lacks of humanity are all we ever have to share." Can I help that I quiver it real? "Or that we would want to share," she sighs into a bonefist. "Desperately I wanted to feel, in some moment, goddess of the unrecoverable, but I lost its sapphire somewhere in memory. All I wanted was some strychnine sweetness I would regret fondly in hell, some autumn beauty unspeakable in snow, but all this is just this, who now will never."

"I am Diana of the glade moonlit in winter glistening unbroken snow to incomplete silence, I am Diana of the why to rise from bed with bared teeth, I am Diana of vengeance for my [[bared->qdrizzle]]." I. "How can I be sure your Diana truthed equates to my art of missing?" "In echoes you can gauge the [[hollows->qhollows]], and if I echo from how you huntress, perhaps we prey upon alike [[altars->qface3]]."

"I cannot answer, not truly, because to know me is to harvest the shards I have planted in so many, fractures of my hopestrain I wish to forever derelict in their joys. To be some assumption of me unstitches the blessings into which I have willingly and willfully subsumed my wholeness. You cannot ask that of me, I beg you, but simply accept this shadow as it seems." I. "I am familiar with shadows, familiar of shadows, negatives bled along [[subsurfaces->qface3]]. You enter into my domain to ascertain how have I abandoned it? Seek what you wish, will not be this." "I seek the mists, weave into the silks of longing, bow cowled in an ambiguously reality." "Pilgrim of what relic?" "Priestess of the philatory." "Ah, then perhaps I shall show you your shrine." She snaps her fingers, her handmaidens help her up, one drags a gargling guard to her, she rips open his throat to portal a passage we [[descend->qshow]].

"I am a wreck, am imperfect, am not an artwork. Neither symbol nor hymn elevates my worship anguish. Ruin radiator, I am a wreck, am perfected, my body has become an [[artwork->qprisons]], these burns stencil symbols into the [[hymn->qconsciousness]] of my barrow voice. Glorious moon goddess jackal atavism avatar, I am accentuated, elevated, phantasmal, intangible, I cannot be touched, I am complete of emotive skin. Worship me dread blessing, you Roman slave, and maybe I will molt your fate to juiceslick these fangs." She. "I surrender to your pounce, these veins are freed to you, vitiate your forcefeed to turpentine allures, who we [[coven->qcoven]] from my bloodoath." Hesitates, blinks as if to open her eyes from sleep, her met with a [[face->qface3]] from the void she has so long spoken to.

"Cannot contour my goddesshood to these raw angles, so sharp, so paralyzingly wrongright, an architecture intended to hirudin your heliotropes to sunflares, I am smothered, wronggrafted, dying on the vinebinds, poisoned by false fruits, crying out for the locusts that cannot rescue me. Stentorious pilasters intended to punch you into [[shadow->qunlayered]], like descending into a tomb in which they will expect your vivacious [[bledwine->qdrizzle]] in stolen gold chalices, grating into your brutalized like why does your sweat not taste of sun, are you not from the southern wastes? Wasted, yes, only because it has become a southern. I am defanged, fierceless, prisoner implantation." She. "You dizzy me divine within the pulse by which we are hidden from the searing surface." "Pulse? No, no, I will [[show->qshow]] you my pulseless."

"But why have you come here?" She. "Summoned by the [[song->qgift]] your tears have drilled into the whirled. Hear it first in your knuckle, the buzz that assumes your fist. Bear it through blood and flesh, your missive. Child of the crawl elongated into your deepest dreamless in hours of early morning you never remember. Follow the glisten and moss to your birth canal. I am a [[nurse->qnurse]], ready to receive your [[ruth->qruth]], your [[wrath->qwrath]]."

"Whom do you expect to find? Have you come to gawp at your prisoner?" She. "I expect nothing, I accept anything as a [[gift->qgift]] unfathomable." "What do you mean by that?" "You are the pressure darkness shrouding my anchor, a depth beyond [[faces->qprisons]] from which I hope never to be pulled back to the storm of surfaces. I have come here a question; I endure whatever mystery sings response." "Am I a mystery? Am I more than a point made to embody someone else, incorporated in their syllogism?" "You are symbolism to a forbidden heaven." "Am I, I, yes, I believed once, but, [[ahh->qahh]]..."

"Relent is how I unguard my assent to new strayings, why I continue to wander when its lust gets lost in dark forest fevers, birdsong bulbs conduits singing secret urelectrics, instinct networks, insects symphonies convulsant with vulpine screams melopoeia of moon infusions to sybilance. Sacrificial unto athame [[auguries->qcoven]] my substrate stable so can I in collateral fracture mentals mull my embossed burdens spice to incense incense spiderweavers of solidity veils to their lacunae fissure affix us affirmer bathyscaphe of pleaodes' pelagic eidetic strophe to stasimon our errant orbits their trajectory inevitables, sins bred to bones so might we as an [[audience->qprisons]] break them to feast one family. Refuse to allow your sereparative your consciousness, think through the shards, glassdream halfwisps of ghostlights." I. "Though it will never come when we need it to, the consciousness through flaws, not solely of them, we are subjects of its laws: we submit to the myriad mulcts our [[episteme->qepisteme]] derives."

"We want to assure ourselves we know less than we do, because any comprehensive comprehension places you in a shrinking room doorless and windowless, your assurance stifling the air, the walls closing and folding to a casket. You are contained, don't you understand, isn't this what your understanding is? Of course, the grandest joy available to us is the talisman of our knowing nothing: all our truths trinket as we enter our mind's cursed chamber. Vault thoughts, trove philosophies, barren and [[scarred->qahh]] in our sunken to perceive: scattered grottos across the seafloor never to be traversed, nodes in a network we can never vein. Suffocation isolation of our bursting to say swallowed. [[Prisons->qprisons]] blossoms quivering nonchains in abyssally endefinite. If I your echo, dread hope, even shall we shiver [[twain->qgift]], then I can [[faith->qsuffering]] through the edge of touch." I. "Do you know I'm tempted to believe you? What a warrior I am, succumbing to the [[woundfantasies->qnurse]]."

"Healing hurts, the sundering paradox: the amount of effort to [[numb->qgift]] to scar equals bearing the wound's pain to eternity. We move on: we are what conveys everything onwards and onwards. Each new day is a [[burden->qprisons]] we take up, but the burden not need be yours alone, we can share our weights an embrace crushed below the iron sky, we can collapse into communion with our unable to carry on, graves where we can dwell." I. "Why would anyone care to echo my [[entombments->qshow]]?" "Because you are not [[alone->qruth]] in them."

"You treat me as if I deserve to be healed, but I deserve nothing but how I have proven inexorable. I deserve this, or I would not have willed it so." She. "You deserve more than the inexorable is why we cling to one another in the calamity." Her lips quiver, she has not the strength, she simply weeps, until the tears flood us free from here, plunges us into the [[unhealable->qshow]].

"I am not your pity doll, I am a cancer in your tissues, I would kill you could I rise!" She. "You cannot kill me; I have been dead for too long to die. In that burial I hope we can share secrets deeper than pity, drier than hope, drunker than religion, goddesses of hemmed and locked." "You are, I..." "You can, if you wish, sever my jugular, I present it to you, but you should know that, bled outside, you cannot translate the gems of the vein." "I, hmm... burial, you say, I shall [[show->qshow]] you our burial."

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XI: Cleopatra''] --- Aggregation aggravates the nerves neon in night, vitality buried scream glow pulsing alive subdermally the superimposed, inscribed cruelty upon cruelty countless caryatids my complexion stone projects the contained. Friction tractions my objective. You cannot frustrate whom you have found forever so, moreso as [[presume->qpresume]] they to tell me what happens to my own [[sister->qsister1]]. Not allowed to embrace murder her to rites we share on the verge of our impasse, as if they can stop me, yet somehow I must compose myself instrumental to their mise en place, somehow I am not to spiral deferred destroyer; not allowed to grieve, not allowed reprieve qua reprieve, must soldier on in the gray, or else I am as guilty as they. He deliberately humiliates my scope horror which I assure their shivering shall plague their identities replacement deface, pounce thirst their his identity merely to spit it, not driven to their desecration in anger, but because my role as queen of the sacrileged tombs demands it, must fulfill queenliness, how it disindividuates subsumes us to person as purpose, eradication of all truly this named in decorum of signify, how I wish I could just [[die->qdie]], serenity beyond time, sleep plush void. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Yes, if I died now, I would be a failure, but what would it matter to me, forever beyond the brink of our raindrop written? Agonizing the hours an accumulate acidic, muscle spasms, is an idol lashed to the mast leading the fleet worth the idylless dwell lone urn urge, capsule ekphrasis of the carnage incarnate shimmers stronger ideals, if it does I don't feel it, I feel my don't as skitter before me pathetic mumbling these Romans gawping like they haven't a hundred times hence [[worshiped->qworshiped]] my malice majesty when they demanded luxury dye their violence to brilliance.

Rain and spray splash wind lash soak them to the bone bitterness borne of wintrous chills cannot conjure when they cannot preside in the silence, attenuated by an arrival acidic seep of silhouettes that slowly blur into the shapeshifting arrival of the acidic seeper drizzling through your skin a nameless, faceless, forming, facening from you, named within you, an arrival... but they cower, cannot complete the conjugation, dozens of worthless faces. There is such a thing as a worthless person: power batters you broken to a boneshard blade, pure use torn from person, but nearness to power, the unwillingness to be effaced, effaces [[blank->qblank]] the empty already, disgusted by cockroach expressions I canter through them whiplash. Evil am I, but vital evil irradiates the disseminating [[beauty->qbeauty]] refusal to be empty. Choke on my abjection. I grab a Roman, goblet spilling, into a niche, and I pull back my finger flesh to unveil scissors, I punch pierce his putrid bulges to ribbons, weave the ribbons a wavy scarf that scrapes my knees... no satisfaction. I don't think I'll ever get anything from anything. I've lost the ability to.

Presume to tell me what happens to my own [[sister->qsister1]]! Should have yelled, should have swallowed his soul in front of them all, marionetted his frame a crude joke, but in the moment I felt the dewy morning memory of softly nocturne. I cycle through too many moods, I can never capture the mood for the moment. I rinkle in a lag, expressing the previous to the present. I am perpetually past, but I cannot get presence to pass me. Unable to process, unable to live, only the retroactive accumulation of [[deaths->qdie]].

Believe want thrilled me cerulean electric when I held Arsinoe in flames we melted there our deepest intimacy. In the fire, family. Burn us out of our built up so we slosh to a sea shared, drown union. But from the bruises bleeds nothing, ink splotch nonglyphs. Barren caustic bleaches the yearn snowy, buried. Faerie forgetmenots pixie wisps the falling leaves [[vibrant->qbeauty]]. I want, worn, plead. Scars torn on my knees my prayers my imperial, imperious, preying.

Why must I coalesce artform. Why not the tempests mixture? Don't find me in my inability to conform the gap inside you. Yet still the wills, not my will, some spirit stronger, loosened desire jinn, thrills the turbulence spume upon the bow, unbowed bracer, spun out tracer whirling the pattern painted. I want to be who I've always wanted to be, even if I never wanted any of this, even if I've long since lost myself forever. I want the shadow to [[shame->qworshiped]] them with the perfections we never share shall, want to detect in the mirror who wills not there, to taste spring, drink its dews dryad, nurturer of these thorns, the thorny want to be the I more than wanting, but I am always caught out wanting, wanting, waning, gnawing, wingless in the wind mist. And I wanted you to be there with me. And you took yourself away. And they take you away. No me left to abandon, so abandon the pretense, why feign fury? Ashbone dust speaker mummying the motions caused but not [[carried->qcarried]] alive.

Addressing my facade speaks some fritterer of vitas: "Your highness Egypt, I come to broker peace, ere its war would emerge." "Egypt listens," if I suck my eyeballs into my skull... "I am Marcus Brutus, Senator of Rome, friend of Triumvir Gaius Julius Caesar. Perhaps I speak only from our native paranoia, in which case I beg your forgiveness as ignorant of your magnanimity, but it seems strange to me he would ride home in a royal caravan." "I have nothing of this magnanimity, nor is your paranoia native." "Ah, then we might understand each other. I see what he sees in you. Perhaps you will see what you see in him in us." Another bumbler bumbles: "Your majesty, I humbly, or not so humbly, the whether depends upon how, in the course of things, varied and disparate, desperate and valorous, entwined of them a multitude stage upon which your actions lens my pride, inborn and ever extending as the sunblessed horizon anointed circumstances we circumnavigate, our lakeside villa where reside you and I and all who aspire the earth be brutalized until its volcanoes rage our hymns, entreat you, not to our level, but to our arguments, our temples which accommodate the gods and goddesses of all nations, so that heavens might meet us where our slope poises us kin, in which at your shrine shall I pray you meet me in kind in awe of this Rome I persist to senate, so the Senate awaits me, as I wait upon you, Marcus Cicero." "Are you [[Marcusii->qmarcusii]] then, is that the requirement? They chisel a bust and go out riding for its likenesses, or is it the inscription inscribes its form on all who write their histories in this stone, vulgar graffiti my masons tire themselves purifying." "Have you for this reason come? In making us bend to a monarch shall you find [[vengeance->qvengeance]], or are you rather returned to us gratefully from the Egyptians we lent you to?" Cicero. "You will speak of one Egypt, and you will address me with reverence." "Ah, but you must forgive our misinformation, we had heard of another Egypt in Rome. Strange our city makes so many Egypts, seems we proliferate where the desert wilts." Brutus.

"Of course, we empathize most dearly with your plight, how this confused, aggrieved, so much afflicted Caesar, bordering on madness his attempt to steal from you your right to a sacrifice. Why does his triumph end in a refusal for yours? How do you let this Caesar subvert Egyptian justice? We would certainly never let the opposite occur." Cicero. "Yes, obviously we want to find a solution where –" Brutus pauses to turn to the one who has wrapped her arms around his neck pseudoplayfully tightly. He frowns and vaguely pseudoplayfully yanks away her arms. "Porcia dear, this isn't the time." "Is it not? Ah, so's the problem with nightfall, the sundials fail. I would read the stars, of course, but you haven't introduced me." "This is my wife, Porcia. This is her majesty [[Egypt->qegypt3]]." "I must say, your majesty, I adored how you burst forth from that priest, absolutely inspired, I've always wanted the same, but the men here are too thinskinned, hard to fit in alongside all the ego." "So I was learning." "Were you? Gracious, you aren't bothering her majesty with your trifles, are you, love?" "Trifles!" "Tch, keep your composure, your Stoics are watching, all they ever do. Some can find that kinky, but..." "Senatrix Brutus, if –" Cicero. "Oh yes, Senator, I was wondering, could you send over some of my husband's clothes, should he visit, I'm afraid we haven't any, we've needed them for swaddling: the shoemaker took his job too seriously and made twins." "You must forgive me, your majesty, my wife proves rather exhausted by the long day. We will continue this conversation at another time." "Exhausted? What could ever have worn me down!" "Porcia, you really must limit your, [[euhm->qeuhm]]..."

"Are we interrupting something?" A face... "Ah, your majesty, this is a, an acquaintance of mine, Mark Antony," Cicero. "Oh, have you lost us? Suffix it to say they miss you." I sigh titter. "Hmm?" "You'll find out the hard way," Brutus wries. Brutus and Cicero disappear into the revelry. Mark Antony smooths his eagerness to an easy warmth. "Your highness, it is an immense [[pleasure->qpleasure]] to meet you again. I pray you remember me, do you, years ago yesterday, when we rode together during the campaign to restore your throne? I was the military adjutant to the Syrian governor, privileged to guard you. We shared many miles together so fleeting a forever [[summer->qsummer1]]."

Lies scattered in our sands testaments to worlds abandons. In a youth led along roads a stranger seeming a summer. Banter bloodletting the hours, landscapes [[dedesolate->qdedesolate]]. And did I feel? Of course I did, humans need, and we needed each other through the paces, curl incense through blank worn patterns. We needed more than what we were and found each other in equally the emergence desire. Months we made into hours so that we would for once yearn for the over too soon. Dignity demands to let the chance drain us to our austere indomitable, but what's the point in strength when weakness makes everyone happier? Why not animal squirm together for warmth? Solar teeth in a smile phalanx glistens humor over his tan serious, the soldier letting go of his guard; dimpled eyeshadow stippling a purr suppressed laugh, the princess at play; and so it was, neither of us named, slake framed. What's to regret of an [[indiscretion->qindiscretion]] that doesn't matter? "Ah, yes, I, I remember... what happens to youth? I'm afraid I've lost your stringed terracotta. I find gestures incomplete in its wake. You don't truly mean a motion until you throw it." "Ah, the yoyo, that's –" "Surely that cannot be its name. Are you serious, the yoyo?" "By what name shall you decree it, your majesty?" "Romans, purveyors of the aqueduct, the coliseum, the forum: arcane silvery words condensed from mountain air. You must maintain your reputation for solemnity; once a language loses its tone, you've ceased to speak it." "Silvery? Your Latin embers rosy. I've always found mine to be softly gold."

"Aren't you going to introduce me?" A woman beside him. "Ah yes, this is Octavia, Caesar's niece." "His wife. Or um I mean his wife, Antony's, not, not um..." "I am Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, Forbidden Goddess of the Ossuary, Progenitor of the Ancient Law." "Are you then, ah good, then there's someone who needs to meet you. Would you, um, if you would follow me?" "Octavia, what are you –" "Antony, love, I know how busy you all are, just thought I would entertain our royal guest while you, you know, you take advantage of whatever this gathering is, I'd hate to stop you from mingling with the mutterers." "Is he not already?" She glares at me, then tics a feigned feigned warmth. Mark Antony starts to speak, but she snaps, the ground gives way, we plummet. Unravel elongating in the fall we spool distortions composures. Her face frays, through it I fold and pass, between us everything lost between us weaves one feeling. Slosh splotches of stretched skin dim shimmer abyssal shade. We fall, fall, fade nocturnal, moonflower glories. In the fall I forget her name, mine, we relearn one another several times, time, I cannot recall who I've been or why I should think to be so, so terrified to awake. Smooth rush of the endless howl shush. Torrents torpid char us decolored, black and white filmstrips sprayed loose to a collage. Memory shards glint the nonlight splatter evocative. I could not contextualize how I am heard, in cacophony diffracted unautonomous autobiographs, all my missing pieces alienate authentic cities. Geyser anxieties her incapacity to speak when most she has to, and she has to, disastrous wince recede drains the ability to, next time, one day, will she. How little you tell the person you love. Another sin to love's name: fragilities we cannot risk to shatter. Our disharmonies harmonize. I close her eyes. [[Nebulous->qnebulous]], intensities numbness, regrets like roses trampled, ill lustrous. Pillowy knots clump our mutual wet stones in streams diverging. Give so much, get so little, deserve the mixture: all your goodness equals a brief reprieve of justice against you. We cling to the idea soothing: we retain some original innocence against which to tally transgressions for and from, and our identities can persist just or unjust upon the count, but what if you're never enough, what if you don't amount, a lifetime of works does not save you to the radiance from which they descend. Flawed, and somehow believing we deserve. The agony in the scattered spots of her eyes peonies the crushed impotence seclusion. She should have been so much, but she isn't, so what now? And I have been asking this to the nooks, boundaries of my furthest roving, limits of where I can be that they cannot, there are walls inside the walls which are listening through the walls, so even if I scratch scrape gape through the walls, the walls behind the walls will hear me coming, and they'll be prepared, why not here's a blanket, go to sleep, when there's walls behind the walls behind the walls... I needn't go too far, just far enough to reach you, guzzling bubbling pitch to become a road so I can lead you where you would love to go, streetthroat keeps me concrete. Not so much we land but the plummeting quiets our hearts to keep within a scene. We embrace to endure last shivers, sisters in a sense already evaporating. Perhaps sisters exist to remind you of who you have not become from your shared. Reeled from the embrace more deeply alone. Marble expanse naves an arcade beyond which in the blue lurk yellowish orange gaslight esperial [[sickness->qsickness]] tingling through our thawing from a numb to a need. "I want you to meet someone," Octavia gestures to where a shriek plumes through the blue. "Do you know Greek?" "I have been known Greek, but I feel none of her in me, only her, and her Greek."

"I know it also from another, like you. That's how we like Greek, secondhand, just enough distance to feel at home in it. They have a story, Greeks, of your ancient law. Maybe it was you who taught it to them. We were animals subsisting off the filth of the earth, inert I as tumbling the design, gnawing at the roots, sunglazed baskers mortem, when the ordered strayed unto primal fire, sunbearers, speakers of our sunrise bronzed to icons of new religion, clockwork gods compel devil us countercreators our antiagonies, Antigones recalcificatichant entombment of Fates assumptive in our cemetery cities sent plagues to torture us our progenitor outlaw, our emergent thrum." "Prometheus." "Yes, so you learned. Wounded distinctions between the earthbound and those who gaze upon us with divine hatred sutured on catastrophe, the godborn was earthbound, lashed to the thrashfroze rocksplash immortally mortal to suffer the hell beneath the law, and we loved him, he had given us purpose, so in his body the twain warred: the law to punish him, the people to preserve him." The arcade curls to crags. Blackthorn spikes tear open the ceilings to skeletal wingspans. Graymilk oozes an outer aura, abyssal backdrop, no hues, a hum. Drip fumes oil and rubber stud a yeast scent. Screams of kill me crawl stripped of limbs from the unfocused. My spine oozes antifreeze to keep the chills from hoarfrost to frenze trance. My brain curdles, white scar diagonal zips tear askance my thoughts to tremors, quivering enmeshment. I cannot contain, calibrated out of ourselves in the apex pressure ripping us from earth to ends, surge crest cry to the quiet star vault shimmering preplummet. When, gone, will we wash away, may the drains retain this butterfly flutter finite soar. Isthmus throat ushers us crimson ash. We rain upon Prometheus, gnashing and gargling decompositions, threadbare bones blistering the sallow lava tube flesh relics to bend and rattle. He begs for death. He cannot bumble protospeech outdurable a second before the crows rip through his lips to yank needles from the endlessly thimbling tongue in moans droning to brownspurt shrieks. Mosquitoes drill through his agony to suck down shrieks. Gurgling maggots breeding in his saliva sliding through burst pores sludging from the jaw in shrieks. Lungs wheezing wasted steam through wounds shrieks. Teeth blasted to grooves megaphone his shrieks. Tubeworms wriggle through his rottenness which from his oozecaked orifices leaks. Empty eyes in whose void your own dignity leaks. Octavia cannot bring herself to speak, so she projects a hologram of herself to read a script. "We do everything we can for him. You can see we've jammed sixteen catheters into his limp flayed penis to pump him full of fluids as well as to suck him absolutely sere, we don't even alternate, we do both simultaneously to ensure equilibrium. Of course, due to his many wounds and hemorrhaging organs, he does lose several megaliters of fluids a day, so we keep massive drums in the mountain to store the variety of experimental liquids we seethe into his veins. In order to circulate those fluids through his upper body, we also insert catheters into and around his eyeballs, so there's intake up there. The sheer discharge wears down the catheters, so we have a rearming team pickaxe their way through the filth and flesh to insert new catheters daily. For sustenance, he won't eat, he refuses anything but to shriek for death, so we've drill into his jaw to spore mushroom stalks in the moistness of his mouth, and in the nutrient rich wiltmulch they grow rapidly, so when they reach his teeth his gnashing naturally cuts them from the stalks, and he guzzles down the food with our syringed in burning saliva solution, which stomach acids for him, since his stomach has become a bleached stone. We don't clean him, since he's become too disgusting for any attempt at dignity not to seem ludicrous and patronizing, so instead we schedule several actors to wear masks of his loved ones and stare in his eyes for hours, so he feels reassured that people still love him despite his irredeemable wretchedness. His bones consistently break, so we incision in his shins and insert splints to buttress the boneshards; they tend to clatter and chip and lodge in his ligaments, so we'll coat the girders in novocaine so a buzzing numbness will tingle over the torment. To protect his ears from all his shrieks, we pack suffocating goops into his canals to prevent noise, but this melts in the heat and slushes through his inner ear into his temples, so we gape fumaroles in his throat so the liquids evaporate into a steam that keeps him warm at night. Because the torture is so intense and incessant that he can never truly sleep, we make sure to overdose his system with strange toxins to trash his consciousness into all kinds of altered states, hopefully some of them restful, though to counteract the ones that induce panic and hyperclarity of his anguish we make sure to slash at his brain regularly so it can gush out excess chemicals. To prevent paroxysms from brain trauma, we erratically blitz nerve endings with paralyzing toxins so that any tremors are silenced before they can compromise the structural integrity of the system. Sometimes the toxins don't quite satisfactorily annihilate his capacity to quiver, it's almost impossible to judge the right dosage since the system has become such a complex interdependence of chemicals, so if it starts to flare up we simply amputate the affected mass, since it'll grow back, but the creature shrieks greatly during this process, so to counterbalance the agony we bludgeon the opposing side of the body, but sometimes the attendants, well you know, in their benevolent intent, they tend to get carried away, so if we induce blunt force trauma, we simply cause an acute allergic reaction to dizzy escalate the body towards a new kind of pain altogether as a distraction. We also know it was condemned for some sort of philosophical truth, so as entertainment we'll insert philosophers into each ear and have them stage dialectic about some vital conceptual development, often nonstop for days, they get so excited, they're constantly up there shouting about you know epistemology, and we hope the poor thing can't wait to hear the next idea that its legacy will come to represent. We've tried measuring vocal modulations in the shrieks to detect pleasure, and any time there's a significant swing we'll immediately scale up the affecting stimuli to incredible magnitudes, but we're never quite sure, so to reassure everyone we have ripped the lips to perforate a permanent smile. I know it's not much, but we love the beast, we do what we can to provide comfort. We're so glad he's still with us, sharing in this beautiful life." The hologram dissipates. Octavia hums conflictions. Prometheus shrieks. Her words trembly upon the crying edge. "I'm scared of you, but I'm more scared of what you'll make us [[become->qend11]]." I cannot help but laugh. "I agree. Too many times have I watched the world burn to believe I am not the fire."

"Greek is a better language than Latin, because it bears its terrified in every syllable; which of course I say that because I don't know it, so I can exoticize it with everything missing from Latin, but like take for example video, sounds spat, almost like you've already passed judgment on whatever wretch has crawled into view, objects degraded as soon as words register their splayed before us, hence why we kill so much in disgust, but eidon, sounds like the mountain pronouncing unto the sea the bell recognizing life flourishes between them, sounds you could pronounce properly only if it took an eon to say. If you had a thousand heads each stored in a tree you could hum the breeze through your leaves to eidon. Isn't it so? So know that I am properly terrified of you, that I am scared of you in a way my language cannot express. I have taken you to Tartarus to Tantalus to show you what I mean." Snow blankets the descent. Shivery she seems translucent in the luxurious darkness, richly varnished cherry wood hair messy in an unworldly ruffle. Disconcertingly sharp blinks reminiscent of, of Arsinoe... Into the screams whirlwind I dalliance enmeshable, savoring the agonies I need not share. Generous amenability of a hell not to your religion. We reach a promontory over which Octavia steps several feet, hovering gesturing at the figure distancely inky below. "Below lies Tantalus, condemned by the gods, who sought desire beyond mortal comprehension, suckler of ambrosia from a better world, whose tastes overcame his humanity, who now in the deepest hell savors the greatest joy, the forever imminence of touch. Submerged in water, but when he bends for a drink, the waters recede; above him dangle figs, but when he reaches to pluck one, a breeze raises the branches; a heaven beyond experience, a yearning without its materia, dream without the disappointment to awake, he lives as we would wish, enclosed sans included. Never will he sully perfection, but his whole being effulges immersed. Throats ours the slaking of crystalline cool never faeried so immaculate as the clear eddying about him, he lusts a consummation we could never fathom, so mutilated are we by tastes, nor could eyes fantasy more febrilely than gazing upon those succulent figs, an alien allure never to be besmirched by definitions. Genuine a dream his each agony, a world of perfect innocence relishing the haunting echoes of celestial ambrosia, a taste beyond worlds, divinity sensuous: invoked by a cosmic pure, evoking the mystically sublime, a forever we can feel but never need inhabit. Gods create us to consummate innates, gods bask utopian mediatative between gaia and genome, yet in hell negative Tantalus revels this reveil also, blessed to suffer soma. Tantalus remains the one mortal who has been loved as he loves: phantasmally imminent, fleetingly eternal, obsessive, ingressive, never transgressing, never processed, pure. I envy him with every fiber of my being. He is frozen in the only moment that matters, but we must dance to our destructions, so the songs call us." She shivers to smile weakness that hesitates to a hug. I rest my chin on her hair, smell in her awkward pulling away while pushing in tension reminiscent of, or is it that her absence is who I am now, fated to feel her everywhere she isn't? Octavia snaps, we're back in the revelry, she chokes back the turn away. I let her take part of me with her: I have enough to give and not enough left to keep it. When you bottle up so much, you overflow. So that's who the dashing chevalier married, a shy shiversome girl who has learned love and hate's vertex. Perhaps that's what attracted him to me: I already knew it, did not need to be taught it, could love in the gaps of it, and maybe that's what always felt artificial about our romance not a romance, the inability for this to be real was the guise, and the false heart was that neither he, the chaser of impossibilities, nor me, the fear that lopes through you when the canopy lacerates a harvest moon's dread pull, moonshafts that levitate you, could forge a feeling that could outlast its frame. Who's to blame we're drained to its denied? Two shrapnel souls in a bullet briefly one another immaculate encasing. And what do those two see in each other, the same? I don't know why [[pangs->qend11]] gong my chest, didn't know I could hurt in this way, imagined I had been sterilized free by the searing empty. Alas, my hypocrisy, to beg to be able to feel, then to regret every feeling.

Windlush vibratos bow the treestrings to a teasing whirl trilling my consciousness tremulous. Slip into the suspended, trance aglow, drawn tensed. Into the night slip to the voices I dying to my quiet. Rome at night, leviathan shadow deepening the marine, fathomless fullness, ellipse Calypso. Hulking bulks on which wilted memories grafted wane wine sour, youth's posca. I was someone here once; no, I don't think I was ever anyone here. Hundreds of times have I strolled these avenues, strode across this forum, how often stared at these columns barring a collapse wondering which sky were we missing, I can in my mind wander each passage to porous borders of the district, but the stones do not summon me home, the marble does not resemble my remembrance lust, the want in the was. The houses have changed, and I with them, city mortality of passing places, touchgone glades grayly longing for bygone days, days lost without sadness, thirsts for anything that still feels like sunlight, any other feeling but this bereaved, the wasted of so much time written in space for you as a foredoom, the lanes bound us to a diminution stage, freedoms given to us because we could not use them, illusions of expanse to guilt the cavernous. We can be [[ourselves->qourselves]], however we manifest, within this prison. Dream any face for reality to uniform. Our free expressions imply correlate suppressions: expression our drowned cry, what has been submersed erupts here at last, ourselves as a jumble of disjunctive disunities corralled through society's judgmental power. Written in place is the person who we had to inhabit it. Stroll along the clutters of our emptiness. Yes. Channel the pressure to stride. Let Rome learn what [[demon->qdemon]] is invoked in this dancer.

Xystus palace embassy judges Egypt herself climes goddess in palms and reeds, tamarisk pinks lithely skirts sycamore behemoths, sesban venetians the arum lilies' spathe secretions, raphides warriors, drink of our mutual decadence we wink upon Romans' rigid lines. Already artisans have carved murals of my chosen sisterhood goddesses, the door opens to portrait me most and least chosen. From the vestibule flow the scents, fennel and basil washed by the rush of cumin and cloves. "Your residence animates us, netjeret," Charmian curtsies. "I'm afraid another's does as well. There's a Roman of some station in the parlor." "Does he have a name or simply a purpose?" "Octavian. I believe he is Caesar's nephew." "Yes, I have a feeling he's more than that. How long has he been waiting?" "About an hour." "Let's give him half another. I wish to bathe away everything." "That perhaps is a bit more than half an hour, netjeret." "Then invite him in between the change of the watch." "What? Are you sure?" "Yes, I have an idea." "Oh no." "Just watch. I have lived in this city before, I have learned to read its gaps." Charmian sighs, takes me through a side passage to a lemon and orange atrium. Lapping oasis purrs. Bare of bearings. Warmth seeps my eyelids to black my sigh. Levitation. Harpist angels the negashivers, naga slithhing from a netherworld amata pool, viscous trails golden, gooey, glumpslump against my arched to the endless breathe. Hair haloes. Wet blur of surface and submerged. Dream adrifter, rift disbeliever, in a contained complete. Sweat melts clean. Pristine river I rosette the current, no hour but my leisure. Crocodile nictitate to Octavian abashed above me as if I see him in the pool's surface. "I was told you wished to see me, so you do." "I um, this is, but ah..." His glances hug the tiles. There's some insight in why conquerors are so easy to conquer, but I'm not in the mood to ponder it. "You find me the Nile, vein of my peoples, overflowing the borders of my body into all who feed from me dribbles of sunrise. Did you think you would find Egypt otherwise?" "This is, I, your majesty..." "I am a majesty, I am all that is that isn't in the earth. Isn't there, in the earth's isn't, an is you bear? Don't you feel me flood your veins?" "I don't know what you mean, but, but there's, I am here to –" "Yes, you are here, or are you here, in the confusion shall we share sincerity, when upon such emotions precarious?" "I, I am here about –" "Yes, Caesar, I know. Strange how Rome approaches me to find him." "Look, I know that –" "I know that you love him," I rise from the bath dripping. "If that's the word, and why not let it be the word, haven't we all found ourselves lying out of convenience whilst we thirst the drips of in the maze incorporation? Do you feel yourself in his arms protected from how you feel yourself, when, into him you breathe, you be, but are you, where are you, aren't you in the embrace embittered, venoms trickle from your lyedew lips debases the lies build from your ellipse, facades to shade your going but the briefest flutters of his touch, the brush of his stubble on your breath sails aflutter to eyelids nearly shut horizons, paradises you cannot, quite, you cry out from his bite, your soul surges in the sound a cloud hovering over your blue placid, perfected in hidden, unhidden pleasure your pulse's misses, aren't you, in him, as he is in you, you without he is, I within this he, his she hits within eyes the world blinks reveal, I have seen it, I can see it in you, I feed it to you, flood from this my river life as the ancients drank it raw, true in each nightmare, real in each shadow, absolute in the question." Shyly he shrinks from my approach, I droll my shoulders. "You know, you remind me so much of your sister." "You, you met her?" "Of course, don't you remember? But you fled from me, only for me to find you here. But I can understand stutters, they're so much more pregnant than sentences, as can we be of our understanding. Why are you so afraid? Do you think I would take your Caesar from you? I wish only to guide him to you. We entrust our boats to rivers, because we believe where they flow. Don't you believe me?" "I, please I, uh, uh, your majesty, I, don't know what to think..." "Think? Who should ever wish to think? Lick lethe from this listless, this languid lovely shy of the learned. Knowing never stops the thinking, but we can stop being in its machining, machinate our own discordenate, let me fix this for you, fix this you, this fixation, so hard, so heavy your burdens, palm kiss them upon my shoulders, your shoulders so sleek, lean into the parsing the noise for cues, music for muse, include yourself in, you poor thing, aww, refugee, why do we so rarely reach out and, help? We drown in too much information with never enough communication. Why not relinquish your reasons, acquiesce an outstretched hand? Can you do that? Are you willing to [[trust->qtrust1]] me?" His pupils dilate, eyes seem to stretch, mouth agape, like it would howl wail shy of a pout. "You're so [[cute->qcute]]," the back of my hand pets his cheek. "Don't you want to be?"

Rhythmic suspires as I elevate up from the earth so must he raise his gaze up to me, tingles the hovering almost touches his willing to, saliva globules in his lips' corners, his blush burns us both, he nods, there are tears. I wineswirl my hand near her ear and whisper bright teeth in a grinette wink. Handmaidens gently strip her, lead her wordless to the bath while Charmian dresses me. She has the dimply fat hints of a patrician playing at military fitness, her pillowy butt softens tautly built legs into a lithely silky back. Steam flushes open her pores to shy honesty. I slide over to my perfume bar. Is she sweet, bitter, bittersweet? Zaatar maybe, minty, herbal, lushly harsh, or lavender, nervously lovely, yes, married with myrtle and mimosa to give the grace necessary to feign faith. I pass the mixture to Charmian and relish its trail. My dress from today still has a lock of her hair, my fingertips tease it longer, more and more strands elongating locks and locks, a wavy brunette wig. I lean over her head, caress her forehead into strands weaving naturally unruly, brushing it cutely kempt. The water wipes away a tear as she glimpses in the water's mirror. The handmaidens lead her from the bath to my divan. I sit up and wave away the grapes. She still drips just a little bit steamy droplets. She kneels to rest her face on my knees. I dab ivory foundation on my wrist, little moon in my caramel, then brush it onto her, she slightly recoils, but I shh. Stipple seal the look. Powder a contour, slip on a soft black cherry lipstick, paw in a phantom purple kitten smoke to adopt her a daughter of Egypt, mascara it complete. We rest foreheads and unison breathe. Overwriting our interpretation distances to one presented reversion of the I encapsulated inculcated by the judge presiding in our skulls, brackets manipulator before the impotentate of the develop bathing acidic the unleash, lysosomal devourer of sagscarred flesh necrotic injected by invasion unincorporatables, erasure sheer, lithograph pure stone none face, prey against its purpose communities in the dust longing for martyrs no more to the must be us not us, precious fragility, whatever we commune here in this antiwrong, in her look to kill being looked upon in living death. Rest in her reality as it sparkles in her eyes, maybe nothing matters but those sparkles, the need to feel them. Aren't we all chasing that? What are we chasing? What do we expect to find at the end of each day, and why can I never find it? "In Egypt we have a goddess called Meretsager," my dagger nails shave trace her smoothness, she quivers in my palms. "She rules over our tombs, secretkeeper of the necropolis. Any thief that breaks a tomb's restive seal shall be chased by her serpents until the day they die. She is forever pregnant with serpents, and she births them when thieves break the seal, on her floodwaters they race across the earth to wherever the thief flees. With this mission have the heavens charged her, but the gods do not understand the earth, mistranslate their domains to our anguish barrows, so Meretsager loathes also we who break the seals of our own tombs to glimpse forbidden daylight, so her serpents surge through our sarcophagi, venomous needles bursting apart our bodies alive and terrified. How can we sleep knowing thousands of knives spear through our skins relentlessly, each minute they bore out more, and the only way to stop this assault is to scrape sharper knives over the skin to rip the spears from their wounds, but this is only a brief reprieve, because the knives will never stop coming, so long as you live they will never stop coming, only when the serpents' venom brings you to your knees, serpents squirming over your corpse, will she be pleased by the silence she reigns, but your feet rove, your dreams range, in your eyes I see your unaltered by the curse, and she cannot ever take that away from you, you will never lose an inch of your insurrection. Why should you care the goddess chases you as you chase yourself in the crosswinds? Why should you not long for her embrace, so that at last she will find you as you have been beyond your entombed? Grimace at the serpents as a self that had to be sought." I rest against her smooth. Charmian holds a mirror before Octavian, who cannot bear to see. "Promise me you will remember this clarity purity when the [[venoms->qvenoms2]] blind you." "I promise." "When your secrets cannot be kept, you may as well dazzle in them." The handmaidens dress her in an iris sequin slip under a flowing white stola. Charmian takes her by the hand and we process into a palanquin, curtains closing us in incense curls. Her head rests on Charmian's lap. A lounging handmaiden fans her. Charmian's head rests on my lap. Always admired her gently curly, too austere is mine, too royal, how different I might look could I just be human. Arsinoe, her hair was, she had, ah... We alight the palanquin to the obnoxious grin of a Roman guard, no I don't kill him, why would I do that, obviously Charmian does it for me, so we wreathe a palla tightly around her head so she won't be, well, so they won't make assumptions. Into a flicker torch passage we [[enshade->qenshade]], partial illuminations of our performatives melting in and out of our notional, somewhere in the shadowy, wholes, can they be, would I even have one?

Little amber streaks spill out from the door we near. I signal Charmian to sentry. Open the door to Caesar at his desk failing to lounge because of his military posture. He nods to the scribe who disappears upon noticing us. "You should have sent word you were coming, I would have prepared to host a queen." "I appear only in your unexpectations." The handmaiden brings forth my daughter veiled. Caesar glances at her, looks at me, glances at her, stands, approaches her, glances at me, unveils her, staggers back. "What's this! Octavia, how, why –" "No it's, it's me!" "What are you, why did –" "It's me, Gaius, it's me." "What –" "It's me, Octavian, I'm Octavian." "Octavian! What, but you look, I mean, what are you, why, you look exactly like Octavia!" "Well yeah I mean um, she's my sister, of course we –" "But why are you, no, how can I be sure, when you look –" "Don't worry about that, just, feel me, I feel the same, don't I? What's it matter?" "Jupiter's bolt, I, gods, not Octavia, it's Octavia, I don't –" "I'm here for you, I'm here for you." "What are, but why have you, I don't, but why this, why her, I can't feel that way about her, it would be wrong." "It's not her, it's me." "But I see her staring at me! How am I supposed to –" "I, I..." "You..." Caesar turns to me. "Why didn't you use different hair or, or?" "I created what was natural." "Natural! I feel dizzy, I might faint, I think I'm going to be sick." "Why would you say that!" "No listen, Octavian, it's not, it's, I'm just, but it's her!" "There's nothing to be confused about!" "There's everything to be confused about! How am I supposed to –" "How are you supposed to! How am I supposed to? How the hell am I supposed to, how the hell, I won't take this, I won't, I won't!" Whirls to me. "You did this, you did this to me, I will not be humiliated, I, I, I can't believe, my dignity is all I have had, how did, why would I let... why is, how could, why won't..." Whirls to him. "Why won't you, why doesn't, anyone..." Whirls away. Pause. Charmian peeks into the room. I signal her not to follow. Caesar stares at the darkness. "Alas, to be right, to be wrong. Perhaps we should sever our hands, save others our touch. Good night." "Wait, what are you, hey, hey! Where are you [[going->qend11]]? Stop! Come back! Hey, listen! Cleopatra!"

Out from the dark flutters a phantom, so I thrust her into the unlit and motion her still, then adhere magisterial. Calpurnia emerges. She pauses before me but deftly subsumes her aghast, or was it mere annoyance, and moues. "Ah good I was leaving, I'd hate to interrupt." "What would you interrupt?" "Hmm," she sighs, glancing at Charmian and the handmaidens. "Your majesty, if I may have a moment?" "Shall I give it to you? Of the tens of thousands who trembled their passions real on a once waking, shall you gain this second over the sundered of so many?" "Please, your majesty, I have not the royal tongue. I acknowledge you an extravagance. I simply wish to discuss one of whom we hold mutual interest." "You may speak to me here. I am Egypt, I am all who hear you." "Is that so. I'm glad I cannot say the mirrored. Listen..." "Only once. I'm not young enough to fancy you learn anything about them, or humanity, or yourself, or the dead quiet. Solely for the sake of our subordinates, to explain everything for them." "No, I don't, don't care about that, I'm not young enough to care. I just want to know why." "That's all I've ever wanted to know." Warily she studies my impassive. Could she read what in me? At least can she what I wanted Arsinoe to my skin see a sandshine so when burn you me down shimmer I'll a mirror briefly to become your beauty, can she hear my maw ripped wrenched where bats roost on my gums bleeding stalacfangs so when I open scream my echo eater they flock and feast hellwing hounds to bring back to my darkness dread sustenance, sighing vampires, slaying sound seekers for relic whispers to trawl my depths of will she won't she in me vivify this fever precisely float I on her judgment juggernaut eradication soul surmounting the artificial borders of touch confressionaltational rage reconciliations I dream between the forever lack of closure is so much I wanted here is another who finds me the times come we hope don't go until they lead to where we wish the wind lisps our arrhythmia. Doesn't she share this with me, clawing after Caesar in my deserts? "There is nothing I need tell a queen about the depravity and bitterness that greets you amid such power, but you will learn my bitterness, my depravity, the greater the lesser power I have to hold onto my daybreaks." "There we are sisters." "So I fear. I see how you treat your sisters." "Should you be so lucky, you'll see with what compassion I can kill." "Yes, I should love to know compassion. We'll see if I ever find it." Her wrist rolls away her words into the darkness that steals her. I wait thrice her footsteps' death to pull my daughter from the shadows, but she returns into them, pulls me into them. "I can't do it, I just, I can't, I'm sorry." She. "Why are you apologizing to me? I am unaffected by your outcome." "I don't know, then I'm sorry for myself, or whatever, or however, it doesn't matter!" "It clearly matters to some degree." "I just, look, I can't, okay? Please take me back to, your..." "As you wish," I wave at Charmian, who takes my daughter to the phaeton. Lolling my neck around. Heavier the night. We must [[leave->qend11]] seas to their shores."

Alienation begins in your bones and radiates outwards until its uncanny encapsules all emanations. Contained the city and its possibilities in the crushing, tightening, smaller and smaller each disjuncture as I titan into its absencing, claustrophic consciousness in the anaerobic pressing the bubbling until the whole system bursts, as must it soon, no, I will not allow it, I will [[swallow->qstart12]] the earth.

"I want, I don't want, I don't know what I want..." "If that is your wish, it shall be your irrevocable," I snap to the handmaidens to bring me a robe. "You're afraid of me, perhaps?" "I, I resent you, yes." "You ought to. My frustration with so many Romans is that they don't resent me, so we can never hold a proper conversation. Please, have a seat, eat some grapes. What is it your resent me for? Besides Caesar, of course, we can agree he's merely the nominal." "It is Julius though, or it is the taking of, the, how he's -" "I see, yes, you envy my majestic allure, I don't blame you, eminently rational, I don't trust anyone who isn't at least fifty percent envy, because half of yourself is the derelict before desires. Others' beauties and talents equally wonder and haunt, with the ones we love biting our lips as they relish the perfection of another we could never fulfill, the bitter degradation that we have settled for each other like the poor buy old breads. Here I am, magnificent of Egypt, royal and elegant as you could never be, as you whip yourself to sleep lusting, why should you not hate me? My stealing of your Caesar is merely the insult that manifests the hatred." "But it's not, you..." "Yes, of course, it's you more than me, as most envies are. Hungers in your soul a desperation phobic to any of its found in the wild. Perfection of your imperfections, shall you not worship me with vehemence? Never the mind, I recognize your envies, admit them as valid, won't attempt to convince you were are not enemies. Rather we should admit ourselves mutually consummate of the trouble between us, therein find a sympathy, can we not? Am I truly so [[dazzling->qdazzling]] to you people that nobody is willing to hazard a little sympathy with me?" "No pathos in me which one could be with, only without." "Ah, so that's the case, is it? Well, I admire the predicament, as I admire any isolating self loathing, the sole font of virtue. The trouble for so many is the belief they deserve to be loved, but if we could wail as one irredeemable [[guilt->qguilt]], we could commune humanity honestly and charitably, nurse each other from the wrecks we deserve, seek harmonies that could harbor us from our storms, so we could contemplate genuines that might outscale the gods that torture us, so that, on some cosmic level, we could deserve morality, become victims and victors, gods of the deeper purity. I have not felt joy in years, I am besieged and loathed, but perhaps I deserve its deserved, can make in its hate a hope, and won't you join me, won't you share with me the better ideals all our fractious fevers never instantiate?" "I, I'm not sure -" "Yell at me, please, berate me, it's the only way for you and I to feel our betweens. Slough your shyness, destroy my soul! You have it in you to revile me, so do so, humiliate me a conquered enemy."

Surfaces brutalize us truths: so forced to signify, roils composers, why nondelineated delvers, we have dyed of our shards. Controled by non. Infuse form with normalized. Undergo facade to enter through the door. Twists sundry loosen to folds through which I arteriminate determined. Place: thus. Face: this. Stride into sugary blazars pastel blush and blue lozengines pumping cream cloudettes while thumping through chocolate wanders, faceflushed miasma of melted mamatakyim, glazed strawberries rolling inside your eyesockets eyes. Underglued to the festoonments a cheesecake clumps gooey snowflakes to a wintry scene of carousal. These kings of everything behind one assurance, what hides behind what fronts, mediates, intercedes in the streets privacies. Lungflushed I whiplash cascade arcs slung to obsessive neuralmetal plates that intersect and tesseract concepts a moulin to a celeste allure matrix recalculated to commerceation, conversant imbursal. Chugged through gears to located a creation. Outcome orient. Lathes mass perfecting the proto to post. Fertilized aveilabled from eyes wounds. Telos of aitia autocracy, meritocracy recursion of the end to the agent to the form, whatever it must matter. Legion. Oblitered to holstered in an alley, mere weapon, as have I become? Gambit queen careering between hedonics and heuristics genesiscide, as why have I come? Accursed to be accounted the curse however I flourish. [[Steganography->qsteganography]] of substance, read in volver. Gunsmoke whispers, engendered am uni shun. Claim myself in [[massacre->qmassacre]] if must some I be precised. I accentuate what accumulated I cumulus dismorph the passing beneath their blazing gaze: book of the dead translated.

Trusswork of liminally languagedrainers trundles powerful the plosive intonation incant along the narrow path of the sentence spanning over valleys, speaker directives votive versus a persued through screech and smoke, burgeoning muscly through the milkblack in rhythms intensifying, grit teeth coalcoated as flushes the oncoming event evident denting the chassis with smacks of industrial hail balling larger to slag fists, pollution punching, dizzy with the breaking pace, smashed and smasher, the rails sing electric with the velocity violence a threnody motion blurring shunt in lines added in secret in forbidden hours between hours to tend the system to the crest where glistens the howl occult in the moonmum mystic, eruptive to vocalized. In the lackaday burdened aware of irregular [[geometries->qgeometries]] winking into the rigid as you regularly liaise with a myriad of institutional instructor princes in order to distil polyvalent multilateral requirements into an organized design capable of inhabitance polypalatially pluripotent of divergence synergesis in which could you produce quality work numbered and filed under regular deadlines that fulfilled all desired content categories, take pride in synthesizing multiple data streams and external project demands into a professionally time managed workflow that rises to the occasion to exceed expectations, dwell in the act repeatable incorporated, except for these drill whispers of acute conditions jambuzz glitchy, volt turbid turbine churns the gouache to volcanic glassy, papers go missing and you in them, inordinate disconflections funneling to lurid flashing scarlet and scared, the copier gently crying as the lights rapidly flicker and a tottering expanse of what has always been there emerges irreducible... Weartide load of work and study to wanderwhy some strangled say. Codebroken to symbology sift the responsive to gibbering jouissance, [[glossolalia->qglossolalia]] of pent up costs seiching to shared bodies of a corpus geist. Multiply intangibly touched friction to fricative frayed. Beyond the nonwork of first and moreso networks helical combinatorics through frustration and deny to polysemously implied, semiology of the sigh to sound. Castles construed from labyrinthine synthomes subjecting the subject to desires to defend crumbling disused due to the pressure to pursue with abandon, slough yourself of places, dwell drown to the nowhere quell portaled in your drear lusts, seeker of clockworks responsive. One day you will be calculated to an answer, stretched out on a gurney with an intraveneous drip drip drumming your finalized. Relax the pressure away and just consider the ambiguity necessary shroud of your enveloped, your disdeveloped to causality, vergement placid of glum, into the storm upon the precipice peering with no need to participate, will weather here to my worn authentic to presentation, isn't the dream, or do we have any anymore, do we not beg the rain its runes.

Pupils dilate to demons marks the border crossing. Sift the noise to hear its clawmarks shriek. Crushsoul electrified, clashlens online: have you come to seethesleeve me, rip into your skin to outsort my spurrsions. Brutalizer equalizer: my purpose is to be coal furnaced well I reversion to incursion blacksmoke and lungsnuffed candelabra fangflicker. Imagine my mergement desecration slathers your viscera on faults creeplining your peerapets to crumble convoke my spasms immanence. Sealed cannot aversion to verse serrated on liar's lips. Desecrete me undrool unspooler, lurch evoludic loping lupine mutationmawed and splattertoothed, thirsterpowered bileburster engine juiced by overclocked to rapid decay acidic deoxyribonuclear reactors, fallout plume teased in my each hazard glance. Invidious cleavitechture absinthes the sterilized incisions to vermilion gauze to age volitionless and null and numb. Killvicious viscous slags scurries to bonegrafts, stemmed standers maroonment lifetime lengthed weeping in sunlight through gloopy orifices. Wail your blurred to muck like swamp bubbles. Toad croakers blubbing theri bulbous to slimesuns glubbled devented smothered by slick thick lacquer shellacs burgundy burngold urngod. Demanded to addend more to the enmeshment mire massacre I the redolent, rendition unto extreme function, spasming their sleepy limbs until slithers they apart from loosely skin only assumedly skin so degenerated is it in the filth of places of names unimagined, relishers of the exotic, isotonic extractors slurping cities supremely ancient and unamended by their murdered, but better than this my wrath which shall their anguish augment the machine we devil upon natured blasted unfamiliar, slumping weeping the words we could not differentiate from dirt. Oil voidshimmers earth lactation of its deathness. Dearness to heart drenched in it, unable to swim, breathe through sieve seams, bleed but its sticky ooze onyx. Riftbody eminence I levitate iron signal tendriling bronze pipes to grid the globe according to my instance nexal, voltsoul treble zero of grapheme phenomenality, ontic abruption scarring the perceived venned, electrically lens I course light through the lie vying, irradiance goddess omnipotence, pink noise purity of generator's hum. Thousands and hundreds of Romans melt in the onmoding. Buildings flatten and fold to my enfolding aural shadownatal. Countersun calamitous luminous mendacity of devilishly mending a city thesister, transistor of two in twain, whom of abandon, wild without abandon, snuffing the breath of those unbound to my increase slit throat shriek, vituperative parity endopower, graviton velocitress, enter into me singularity. Terminal illness of borders and being. Isotopic [[reflectives->qreflectives]] I cast upon the splatter simmers the flex of face a frown and grin flourish. Burden unmass boulderish over the peak to race demise's sublime [[freedom->qfreedom]]. Melt me massacre.

"Gold as in excessive?" I blase. "Ah, but gold only appears excessive insofar as its visual notation has been contextualized by our yearning before its rarity and expense. We are trained to notice gold; we flourish its shine as more solar than the stronger sparkle of silver; we distinguish a certain necessity of gold that we do not see in similarly evocative materials like pyrite; we fetishize its inertness that it may purely mean however we alloy its purposed. Gold can be extravagant, can be bold, can elicit desire, but only insofar as we force it so, and isn't that exact violence the very reason you wear it, goddess who must be extravagant, queen who must be bold, ally who elicits desires? Do you not coopt gold to your convoked to sequence? Gold serves not as some symbol but melds directly into your skin, translates the terms by which we see you. A different Queen Cleopatra, Goddess of the Nile, would we worship without her golden headdress, her golden gaze, yet your power is who chooses this visuality, you would equally be queen and goddess in rubies or jades, so we ask why, and perhaps you do answer excess, that we might see you as what cannot be contained in sight, radiantly overflowing into mysteries we cannot affect, purity of symbol qua symbolic purifier, dream beyond cages, enthroned in any sundering gale you storm upon our sails you ukase upon us newly metaphorical, bends of images to ident, languages of a matrix we have yet to maze which gnarls around us, forces us into your confusion, subjects. I answer to who you address me in gold. Shall we exceed the bounds? We have to hope so, shall this daylight be lived in." "I rather expect a Roman to associate living with exceeding boundaries." "Ah, then have I strayed beyond our agreements, or perhaps that is the very nature of an agreement, an intersection, brief identifications of passing lineages of difference. So you expect how I have moved into my own arc, yet is that expectation not what thrills the experience? If we were to converge to a singularity, we may as well never speak again, but the thrilling electricity of connection, knowing this power coursing through you shall travel its own leylines to distances you never will see, isn't that the delight of meeting another, through the purpling wineswirls spilling through your window glimpsing stars outside your prison, inside theirs, an absence which suffuses your containment with infinities? We never shall combine, so why we are forced to desire, and in that, perhaps, our only continuous conduit: desire, how much you, how much me, never enough that we... ah, but the night draws on, [[draws->qend11]] you into it. If we do not meet again, my fellow memory, then I shall aftershock this touch in a thousand others."

"Softly then we shall keep it in whispers." I. "You're afraid of me?" "Afraid of nothing, feaster upon the weakness of every creature that limps before me. Merely I wish to ensure some secrets dreamed asides do not affect this version of the world." "Ah, you have my word, of course, none of that nearness shall be summoned more than how already it may pervade. I am pleased to dwell in your satisfactions, wherever they facture." "Foundry I oasis the non, but if you seek there the life to progress, you will starve before a mirage. Dweller of cliffs, the hidden between gravities. Spent six thousand years in a grotto perfecting how to astral project myself into the nightmares of my enemies a torn causality seething asunder to irreparable void discontinuum. Haunter of heavens cleft from your gaps my nova pierces and frills, worship you the indemise of my demesne devilish, manner of your accentuated to service? Assuredly I pity the submersed in my subversive, would undo it would it not undo you. I have culled you from sleep, have I not, why would I not? Breaker combinator besieges my fiendish theming the filmy distortions torsional to the torus twist which whisks us from image to envision, the screen: what can be seen instead of the lurking behind. Chase that phantom does your delirium wish, but expect the excruciation hollow, hollowing." "Terrified of your infusion and its retributions, surely, I acquiesce whichever aesthetic you assume, yet sweet terror keeps us whiteknuckled on the reigns subjectifier, which should otherwise subject us. Greatful for your demolitions, cleared up to construct, confused before your spectral bedeviled my daemoned a framing in which cascades this canvas on which seem we to shimmer inreflections feverishly veracities. More than remember you, I am remembered of you, a body composed of how you have felt it so. Versions of whichever way you will concatenate my person alignigheyesed potential pluripotent, whichever of your pharaoh echoes I plural, which I do not hope to guess, merely to live, and to thank you for the chance to have known you, known myself." "You, you're thanking me?" "My being psalms panegyric of your tempests. Because of you, I feel filled of more than this city, which, look around you, who should wish to be here? Hence why its best always prove so keen to flurry themselves away on campaigns, as once I met you. You meant so much then, the soul of a war that amplified my purpose beyond my own innate violences. Religious of your kiss, contact with the other depths that drink us in, a way of recognizing Rome as merely one of many maelstroms, allowing myself to be fractured to sink through both, assume unforced to neither. Perhaps you tasted something similar in me; I should hope I gave you memories strong enough to evoke dreams the present never provides." "I..." "No no, I'd prefer not the answer actually, better the hope than either realization or realization. Besides, in your eyes I can assume so much to busy my mind for the next few tedious banquets. You will see how so many we have, how absolutely they do not differ, but I shall differ from them by [[leaving->qend11]] you alone." He kisses the tip of his index finger as a gesture to the silence douses.

Brutus shakes his head and leads Porcia away. Cicero sighs and bumbles a bit before excusing himself. I motion to Charmian that I wish to withdraw. We withdraw. All the fight in my fingers unflex. Caesar presumes to tell me that I cannot kill my own [[sister->qsister2]] however I wish! Yet, scowling at him, trying to formulate the convexity of defying him with enough vehemence that he is scared of my wrath without being suspicious of me, like I ran out of fuel, I simply could not process it, my shoulders slumped, I relented. More than relented: stumbled in the spotlight, forgot my lines, could not rise to face the audience. So intricately I had designed my procession into Rome, everything perfectly executed to rigorous detail beyond their abilities to notice, manifesting myself immaculately artificially aesthete, then as the spiritual thrust empyreans to apex, denied, denied, I couldn't, the energy couldn't be refocused, failed to envision what Cleopatra should respond... Muted dulls foamsway nonvalidities to blunts abluted. Nonsharpness, even my teeth seem dulled. Losing the ability and the will to lift my limbs. Forgetting my face and voice. Slouching, even luxuriating the slouching, relaxed to a posture my mother is not alive to whip me for. I have failed her today, and there's nothing she can do about it. People die when the world wearies with their observing, stunted of new forms until this gaze goes away. Because a queen does slouch occasionally, doesn't she, needn't she? What's the point of poise if it conceals not its counterpart? Our carriage rolls. I give myself to the bumps, the thumps against the door, the jumps, mixture between river floating and flying. Wish our xystus was miles away, this journey could be a night unto itself, an oscillation between dream and dreamless. Imprisoning my sister in a temple ought to be more home for her than I will feel in her absence. I admit our relationship was strained, so much pointlessly venomous, but there was, just having her around, the feeling of her being there, of watching a dance together, looking over at her glumly scowling at the whole thing, there was an intimacy that did not need to be shared, that she cannot invalidate, that in those moments I was not alone in the role. My family is gone; I am alone in the role. Egypt a [[project->qproject]] greater than its creators consumes my fragile. I have to endure to endure the land I am. A history of histories entwining to rope through the eons abyss to us, culture upon culture calcified in the limestone glisten magical of darkness, the howling soundless awaiting our drowned to echo, who could be a goddess and forsake this? Divinity lathes, humanity worships its written. Tombscript by torchlight I trace to tattoo, so our ancestral signs may move again in skin. I can slouch solely because thousands of gods slouched before me without sloughing the burden. I cry because my mother cried, her mother cried, her mother cried, yet she still bore my mother's mother who bore my mother whose drillbit I spiral screaming through ruthless deserts. I am deserted, my purpose, goddess.

"Yes, wouldn't you love to impose [[limits->qlimits]] upon me?" Porcia. "That's not what I mean! Forgive me, your majesty, I -" Brutus. "Why not bury me? Then I'll always be right where you want me, isn't that so?" "No, it's not, that's not it at all, it's simply that I'm tired of having to deal with your interruptions, with having to pick you up wherever I'm told you've lost consciousness." "I don't lose consciousness, I deliberately give it away." "That's not, okay, whatever, look, your majesty, you'll have to forgive me, some other time we can -" "No, let me talk to her majesty, I want to get to know her." "Not like this you won't. Come, let's go!" I snap my fingers and freeze the world of motions. Porcia sidestaggers out of Brutus' clutch, then glances derisively at his frozen. "Thank you, that's really quite generous of you, your majesty. Takes so much emotional energy to argue, never worth it, but in the moment you feel like someone's jamming their fist down your throat, so you shiver slather them in bile to writhe yourself free." "So rather tedious to have to be the [[aesthetic->qaesthetic]] you need to perform for a scene, isn't it?" I. "Yes, it's so, absolutely, I can see you're learned. That's why I'm not even really that drunk, but it's so much fun to play it up a bit, it's the weird thing with wine is, if you genuinely drink too much, you're just kind of flopping around unable to actually interact or think, you're struggling to stay moored to what's actually happening around you, it's worthless, but if you drink enough to effect a pleasant buzz, then you have the foundation of alterity sufficient to play out all your hypotheticals, to savor the luxury of no control, actress the roles you cannot believe yourself into in the harsh gleam of bonetruth." Why should I quibble that that's the opposite of what I said? These people are so much simpler when you're not involved.

Cannot be carried out of our position. Isolated in its isolationism. Nobody moves beyond the focal lens. Dolly zoom nausea to the racing alongside and away every. Buried. Purposed into this place or else no purpose, prison of systems perforating your cornea to inject its insight to envelop your visual. Unable to accurately add up beyond your border; you will be misconstrued; you will be miscast; everything will be lost. In memory you are not yourself, you are them plus the phantasmie of your speculative. Node. Number, one more of what alive was, but not a part of alive, death the literalization of your mechanismed. Performance erased by the close of the curtains, water to soothe the cells of some another amalgamator. Art fragiles the impasse. Overcome by the painting figuring what cannot come over to your eye. Your I is mist translates its vestige. Retainder of erasure, vitreous verlust. In significance crushed into some one becomes insignificance, irrelevance of valence of election, iconic bond, your stylized to stylus. Empath mend to path me to ends unenvisioned, circumscripture lateraligner writ linewright for the staged encounter. Limitations of consciousness contour the art of our unconscious allopoiesis, designer designifier. Foundry fulmination culminated terminus to be left to tunneling veins, conduits of our missives trained to persist past our station. Our rain's reflections remind us where we are buried contains us only as [[ghosts->qend11]].

You cannot trust people to account for themselves. Gods we daydream benevolent because we are not and must desperately wish our wound away. If we are to blame for sin, then we are blessed to suffer it magnanimous and blithe. Originally we were good, but we have erred, insufficiently strenuously held to the sourcetide, so thus the hellsty we wallow. Our souls are not here but contingently or by choices. Religion's necessity: we pray to more than thus presides. Intercede for me, bless me with salvation, elect me from the masses unique, love what cannot be otherwise, grant this gyre its cause and causal, or I melt thresh unkiss, and I refuse, I revere. No, I don't believe that. What an inane argument! Isn't it more that humans are venial in the same way that the mountain range that blocks the rain is a murderer? Exhausted, lost, limited, besieged by anxieties, electrified with purposes, so desperately violently in need of identities: why should we be surprised we torture and despair equal to their pretension to love? What call we love besides fantasies that equilibrize our atrocities? Freedom is a waste, its sole virtue, beauty of excess. Squander your spirit on all the petty snubs you would love to drink inflict on others. Be yourself as punitively as possible. Hurt those around you for bricks and mortar. You cannot shine until others contrast your bravery and brilliance under your foot where the besmirched belong. Hunt the weak, the outmoded, the resigned, resign them, signify your intention in a thousand borne grievances, in too many severs. Prosecco bubbles through your teeth in each new little chain you can imagine to break others to your march. Sybarite of jugulars dalliance I upon the dying; hurt them, heal yourself. Unearth the equilibrium from the graves of the useful; the useless don't count, of course, no one buries them. What do you want? Indulge in idiosyncracy: the more space required for others to remember your pleasure the better. You're worth it. You are everything you've wanted, because you've taken it all. Freedom is limited solely by your reach to consume. I don't know that I believe that either! I don't know what I believe. I don't sleep at night. Have been hurt by too many [[dreams->qend11]] to believe anyone deserves to have any. Let us hold hands sleeplessly beneath the blinkless luminous starfield. Utopia expects in each embrace nothing but this too shall some too soon fade. Oblivion forgives lovely our freedoms to uniform.

Spaces need not to be spoken. Expanse and in them. Presence within gems. Ongoing going on and going on in going. Bathed in the clay orange baked. Desert. Deserted. Inserted into a view, a part of it, viewer. Sitting in a room; for hours in a room sitting; languidly watching the light slip. The invisible markers of place aura: this house belongs to another, I will never feel at home in it. How can a house belong to someone? Why do we live in the same place night after night for years? Returning home. Return where? I am Egypt. I am the Nile, the desert, the mountains, the fields, the city, the sea. Am I not Egypt everywhere I go? Whose map will proclaim this room not Egypt? I am presence. You are present in Egypt when you kneel before me and kiss the linoleum I transmute to sandstone. Rome is snuffed out in my each touch, borders of Egypt my skin, invasion my each exhale. Falling asleep without fearing I will wake up elsewhere, but where would elsewhere be? Except I cannot see here in their eyes. Exiled by my gazed upon. Phobic projection of place the home and what should be in it. Thalassophobic plunged into view. Which way in the rippling darkening should you swim? Immersion phosphoressence in perception photographic graphic. Developed from negatives, enveloped in images, beaten to being before others an other, an image, a silhouette negatived to deveiled. Captured on film a prisoner; a photograph taken of me; shot. Socialized normalized violence of appearance, ineluctable, inattainable, imminent, envicision, venividivicisection, davincied vetruvian, from which angle must I bare before your proportioning? Paradoxical peacefulness of a boat on a lake, impossible stillness of water, rest upon it firmer than ever the earth. Coldness sunshine peeling through the panes. Dappling through leaves an autumntide tea, poredrunk to listlessleep. Unbearable vastness yawning of caves in which whisper the depths sweetly to dripsnuggle in cosier and cosier nooks, crawlspaces embraces. Ballerina litheness of the panther's en pointe [[towards->qend11]]...

Outcrying into a tongue unsure of its schemata. Wispery annunciations twinkling in the midnight mist. Arision ciphers encoding our daylode to diode, continuity concatenators vocalized seething cascades. Rinkling of runs sparkling piano gentle in the rainbreeze refrains gasps through gaps to grasp the ghostly voice vermeil. Allayed the dammed to steam mystic mephitic to be wept by sibyls in caves seeping and deepening prophesies lamentations ecclesiastes, our sung to songs. Unsolved solutes us soprano, dissolved burdens us to bass, we hymn their countercontralto. Contraction into speech glosses the words losslessly generative of emergent networks burgeoning diverging identity to indemnity claimed by the completion into sense, spoken and spoken for, spokes turning the waterwheel in its babbling channel to energize hum thrum seance of the starways to geisterstimme radio tuning to wanderers bouncing between heavens and depths muezzins of synesthesia of the intangible. Learning to steep the throat to sorceress the sounds. Leaning through the gush bursts of glottals to grasp at the disturbed air. Leaving my body to embody its ejected musical. Letting go of sense to spark into the senses a sense. In my skin the sound, in my sin the sound, in my in the sound, in my I the soundscape. Poet of severations autodafes to verses of scriptures of the fire that is the fire. Amounted more than the meaning, convoking in mutualmancy a moreness of meaning, spirit that supersedes its bearing to themes scoring our scoured and devoured, our minims to motifs to flow our molten a volcanic psalm. Rebirth jaggedry from the swallowing seas apex to a pulpit from which to wrack the sky with yearning or spurning to worship fists. Relent. Revent. Reversion to suckling from thermal vents, nutrients mana from our mantle mother. Placed here to [[survive->qend11]] the crushing pressure wiggling soundless in the boundless abysm.

"That's the real tragedy per the daily, is how we impose upon it yesterday's inevitables. How free we could feel if we accepted today as marooned from consequence, alaya perfuming each instant infinite and impermanent. Choose how seconds sequence, tie them into whatever threads color your patterns necessary. If I knew in advance that tomorrow I could be a completely different Porcia without having to sunder all the stricture stitches, then I could consign myself serene to any today me, the agony of continuity wouldn't amplify each failure a thousandfold, wouldn't threaten any bliss with its transience. If only all were fleeting, then we could be fleet into it and fly, but day after day the drone growing lonelier and harrowed, how are we to fight it, why even would we, why build a building if the ing of it is the problem?" "Do you not have cherisheds you wish to house?" "I do not wish to shelter but to snuggle together for warmth in the howling storm, more honest that way. There's something so rather condescending about protection, don't you agree? Like our grandmothers in the jaws of a dire wolf could emote more purely and awfully than we do today." "They are probably bleeding out wishing, please, gods, bless our granddaughters, that they need not suffer as we have." "But right that's so sublime, that's why we wish the best for our kids, is the divine joy of being starker than they will have to be, the feeling that our lives serve necessary evils far beyond the compasses by which they will wander a shrunken world." "We have some large wolves in the south, perhaps I shall send you one." "Please do, I have always wanted a terrifying pet, like imagine if you had a massive brown recluse spider, there you are sitting on the sofa chatting with your friends while they're sweating uncontrollably following the spider as it skitters around the room, onto their leg, ah, I would host feasts every night just for the joy of it, to watch them squirm while I smile beautifully oblivious." "I prefer to smile beautifully oblivion." "Same thing really, just whether you'd rather red or purple the emotion." "I will gild it oblivatic." "Well so that we're not caught matching, I'll tan it to oblitherratic, or maybe obliviautomatic, or well, I don't know, I've probably killed the mood of it now, that's the nature of obliviautomatic, it unerringly ruins the night." "Ah but I night the ruins." I [[flourish->qend11]] us into twilight of our separations.

"Perhaps that is why I do not drink much, have no need to pretend to pretend." I. "Do you not? I would have imagined a queen such as yourself would bathe in excess, wasn't that the point of your procession?" Porcia. "Excess was a part of the procession, not its point. Surfaces exist to conceal intentions." "Ouch, that's a wounded line. I'm sorry you've found yourself in that place." "What place? Rome?" "Fair enough, fair enough, I'll not push the point. Who am I to console you, bickering with my husband as a way of introducing myself? Maybe that's the surface concealing my intention: I wear my disarray on my sleeve, so I wanted to probe to find your disarrays, so we could be equal. Is that complicated enough, enough layers of intrigue and selfishness to properly explain it, or should I convolute it more? Actually I wanted to equalize as a way of vengeance for how my husband has taken interest with you as an enemy when I'm supposed to be his most intimate enemy, frankly he spends too much time hating you that I'm jealous, or maybe it's that -" "I understand your argument." "Are we arguing? Somehow I always end up here and never know why. Let's start over: hello, I'm Porcia, how are you?" "Icy." "Icy as in icy or icy as in go the hell away?" "The first, but insofar the first, the second." "Okay, I can take a hint so long as it's explicit," she unfreezes the world and [[melts->qend11]] into its dull roar.

"I think the reason I let them prevent me from sacrificing her is that I wanted a reason for her to survive this." I. "Are you appeased? Has their rejection of your power made hers more palatable?" Charmian. "I share your disappointment, but I must bear also many different forces." "Of course, netjeret, but shall you bear her difference, differentiating, disappointing?" "What else must I do?" "Bless her free of difference, merge her blood and yours from her corpse no longer a resistance. The Romans salvage her solely as a cudgel; can you allow a goddess to be so debased? You know she has not the wisdom to resist their entreaties." "She would never engage in discussions with the Romans. She would erase this city had she the power." "Had she the power, yes, but you have taught her where that lies. Who knows how she will engage with what is offered to her?" "What could the Romans ever offer her? She has not the capacity for tactics, she dwells entirely in her own intention, exiling those against it, compiling the rest into its beliefs." "She burned our library, what she considered our city's soul, because she is convinced that Egypt is dead. An irreconcilable conflict: you are trying to save Egypt, she seeks vengeance for its death. She will follow paths that frustrate your purpose, because she does not believe its validity. She rejects you, your quest, your queenship. There can be no mediation, there must instead be murder. Bless her liberated from her dilemmas. Give her unto the gods a warrior. Do not let her sickness spread miasmic into the groundwater." "She is murdered and buried, the temple receives her as might a tomb. If she spends her brittle breaths cursing me, well, I allow it for her. If she forsakes her principles and rises up against me, I am not scared. My destiny is whatever the inevitable proves to be." "Why this softness? Where is the brutality of your goddess?" "Where? All around you, Charmian! My city lies in cinders, my sisters are buried, yet I besiege Rome, invoke greater violence into this quivering world. Dozens of thousands will be slain to slake however many hours remain in my hex veins: their carcasses will ziggurat my brutal beneviolence." "But not hers?" "Yours will, if you do not cease your insouciance!" "Yes, netjeret, your will be blessed and eternal." What I hate about Charmian most is she sees my need to cry behind every snarl. I ought to carve her eyes out so not to be judged. No doubt she communes every night with my mother, in whispers they conspire their haughtiness. Never forget that she swore her service to Mother, that her duty to me is her duty to Mother. Glancing at me now through the shadows, nodding to the phantoms, look, Queen Cleopatra, how your daughter fails to live the name, she is too soft, soft, can you believe it, asking where my brutality is? I'll show her. I'll lay bodies by her bed every night so she can gauge my progress, and I will [[progress->qend11]], I will see this process through, no matter who must die, how I must.

Urge to exhaust myself of sleep, collapse unconscious of unconsciousness. Nauseated. Subsume me waveform, that I need not flatten to the lines written for me, speaker of sequenced. Yearning to untie myself unmolten but the slushfloe purls bleak through clawed brain channels imprisoning motions to my patterns, patterns that define what is mine. Loned into one and deny. Rubbing my face, gently rotating my fingers into my temples, blinking and unblinking. Long sandpaper silhouette of a submigraine. The darkness discolors with corals. Amaranth steam bubbles and fizzes in hazeblooms. Pomegranate bulb in my throat cannot be swallowed, distastes the saliva, might soon birth from my neck shrapnel moan. Drugged the city rocking through the carriage depresses black and white. Should burn it to bless it with color. "What's the schedule for tomorrow, Charmian?" "You're invited to meet with the triumvir and his allies in the early afternoon, from the tone of the invitation it may prove unwise to miss it. Throughout the day, you will likely receive social visits from a variety of senators or otherwise busybodies. If you'd like, I could push the morning back an hour." "Could you? I don't even want the sleep, just the extra hour of darkness. I can't even imagine seeing the sun right now, I think I would vomit." "Would you like some medicine, netjeret?" "Venoms, milk some spiders for me, add it to my tea. It seems I will need it in my veins tomorrow." "It shall be done, my queen. Is there anything else you wish?" "I wish for [[nothing->qend11]], that it may spread, now and forever."

And okay the one thing about the rats is that they're super insistent, when one tries to barge into your bathroom under the door you have to keep kicking at it constantly or the second you stop it will [[scurry->qscurrying]] right in, and once it's in you're batting at it to try and keep it away, but because rats operate from sheer spite they taunt you by constantly rustling up against the bath like they'll climb in and harass you, so to keep them away you keep kicking and fighting until honestly you're not even having a bath anymore, ruined, and somehow you still feel bad because you're lashing out this ridiculous amount of violence, it's like somehow you're the cruel one now, here's this poor rat just scurrying around for food, meanwhile you're obsessively assaulting it, desperate to kill it, your whole body is taken up with an honestly [[debasing->qlunacy]] charade of wild attacks and feints, I don't want to be that person, it's not fair that I have to be the [[antagonist->qfamulus]], when it's, obviously I mean it's the rats that are doing it right, they're the ones attacking me, but somehow I'm the one who, and if I even caught a rat what am I supposed to do, squeeze it to death, have its organs explode onto my face, or maybe I should start bashing it into the tile over and over again, no way, that's absolutely not what I'm doing, but the rats can read that, they know that even if I got them I'm not going to go through the hideous motions of beating the life out of them, so they exploit that weakness, they can look at me and know they can get away with it, that's why they, they, they're in the walls watching, waiting for when I least [[want->qabandon]] them, and I can't take it, I don't want to be watched, all I want is to be clean and to sleep, is that so much to ask, they're like oh you're so lucky you have such a wonderful domus it's so big, when meanwhile I haven't slept in weeks and I've forgotten how to trust.

"No, I am your enemy conquered, and I am thankful to die to so gracious a sword, you beautify my sacrificed before you, and it is that beauty I hate and worship, that beauty that makes you a queen and I your subject, because all I want, desperately, is to believe and submit, to serve a majesty beyond myself. If all my flaws were redeemed in a goddess, then why should I regret any suffering between or of them? I want to relent, I yearn to be collated in a purpose, how so wonderfully I would die my idiosyncracies into a Rome as any of your subjects do an Egypt, if there was a queen of me I could be free, but I am forced to serve myself, to find some way I can siphon off of Caesar, but I want nothing, am nothing, so I am jealous of your want so much but are nothingness, and if perhaps you feel that jealousy as a cruelty, okay, I accept that I am cruel, but only because my viciousness is necessary for any empathy that can arise in its wounded. We shall share an empathy only where we have been harrowed as one; elsewhere, we are also gladiators, dying for the amusement of others." "Are we so opposed? Is the amusement of others what betrays us?" "Yes, their amusement remains the only way we will learn to recognize ourselves outside of our own heads. I am only what I am because others reduce me to existent among them. Why should I be ashamed of that, or rather, why should how I am always ashamed be augmented by that? How can I escape them into anything I would desire of self? How have you done it, or have you done it, what makes you so magnificent?" "I am not existent nondivine." "So why I worship hate you, why I'm obsessing over you to the point where the you matters. Enmeshed in a million things I don't understand, but you are blessedly beyond me, and so I want to die in your service, I want you to demand of me martyrdom, so that I may forsake this life with the vision of a grandness enduring. We choose our objective to correspond to our objective. I envy you insofar as I must be destroyed, yet you beautifully outflourish Rome's ability to destroy." "Beautifully, though, and all that scours." "But the desire of others is what scours most. I am most burdened by what I cannot for others. If you crisis your whatever cognizant, you assume the slightest load that I impose upon my deserving to be question because in that questioning I will break apart to questions we can all weep unanswerable. I regret, thence the transcendent perfection of my regret, immaculately not me gurantees the capacity to knot me, refuse the asynculation to accepted, I unpercolate, nullfier of all these complications, so that from its rift might realize radiate the flushed hence, compiled, compressed, regression, living in abject fear of transgression, community torn by one who cannot quite to its sealant." "Shall I stamp you with my seal? Would that give you the mark of alterity you desire, or would it merely torment you?" "I, but you..." "Ah, is that hesitation? Then we have an answer. Charmian, bring the seal, would you?" Octavian hovers unsure as around him lithes handmaidens conveying him to recline. Charmian tingles over him, jams a miniscule drill into his thigh and drills, implants a particle of my flesh. His leg spins wildly out of socket, pulled towards me magnetic, but I reverse polarity, expulse him from the room. Should it only be so easy to escape myself, [[alas->qend11]].

"You speak about being dazzling only as a curse, but it's a blessing, the only blessing, to have people envy you. Envy is how you know you're worthwhile. Do you know what it's like not to be dazzling, to be a pariah in your own mind, slave of the shadows you worship? You speak about being dazzling only as a dazzler! You condescend to me, mock me, but I deserve it, I am what can be mocked. I am a descent. I hatepraise your arising alterity over my brutalized maars. I loathe not your abjection but the hidden possibility of that abjection to solve my own condition, to be happiness of its own stripe, or do I, or did what, I don't even know, I can't argue, you can become whatever you like, but I cannot, I cannot, and I resent your pseudowise application of the presumption that you can fix me, I have wandered depths you could not even imagine, you could never suture the ruptures that compose me, I am power radiance of a gap you never noticed between your tissues. And if I'm not some positivity you can latch onto, maybe it's because there was none for me to latch onto, was barraged by negatives that I did not develop, cannot fulfill my own lacks, let alone the ones you project onto mine. Nothing of me was worth desiring, is why I'm so bitter about the desirable. I have nothing, I want nothing, every day I wake up and am nothing, why should it be bizarre that I cannot go to sleep at night without gnashing my teeth? Do you think you get to just live your life and not have me in the pipes thrashing in jealousy? Do you think I don't look at you and want to cut my awful jaw off and let the rats feast on the viscera? I want to be punched free of jaw. I want to be annihilated. I yearn erasure's precious, so I be you its dribbles, any slobber of gone you will slop on my sobbing. You hold every right to abhor how I envy you, but that doesn't give you the right to condescend to my envy, because the fact that I want to tear myself apart in order to inhabit you, miserable and unloved you, must mean, it has to mean something, hasn't it, or do I mean nothing, am I merely yelling into the void?" "I accept your not void, but nevertheless we are opposed, somehow, by you, by me, by the gods, who shall say, and I accept your loathing, I should not be trusted an inch beyond my wretched aura, but I have my abyss, you yours, and what good is it blaming each other? Why can we not hold hands blaming the cosmos? Why always the fight, why are humans so fractious, why is their this inborn need to disagree? In utopia, we will claw each other's eyes out. There is no utopia. There are greater and lesser hells we can assign ourselves to. I accept your hell greater or lesser, so long as you allow me mine, even if, and especially if, you agree I deserve it and do not deserve it equally." "No, I do disagree, I refuse alterity, I, no, I have no idea what I argue, I resent having to argue, but there is only one hell, and we all suffer in it, deserving or not deserving. I'm not angry with you, I'm not arguing some point different to you, I, I simply am, hence the violence, hence the alienation. But I just want it to stop, that's what I envy of you the most, that it stops, that even if there is all this conflagration, even if you never sleep at night, even if everyone you have loved hates you, there is a kind of placidity in that, inherent to you, that is foreign to me, and I deserve that envy, because that envy is all I have." "Then I accept your envy and wish you the best in your bitterness, and I don't mean that sardonically, I mean that genuinely, I hope you find in your bitterness the smallest scintilla of what you have wished in it. I hope everyone who knows me loathes me according to their creed, so that if I exist, I exist [[destructively->qend11]]."

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XII: Calpurnia''] --- Wraiths rosy mucous membraney conga around the banquet abyss. Scullery maids hesitate to go into the shadow, sometimes shrieks and splatters shoot forth from the shadow, but the [[plates->qplates]] course and course. Impatiently I thump the table [[waiting->qwaiting]] for [[who->qoctavia2]] should be here. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Overflows the delicacies and tortures: spikefruits; splutch glops sizzlesplooching charcoal gristles; panic pancakes where a bite blasts either chocolate or a landmine; the faces of old friends muttering about how everyone in your village is waiting for you to come home, if you're going to come home you need to come home soon, so many of us are dying, if you don't return now then you will never have a home to return to, you'll find your birthplace foreign to your pastness; rancid bricks; strawberry creams dolloped on banana cake; onion and basil sfincione; cheese bakes with leeks, sweetcorn, broccoli, and fried potatoes in a gooey, savory sauce; dirt; a wriggling long tube smeared with dripping globs of garlic and ranch, in the center a bulbous ball palpitates and spasms asynchronously; brittle briny goat's cheese from Cisalpine Gaul that in the mouth shifts to creamy buttery cow cheese from Transalpine Gaul; creeps of guilt from the fact that your father was such a relentless hard worker and you know that despite any successes you achieve he's still deeply disgusted by how lazy you are, any victory you win only inspires in his mind the frustrating vision of all that you could accomplish were you not a spoiled shiftless spineless unimaginative drunken wastrel, everything about you is faintly [[repulsive->qrepulsive]], you're a barnacle freeloading passing ships to ports you could never deserve, rank disappointment fumes spread wherever you slug; ciabatta loaves filled with raspberry and blueberry jams; glowing heaps of plutonium, flesh of those nearest blackens and slips like lepers, they lean away from the table frequently to vomit redder and redder matter, they crunch and shiver under propulsive migraines; rye potato gnocchi in brown butter and sage sauce; a single raw radish that reappears on different plates; marinated slave's will to live; jostlejolters sparkly icing caked battery acid; [[syringes->qablution]] full of vaccines for diseases that don't exist yet but might someday exist so it's a good prophylactic tactic to immunize the population prior to the outbreak, but accidentally have the syringes been stuffed with a ludicrously high viral load, so they're basically guaranteed to be fatal, and for this reason they prove exceedingly popular; the sketchbook you started at sixteen when you wanted to be an artist but abandoned after a few months when you realized you just did not have the innate talent to be a truly great artist but which you wish you had continued because being great at art is only one reason for art and now you have so many emotions you cannot exorcise and you wish you had kept at it so that you could have been good enough that sketching would be reasonably therapeutic rather than vapid like the listless vapors in your brain that numb the ever accumulating into just enough routine dull to pretend to live; lemon poppyseed muffins humming a lilt of lime; frose bobbling in molasses; peanut butter paranoias hidden inside a dried date; aged fatigue laced with overdoses of caffeine and cocaine; crawling rice grains that buzzy staticy shapeshift their patterning into [[faces->qfaces]] you recognize, you think, you're not sure, no you definitely do, it's, it's, except it's already changed into, oh, oh yes, that's, oh yes that's, ah... and you have sighs that can't escape your throat...

Other things are being served as well, but as a vegetarian I shall not mention them from disgust. Even just the words nauseate me. I like slaw, for instance, but I refuse to eat it for its unaesthetic name. Some people call it coleslaw, and I hate them viciously, because that's even worse, perhaps sometimes you could sneak in some slaw and simply hold your nose to the name, but coleslaw, never, oozing down your skin the need to shower in the wake of such a sound. I'm already a bit miffed about having had to think of the words goat and cow, I've spent my energy for today, I have none left to name any other grotesquery. How could anyone want to consume a category of foods almost universally given the worst words? Our ancestors curled our mouths to greet meat with innate disgust. Even uttering that word, which I shan't repeat, craves weeks of [[ablution->qablution]], I've thought too many of these words, I hate this whole train of thought, but the gross momentum pulps my brain soiled, eugh, it's, why do we even eat, all food is horrendous, mastication is fundamentally repulsive, what little you do eat are the tiny bits you can manage in order to sate your body's degrading urges, foods cleanly cut off from the rest of the fester by neat names. Apples sound kindly, like a grandfather you love, and if you have your kitchen slice it for you, so you never need to [[interact->qfaces]] with the hideous core, then you can accept apples. The human body is a ravenous daemon, but if you wean its thirsts on soft words, you can minimize yourself [[meekly->qoctavia2]] needy, and is there any hope for humanity outside the unity of being meekly needy?

Through the shadowy waddles [[Octavia->qoctavia2]], late after I expressly asked her not to be late, so I attempt not to threaten as I pull her down next to me. She's achieved a particularly successful version of her usual almost nice style, very nearly nice, but I cannot help but chide: "Octavia, honey, has your hairdresser succumbed to dementia? You've been wearing this exact [[ponytail->qponytail]] for at least a week." "I, like it, like that." "Obviously, but you simply cannot keep repeating the same style, it demonstrates an absolute lack of personality, and you don't want them to think that about you, do you? You've a lovely, thoughtful personality, stop being so shy and express it. I'll send you a new hairdresser." "But I told them to –" "Yes, and they didn't think better of what you told them, so they can't be trusted. I'll also send you another attendant to keep you on time, you know how your [[uncle->quncle]] is about punctuality, after all his is the calendar, haah. There's so much you're [[missing->qmissing]] by dallying with who knows what."

"Is Porcia here?" Octavia. "No, no she's not, you really need to stop relying so much on her, there's, it may not always be such a good idea. Actually, I meant to tell you, Decimus has a wonderful new wife from Dalmatia, Livia, she's about your age and really exuberant, she can really carry a conversation on her own, so she'll be good for you, and she's eager to make some friends from the city, you know it can be quite hard on these young women coming from the protectorates. I've told her we'll visit her domus on Thursday for a matinee." "But auntie, but you promised you wouldn't set me up on more of these friendship dates, they're awful." "They're not awful, they're great opportunities to grow lasting friendships, and I never said that either, I said I wouldn't force you to make friends if you would make your own, but you haven't, have you? I know you cherish your friendship with Porcia, but you may not always be able to rely on that, you need to be your own woman, and that starts with making your own friends." "I'd rather be alone." "No, you wouldn't, alone being beg the barren maars. If it seems nice to you now, your soul has yet to hollow, absence has not hoarfrosted your bones, crushed your motions liquid, cracked your wholeness, scoured your tone in lyes, which is good of course, I would never want you to go through what I had to go through, you deserve so much better, you're so kind and creative and unique, you're such an interesting girl, but you have this automatic anxiety that prevents you from daring yourself into the scenes that will define your forever you, and I want those for you, I want you to discover the person you cannot create alone, because, please trust me, you will never be satisfied with whoever you cobble together in the pressure quiet. There's no hope for such a person, only thinner and thinner survivals. Come, your [[uncle->quncle]] must see you."

Crowds disperse around my imperious. I present Octavia to Gaius, who, uh... "Ah, Octavia, I, it's good to see you..." Gaius. Ligaments drip their joints, teeth sharpen in the grind. Is this his tone, why, why is this his tone? "Yes, she wishes to thank you for her new title of triumvirtrix, don't you, dear?" I. "Yes um, we appreciate your, your..." Octavia. "Isn't it just marvelous, your [[brother->qbrother2]] and your husband triumvirs alongside your uncle? I've always said you were luckier than you knew how to use." I. "Certainly, it is a marvel," Brutus. Caesar gauges the comment, then meanders his way free of a grunt to a sigh. "Well you really must come visit more, we always appreciate, the..." Gaius. "Ah but Octavia, you must bring your dolls. She's taken up dolls, Gaius, isn't that so fascinating? I've always said she's so creative, it's lovely to see her find a –" "Have you, yes, well that's great... well, it's been wonderful to see you Octavia, we really must catch up sometime, you can tell me all about your newest hobbies, or, or..." He lugubriates [[aloof->qaloof]]. Both our humiliations brim tears because I will have to shed them alone. I extract us, maneuver Octavia to a conversation that will hopefully moor her from fleeing, then wilt into the table. Why do I bother? I try so hard to ease things for everyone, yet they show not the slightest gratitude, continually they mock and abolish the minivictories I claw from the mire. Why would Gaius be so blatantly rude to his niece? Like he loathed having to remember her existence! I wonder if that's not his default mode to us all now. He's gotten what he wants, this political whatever, now what need has he for family he cannot draw from a scabbard? Suppose then Octavia might get her wish, her mother's dying wish one more bereavement indiction. What was that, why would he, why has he this mood now? Not business, surely, they've quibbled all the bloat to sea, now but they drink and sail. Perhaps it's [[something->qsomething]] I don't want to know, for which reason I absolutely must know it, but who would I ask, who would know it, but if they didn't know it and were asked it, wouldn't then know they didn't know it, just as I, and go about asking it? Why do I have to agonize my way through this maze made of their careens into wrecks I must clean up? Not one shipwreck has crashed them ashore consideration. How must Octavia feel when I tempested all this stress for her to be here to placate her doting uncle, only for her to immediately be dismissed? No doubt she's mortified, already she had the pallor, may as well powder the corpse if we insist on awake. Poor Octavia, nothing works out for her, because nothing works out for me, and I'm the only one looking out for her. Honestly I could vomit had I eaten anything all day.

"Is Antony here?" Octavia. "He left already," clench my teeth, glance askance. "Did he say where he was going? I've been um, meaning to talk to him about, about some repairs, there's, our house, there's um, well, some, some, we have a problem with..." "Don't worry about that, your [[brother's->qbrother2]] here, he always likes to take care of you, you can tell him what you need, but first you simply must go say hello to your uncle, only a quick hello, he does so love seeing you, we both enjoy spending time with you, and he wishes you would come see us more, frankly it's embarrassing for me trying to explain why you so rarely come." "I, I'm sorry, it's not like I'm going elsewhere, it's, a lot of times I just don't leave the house." "Yes, we can discuss that later too. We'll have a good chat sometime. For now, we must take you to see your dear [[uncle->quncle]], musn't we, he does so wish to see you."

Since she was a child, Octavia held hands without grasping yet somehow seeming never to let go, when you grip harder to ensure she's there her hands feel ever more faint, soon through you her fingers will slip through you, turn around to nothing there, but your, your hand will still piano her touch. Once when I went to hug her it seemed I had gone through, and almost flailing I gasped not to cry out, but, to whimper, until in my ear seeped my name, not assuring her, reassuring me, but interrogative, and I pulled back to find her at her feet staring, not at me, addressing me to her feet, as if she was, what was it, ashamed to be startled at my starkness suddenness? But couldn't she realize that she wasn't there? Does she think I don't know what it feels like to embrace someone who isn't there? If I hold you, and you're not there, why would you be surprised I cry? I want to lash her to the mast, soak her in the sunrise until she dribbles her own dawns onto us, waking each morning to where she is is today. Their mother sick cloaked gasping through medicine musk in a turgid haze hacks a plea that I would ensure her girl is [[loved->quncle]], says nothing in the last days of Octavian, perhaps because Octavian she knew would be loved, but in her girl's long pauses to reply, in her girl's tearful refusals to eat, in softly shuffling through mute moonlit halls finding her outside her room, sitting there, just, sitting there, she understood, deeper than I will, in the way only a mother will, or can, if she cares to, which I could not guess in my mother's stillborn shush, or maybe we only wish they do, because if our mothers cannot perceive, then perhaps nothing persists to be perceived, only the ether's turbid rippling. What is real in us may never be real for anyone, and can we truly judge the fictional real reason more than the roil? Lounging late into the should be asleep she leans, her chrysanthemum camisole petaling her on the pond, smiling into the air, brightly genuine like never otherwise would I glimpse her. What thought had occurred to her then? Perhaps the night itself had pleased her, black and white and silence. Was it because she assumed I was asleep? When at last I was gone, there, the peace glade to hide happy. Unluckily for her, I never rest, I roam the broken ravenous. Remorseful gods will apocalypse our putrid to find abomination abiding striding the abandoned non.

Maybe he's exhausted from dallying with the grand slut of the sands, the brute, I ought to cage him and feed him offal, only that could ennoble his station. He's going to hear about this insult. He can humiliate me as much as he wants, I've resigned myself to [[sainthood->qsainthood]], but Octavia doesn't, she doesn't have to be like this, how dare he seed that into her, what, because she's not a wrench to bolt together the machines you wish would hold your souls? I'll drill into his [[temples->qtemples]] to profane their inane pieteousity. He thinks he can just hurt whoever he wants as it suits him. The spoiled brat has been allowed too much license simply because he charms the troglodytes by dragging in worldworse all over our pristine carpets. They find him whatever the bloodlust synonym for cute is. I'll correct him. I'll...

Where has he gone, Gaius so [[thoughtful->qthoughtful]], the [[generous->qgenerous]], so [[joyful->qjoyful]]? Full of thoughts about his image broadcast to silhouettes, generous with the color he lends for his doppelgangers to better form him moreness, but not joyful, joy is one emotion you cannot [[prostrate->qtemples]] to politics. Heavens, envious that we might achieve anything on earth, leech ambitions to the clouds, blank vapor. If I could only find a way to bring him back, and that's all I want, I just want my husband back, no, not even that, just for him to want me back in the way that would bring me back, or no, not even that, just to have my absence grieved... I wish I could throw all these curs lapping up his milk into the street with as many slaps and kicks as I could graft on limbs to dispense. I want to talk to him about something, anything other than him, but that's the Rome of these days, all conversations lead to Caesar. I'll set up a hotel outside his city gates, turn a profit, we'll attract guests as the only source of fresh air. Ought to be some profit to me his looming over everyone but me.

Bitterness juices in calcified tenses. You don't want bitterness, but bitterness persists in what you don't want. You try to be better, to forgive and let go, but the only virtue is suppression. No one is good but some of us struggle a quarantine. Swallow enough of your turmoil to saint the facade. It won't matter, but who needs it to? Pests buzzing about kindness slurping up sap. Righteousness grinning that the cosmos will wrench itself strangeways to condemn those who fail its supremacy. Greater the scoundrel those to whom virtue is a cause with an effect than the most depraved abuser. Pride, yes, of course, but pride simply is. Don't you know that I have feelings, that I yearn to spasm catharsis? The effort it takes to rescind authenticity to bless you with equanimity pressurizes cancerous, but I choose to, for no other reason but that I will have been better than this earth. I bend before your needs, I nurture your wounds, I navigate your trauma, and I ask nothing in return, because there is no gift you could give to deserve me. I am absolutely smug about ravage after wilt choosing to soothe the scathing conditions you create despite my despair, the tears that slip down around the throat to my shoulders, because in that anguish lamps a love uncleavable from my distance from nature, my soul as I distrust its paradigm, designer its fallible a velvet. Because if it is all for naught, I will be that naught. I luxuriate in my [[victories->qend12]], because no one else will care, and I refuse to let my beacon fade. I am bitter, engorged on hate, sluggish under the loathing's weight, my nails stab through my skin whenever I see you happy, I writhe in my empty bed in envy at any success you somehow drink from rivers that never reach me, I rebuild my dignity from how you humiliate me in tatters tiaras, but I wish you the best, and I hope you soon feel the serenity and fulfilment you deserve, because in you I bless you godlike. Whoever gave us this can claim it, but I name the coming after, the elevation to renunciation in which void lies creation. Sentience, outside the capacity towards selflessness, molds merely greater a stage for existential agony. You can never thank me for my kindness, but perhaps when you smolder in hells you cosign, you might cry out to me as a goddess.

But why must this be our moods towards each other, it just, it wasn't always like this, in the garden we wander ghostform lullabies, plants plumes frill the secrecy, to each herb we take turns inventing properties: from me, oregano, with its bunny ear leaves, frolics the muscles racing faster, zephyr spice; from you, anise, clay clams roving a quivering tongue, protects the chest from coughs and pyrosis; from me, yarrow, with its beehive bulbs, gloopy honey thickens to ease, eager to please; from you, parsley, flathead spikes, guards against disease; chardonnay light spills through the leaves summer rain. Newly married, not yet familiar are we with each other's palms' lines, tracing through them patterns horizons, endless expanses delimitlessly what lies here, in every place its heaven. Creators of a secret world in whispers, sly glances, winking grins. Charting the territories we have a lifetime to share; lifetimes sunder, life and time's aching drifting. Lesson for Octavia: never comes an outcome. There is no endpoint to the emotion, no revenge, no justice, no peace, no fulfillment, no vindication, no gratification, absolutely zero [[healing->qend12]]. You build, you lose, you keep, you start to steal, you return to the gone, and you find yourself there. Penance our greatest fantasy to enough suffer earned indemnity. I retain these bitter citrus cancers for cause beyond cures in the brinkland wastescape. Gaius will never suffer how he has treated me, her, but I will, I do. I will wait with this complaint in the rain for the collector who never comes. Elongating abscession eludes the forms fevers shimmer in shadows absentsolution dreadnaught. No equilibrium harmonizes the thousand daily seisms. Fallen on the battlefield, finally you attain the enlightenment position of watching humanity trudge past your wounded collapse. Natural dearth the earth death, life the aberration, living sixty years named, conveying continuous history to each fractal zoom, portraying the flowers of yesterforever in motions through the snow of the eternal springless, until magnified are the forces that compel you alterior, you fit no longer in the frame, forgotten except to the skew. The burden of being still in the stillness gleams the ludicrous enterprise life moths. Insistence upon a changeling erases us identities. With enough memories, the mind loses taste, staler and staler memories hollow us free of the delusion to remember. Magnolias bending in each breeze complete.

Why should I have said it? After so much endured, after said I something which should have speared him, his martial instincts parried with as good a weapon as any, asking why I never said I loved him, for an instant beautiful connection, exactly the vicious gentleness I might have wrought in my wrought. Because I have said it several times before, and each time it was thrown in my face by people who would prove not to have the sacred attachments to the word they thespianed, vibrating pathos of the perfect tear. Because it is a way you make yourself vulnerable before them, word of reverse power, and the wise, I learned, savor the power that comes their way. Because the longer I did not say it, and he did not say it, I could feel it slip away from me, the word, not the feeling. Isn't it such a charming feature of his, that he took my refusal to be vulnerable and riposted that a weakness? The word is not the power but its presence inside you, neither expressed nor hidden can you be emancipated from its languish. Because why should it be said. Read it in me, draw it out of me, why all this pretending we don't see what hues our emoted, is no honesty honest enough to admit what already is? Because my crystal pretension was I was too fragile for him to reject the offering, and I could not bear that lie shattering, proved not the guise in which we are sincere, what would be the purpose of such a word were we forced to survive it? Because we are all weak and pathetic and [[fleeting->qend12]], and in the course of all we shared, I could never summon the courage to let go to the raw uncertain of holding on. Because, although you have marked the months, to me the time is my own, my inexplicable: there is no why, only who.

Cardinal dumping dead chicks from its nest I rest stance to willow to a seat near Caesar so called wondering do I why not weigh on his conscience or his stutter pretension to ease evinces my weight, ought I to snatch his plate of rhubarbed wire and feast the gums to stumps to issue stormier the breath with enamel hail. "Victory is a bitter tincture, because it heals the body's oppositions. What good is health to ambition? Driven wild through marshes grasping for artifact starshafts in a fugue meld gumbling through ills, forced human grossly in the vision quest to grandeur, electrifies the need in our necessity, but my enemies struggle to remain so, I cannot get a senate to deserve my power, I would have stayed in Gaul had I known Vercingetorix had more in him to strangle than the city his death's praises gave me. What do I expect? The best of us I have already killed." Gaius. "Yes, Chrysippus would be appalled in victories succumbed to your hollows," Brutus. "Would only others have the gall to say so, I would have the pleasure to take ire. I have always considered you a friend, Marcus, since not yet have we invented the proper word. Diametrics? Diabolics? Some a to die, surely. Consider that a kiss and a threat. The rest, well, they acceded to my increasingly audacious demands with their own fervor increasing, as if we were fanning ourselves to a frenzy thus Bacchus might rapacious revel raze us to firmament, immutable substrates qualifying any soul that should form it." "You read too much Timaeus." "Had you to waste hours at a military pace, you would understand rigorous excess." "You will find we do contemplate a military pace. The lesson we learn in this defeat is how little we can rely on our colleagues. We will have to endeavor self sufficient opposition." "If any self is sufficient to oppose me, I thirst their manifest. I wish but that I had found them on the battlefield, where I am most native. Had I been born earlier, I might have relished Spartacus, the soldier who demands we prove our relations, truly has he read the battlesoul. The beauty of such a foe was lost on Pompey, the Pompey slain begging Egyptians to harbor him. An army crafted from the arena's theatrical purity, gladiator priests of the raw verse, idealist zealots of Libertas, such soldiers were my antistrophe, destiny to self laureling the carnage of eppursimuovists, but the empty cruelty of the cosmos gave them instead aristocrats slapping whatever forces them to rise, what an ugly travesty. I have sought any foe I could find to summon those spirits to me so might finally I prove myself the Oracle of Delphi, dialectic victor, and perhaps that's the word, dialectics, foremost fount of wisdom in doubt, whose hemlock praise slays Justitia, so law will be my will, no word but mine may be spoken from the blind." "I couldn't have said it better." "Because you are a child who cannot wit what the blind witness, but I will not explain it to you, I already explained it to your Cato. I have heard the letter arrived this morning. You see no news comes to Rome but what I send. Cato was a great man, which is why I rejoiced his opposition to me, because I knew he would give me the blood of a great man. I regret you never will, since you have chosen to confine your opposition to the Senate." "I confine my opposition to the ideals I seek to uphold, but I assure you I can render you the blood of a great man." "We shall have to see how potent your battles prove." On they fuzz until my mind does. Not a word to me. Shall this be our new agreement? Never a word to one another again. What should we say? Nothing remains of him but the idolatry. I have to let go. I [[lose->qlose1]] out to his true lover, him sculpted upon a pillar.

Born without passions should have prepared me to [[grace->qsainthood]] upon the minusia but beneath bereft I cannot gauge where go I where where arises abyss. Greatest comfort possible, grief, certainty that once there was. Would dwell junked had I pearl regrets, unbridled illusions of the yet [[wasted->qwasted1]]. I do not ask to be loved but beg overcast skies that I could believe I had lost [[love->qlove3]].

Into the shadow I wander shawled in eyeballs grasping and regrasping air. Where is my niece? Where is Octavia? I cannot allow it to be too late for her, not for her, but for me, for my inability to see myself twice. She has the strength, perhaps, to endure beyond my petty afflictions, but I do not, cannot endure her enduring it, I want her on her deathbed to weep for life worth having lost. Why should we wish to reach a [[future->qend12]] we regret not is not now?

Roads lead into roads that lead into roads until I cannot find my way. Maze feverish giant the terraces to arches occluding all starlight. Roads into where into who would even wander them wonders the knots in my stomach tying alongside crossroads upon crossroads, cannot the first delve into the second without forsaking a third and seventy more above. Imps bang upon hanghang croak crooning minotaur, minotaur, minotaur, and from the labyrinth charges a minotaur faster than I can flee, he gores me upon his horns through a wall into a butchery hung with exotic corpses into a hook on which I hang. Through the rubble hoofs the minotaur who watches me wriggle impaled like a worm, then again, thrice he enters as if to find me there. Roars open his bull maw to reveal a staircase tongue. From his throat canes a soothsayer who aches and shakes his way down tongue stairs. Each step simultaneously he shrinks and grows until a figurine my size the soothsayer presses his forehead into mine, mouth inches from mine softly, softly whispers. "You have suffered, so suffering will be created. You have willed this into being. Your debts will be settled. This will bring you suffering, so suffering will be created. You have willed this into being. The debts you owe can never be settled. On the day of accounting shall justice make this world worse. Beware the ides of March. Fear. Be aware the [[divides->qstart13]] march. Fear. You will receive your being bereavement." Loops nerveless veer the lithograph subterraneans concuss cave our deepening lightless the river not thither force respire, course desire drains along the dampness nonshimmer, mossy spurl unfurling potentialate palatial of the darkness, starkness subordination, beneathing directionality of the evental retroinevitable, have I not been buried here since birth? Bring me my being in expunction, so does the dampening fever horror, humid future.

Like yesterday we floated on the breeze leaves autumn vibrant. "All my years of marching to where the wonders die out to sea, have I ever failed to come home to you?" Caesar. "I wish I couldn't believe you, but this is my curse, priestess of a catacombs temple, to feel you in the freeze." I. "Only one who cools my embers senses my snow touch." "Then will I winter awaiting." I recognize resignation as the only [[kindling->qend12]] that keeps love alive after passion dies. There used to be so much.

Martyrdom beauty of encapsulation in an act, gravitional lensing of a lifetime so that its light appears to us a halo around unseeable negation, is the same as the ascetic whose life we assume contains halls of quiet and light. Deaths we daydream to worship more than how we grind and lust. Vicariously we insert ourselves in their story up until the destruction of renunciation, then we let them subsume to idea to star our wish to ornament our lives with ideas. We pray to saints, but how repulsive it would be to meet one, to be there with a human somehow being in the midst of renunciating, the uncanny disjunction of fantasy to reality, the abject mundane horror of holiness, we would martyr them immediately so that we could gentle back to worship. We desire all goodness to vanish, so we need not shiver in its shadow. But I am willing to be good in its hatedness, inconveniently and cruelly caring, because that hatred is all I have. If they do not revile me, they do not think of me at all. Gaius, Octavia, [[Octavian->qbrother2]], everyone loathes me, mocks me, and I deserve it, I crave it, because I [[care->qend12]].

Where does he think [[victory->qend12]] lies? In temples he seems to see far off countries; no doubt in foreignscapes he dreams of temple interiors. Our city is what for what? Bending his knee at the temple of Juno, thanking her for bringing discord to the peoples around us, so that in might might he prove whomever wights the tilted and torn tawny tarn rivuleting down my cheeks slopes.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XIII: Cleopatra''] --- No one conceding eye contact stilts the room slightly a slide, cannot move but drunkenly, this confused frustration silts sobriety bitters, sitting dinged to dampness in a sideways sunwhite room while prim people mutter and blink and nod. Octavian refuses to sit straight but cannot comprehend the slouch, so his diagonals gleam tilted teeth. Mark Antony cannot stop tapping his foot on the floor, might dislodge the divan and slide into my nausea with his furtively affected [[ease->qease]]. Caesar addresses daydream phantoms, or so his [[monotone->qmonotone]]. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

"I've been [[talking->qease]] to you all about the, the next steps, and I think we need to rush from the reward to the reaping, that's always been, um, my philosophy, what deserves me Roman premier. The last of my equals is, well, I suppose the, Egyptians proved too much for him, and too much for my enemies will they continue to prove, thanks to, to your highness, um, your support gives me the wealth needed to smooth castra to a capitol, so I appreciate, that, but, but we must be smart about this, if we, to succeed, and I think the way to do that is to make the first move seem a retreat. They're poised to block any power I seek in the wake of my victories, because they've seen they cannot create my equals, but what if I, the only one capable, create my own? We go to Senate with dozens of reforms to dizzy them, then we glutton them on Egyptian gifts, then, when they lean back from the table in a good mood, we bestow upon them the security they need to go to sleep, we suggest a second triumvirate, I propose to reestablish the balance of power I've accidentally disrupted in my quest for the greater glory of Rome, it'll all seem to them the magnanimity they've been desperate to convince themselves I possess, just the hint that maybe Caesar isn't so bad after all will annihilate every last vestige of resistance. I'll appear statuesque in my civic virtues, so they won't mind me putting several in the forum. We'll reform the triumvirate on my terms though, I'll have my allies nominate the both of you. Of course, a triumvirate made of me and my closest kin is a triumvirate of me, and I, I do think that about you two, you are both of me, we are in this together as a, a, uhm, you know, a family, and our power will coalesce a summit I can figurehead. If from my marble they must carve my equals, then they will finally admit Rome's perfected face. It's this that has always driven me, not the drivel about power or money, but Tantalus reaching for ambrosia, I labor to taste godhood in acts. I build the temple of Mars, so we might worship victory in the house of my sweat; I build the temple of Jupiter, so from me is shaped the king of gods." "They shall know you are a god by how you slaughter your slaves," I. They fidget like they would stare at me were they all not individually determined not to look at me, and that's all I wanted, really. Mark Antony dribbles platitudes about loyalty and service, Octavian moodily monosyllables. Unbearable drear stuffs the room acrid. Sipping a rosewater tincture keeps down the urge to cough until the hacks scrape up blood from the lungs. Caesar drones on about Senate and strategy, strange he should want to rule a place that inspires so little [[passion->qpassion]], or perhaps dispassion is their passion, and these are his fiery rhapsodies. Romans have so much capacity to care and yet so small a soul for caring to fill. Disinterest mudsculpts demons that spread, conquer, rule, persist, persist, persist until exorcised, any exercise of human touch. They build outposts to dwell for years in enemy territory, regulating to a certainty inflow and outflow of troops, then, after baiting the enemy with tease after tease until their libido ebbs into calcified frustration, inch meticulously along the battlefield to kill and die as a single semiliving organism sans deathcry, battlecry, bloodlust, killing frenzy, no wonder they strike fear in their enemies, imagine the indignity of dying to someone who doesn't even enjoy killing you and has marched hundreds of miles over months eating staler and staler rations to do it. Brutality is the thin membrane that beautifies battle, rip it off and you return to nature, predator pouncing on a gazelle, one's ability to crawl to tomorrow swallowed by another. No wonder Caesar insists they stamp his face upon coins, what could be more Roman than an abstract trinket virus that pillages dispassionately? A sestertius to sublet a slave's month, yet they complain sacrificing slaves to a god is cruel. If only they could achieve sentience and reflect upon themselves, they might discern how to succeed the Greeks instead of simply puppeting their carcass, but then, I suppose, they would become Egyptians], and my attempt to adopt a daughter of Egypt has not proven successful. Best to let your inferiors govern themselves.

Elliptical recombinations of safe nonphrases suffuse the lethargy with sufficient discomfort to dispel the desire to pretend away the awkwardness, and somehow Octavian excuses himself. Caesar hesitates his chase to seem, perhaps only to himself, like he leaves for a separate purpose. Mark Antony surprises me with a switch to casual confidence. "I hope you don't take the speed of our successes to indicate any weakness in Rome. Our might lies in our legions; there's no reason to keep it squirreled away in senators." "You're afraid I'll invade after having taken such pains to strengthen your city?" "Why else would you strengthen it? We would not be a prize worthy to rest in Egyptian jaws could we not elect ourselves to meet you more than conquerors." "Your compliment betrays you don't mean it." "I mean every compliment I have said to you, just in the subtext. When we rode together into Egypt, then could I understand you, seeing the monuments that made you. From that awe I address who belies that awe." "No doubt in awe you undress me. I admit it, you have divined my passing fancy to sate my vanity by installing my puppet [[emperor->qpassion]] on your throne. Misery is bearable merely because we share it. Shall you flee to your senators to expose my plot?" "I shall conceal your secrets as a personal favor, since your plot favors me personally." "You suppose I do it for you?" "Not for me, no, of course not, but coincidentally alongside me, why not, with me, well, why [[not->qnot2]]?"

"Why not not?" "Excellent question. As a gambling man, I believe the best questions are those with the most answers. I'll start, as a poet, with your eyes, suffering immortals no instant can parse to expression sunken deeper in a goddess for the burden of hearthing it. You are inalienably alone, goddess an aspect invoked in prayer and curse alone. I recognize in the idols your glare I break my knees kneeling beneath, inscrutable stone faces equally merciful, wrathful, yes and no, creation, negation, the aspect posited and receptive, a hundred times have I besought [[Bellona->qbellona]] to judge my soul, never expecting hers to return to mine, to reveal more than the war that unites us, to whisper a Bellona beyond the possibility of prayers. To whom and for what would a goddess pray? If you cannot pray, then can you truly desire? If you do not desire, then are you not merely rock weathered by winds outer and inner? The stone face that emotes never, speaks never, merely grants or rejects the life imposed upon it, soil soul petitioned by the seeds that contain godhoods impossibly alive, worlds within worlds, spirits within spirits, matryoshka meaning contained but forever separated. Caesar wants to be a god, precisely because he has no humanity in him to lose, or he would never wish for such a curse. Why live imprisoned inside truth when you can traverse them all a liar? Why not invent afresh peaks our primal secrets lash us to? We conjure gods to sate the same yearning that yokes us slaves. Above we wish a heaven to guide us, below we hope a hell to grade us, so our careering betwixt poles instills us race essence, rushing a gauntlet towards a goal that will reward us victorious upon the corpses of could nots we hymnal to language vestments crimson as an altar? Anointed to access the divine above cloying mobs, yet marooned on earth an agency, infinite conduit, shaper of power to purpose. I general Caesar with absolute loyalty, because I would never want anything but his success and my stance beside it. The same loyalty, a young adjutant, I once offered to you, your gaze. Towards an altar I approached your carriage festooned sandstorm with lace drapery muttering invocations to the sphinx insignia, as an oath I spoke into the veil, as an omen your psalms spellbound me, and when through a curtain slip lynxed black eyeline envisioned I the goddess her prophet to its revelation, but in this vision there faltered less than omens, a present uncertain, you seem so confused by my mix of expressions, and I was confused to see in a goddess confusion, and each left speechless we shared an unspoken until we were united a no need to say, then was I terrified, delighted, entranced to see in those eyes not a gleam but a flicker, a fever, kaleidoscope faith, gone was the goddess beneath the barely suppressed gasp, emergent was the believer, a healer, conceiver of alteria in which permutated I in the days you drew me out, once a knight, twice a poet, thrice an oracle, always an ascendancy of breathwine spilled across your fantasias, whatever we wanted to trust like truth we charmed to charade, electric thirsts soothed through phantom vermouth warmth vibrancy vibrating through us heat in a fleeting fleecing touch, wary of our onlookers yet more brazen by trusting in the doomed world martyr hypervivacity, mandala more vivid for its fated to fade, crystal present purified of both past and present extensives, eyes ablaze with this hoursun loosing into twilight fireflies rememories, I recall them, the brand that forever symbols skin with a single second's fire, tattoo of spectral touch, these veins brim with the ink of the emotive endless uneternal, your emotions echoing in my mind still audible in your voice as how your glances sang them, flush of batting eyelashes percussed them perfumed with your grapes and cardamom, your date palms swaying shade over the Nile the [[Mediterranean->qmediterranean]] kissing, your reality in its fragile, but now, now, where, when, how, how, now only in your flawless ambers flows the goddess gaze, stone stillness, how I wish over a hundred softs and safes could I coax the tragedy of how it happened so might consider I how to heal it, because you deserve healing, you deserve anything other than prayer, and if I have to pray it into your celeste sleep I will, whatever you will I will until you feel in me fulfilled, whatever you want, and you want, I know you burst with wants, but who will hear them, who nightmares the gray cries of gods, who raves moonmad with whisper divinities, who can, gulfs wracked, consumed by absence presence, stare into an old friend's eyes and see newly you any you to assume in whom are you disenhaunted, claw through cataract yesterdays chaos with me your mayday, any day you can, and you can, I believe in you, the goddess who blushes, who bleeds, the girl who dangerously needs." "Antony, ah..." "But this world, I have discovered, is richer a treasure than any child imagines innocent infinite as stare they out to the susurrant sunset, and we in the northern Mediterranean worship different gods than those that influence the eastern shores or those further east into deserts and sprawling plains scaling to plateaus and mountains upon mountains upon unscalable bones of the ancient titans and beyond into wild earths where peoples elude our comprehension's brink, but nowhere more distant than the endless ago sprawling the southern sands of our unity sea, genesis endured in gypsum limestone hulks, first fires of our forlorn watch smoldering still in sandbeaten camps tawny against the balding steppe where millennia lie derelict to shade the dayfierce dire for those who sweat to claw new terrors and doubts into the sandstone, and gods preside there the totalities of memory into living gods, Horus the sunrise bearing sunset [[Osiris->qosiris]] to reign an open sky, ancestor presence, the immortal of mortals mortal, and Pharaoh do you phosphoresce vermilion with veins embers lapis lazuli vivisections vivifications, retainder of tales, reciprojector of depths ebbed and flowing, the sphinx whose gaze unchanges into landscape animated into riddles perpetually semisolved in the enduring agonysmithy, and in those enigmaticana adore you I angel of the wists reborn wings, worship you graveyards goddess of our failures to exist greater, perfection of the puzzle, humanity attempts scattered before youthful chance runes the book of the dead written living, written your wrestling thrive, would you only wrestle for all in you alive, your wisdom too mystical to be followed, solely felt, in your merciless kindness ebullienced in endevoting diva flounce candor resilience to be soft in tempests that render everyone breathless esprit, in the eruptive cascades which cool us to the terrain persistence chi unquellable and unconquerable, brutal gentle worldversed to prose, composed of radiant fragments chromatic symphonies in keys to parts of you I can only begin to [[daydream->qdaydream]], enchantress stylish, splendor of empires contained entire in a smile, faerie flitters of the wrist amazes the aweweaving of fingers curling gazes to stroke locks ebony luxuriant, the thousand innovations you transit across the mundane undepictable masterpiece supernal essence which cannot be spoken but as Cleopatra, in these I believe you goddess in the Egyptian tradition, deity of a dwelling so magnificent she must be worshiped, and in each minute enraptured in tenuous moorless idylls magicked enravage as the seagale straying we sharesculpted in every tendering upon touch claying I lavishe a love flowing from this very worship, the will to aspire paradises we can conjointly miscarry into glades of our graces, strays of your traces more immersive a portrait than ever our souls conjure of dreams."

"How do you know of [[Egyptian->qegyptian2]] gods?" "I have found myself interested in the [[subject->qgoddess2]]. Perhaps you could teach me more. The banquet they expect us at tomorrow night is inane I assure you, worse as the legion's fitness regime precludes me from pacifying my ires with gluttony, so I would love to escape it early, maybe you might feel the same. I have a place just outside the Servian Wall in the Campus Martius, where my legions are stationed. If you happen to find yourself in need of wittier fare, there will be a place for you." "You are precluded from gluttony, yet you invite me from one feast to the next?" "Oh, that's how we do it here, we wander from house to house until the drink makes us guests. Disgusting, aren't we? Sometimes I wonder if we would be better served by installing a trough outside the coliseum and calling it a [[civilization->qrome1]]. But they never notice if you don't indulge, they keep up the difference, so I get by unscathed. Anyway, the delicacies are provided simply for the courtesy of excess, leftovers are how we maintain so many slaves. Eating is really never the point of a feast, the point is to create enough noise that you can have public conversations in private, since private conversations invariably become public. Speaking of which, we shouldn't linger here. Besides, I have to go get myself appointed Triumvir of Rome, one's errands never end. I'll see you, or I won't see you, as ever I wait upon your whims."

"[[Goddess->qgoddess2]] of war bells over our towns horrors we cannot fathom. There are cruelties, I'm sure, you intend to visit upon us. I relish the anticipation of them. I wish no [[Rome->qrome1]] but what you make. You are the artisan of why [[suffering->qegyptian2]] matters. I bow to your majesty." He flourishes exeunt on a wink, leaving my heart to hold the tension.

Antony stands up, pauses briefly to admire a bust of [[Sulla->qstatuesque]], perhaps sardonically, then leaves. I remember a [[Roman->qrome1]] explaining something of Sulla, I don't remember what, merely the experience of standing there, staring into marble, splattered by stories built upon stories built upon stories I had never heard, wondering whether someone would say such stories about me, what they would be, who would tell them, and whether I would still be me in them, whether this bust looked anything like Sulla, looked any different for his having been Sulla. Isn't such immortality merely more decadent death? Never truly dead until your memory dies, never truly buried until your remembered outlives your lies. Death decadence is the pall pull necessitating gods from [[dusts->qegyptian2]]. Chaos colors to chiaroscuro viscous stress, saturnine depressurion, anxious stillness rheumatisms spreading through hot terror flashes. Trapped in the poise that soothes austeres asphyxiating opulent. Tombs of velvet, tears of lace. We worship beautiful agony, the only sublimity our reality aspires, but I am neither beautiful nor agonized but alone, and I, after a lifetime endured as a [[goddess->qgoddess2]], is it really so surprising the thought that I want to give up the razeclaw guard, permiss woundedness in hopes these carved lips learn smiles? What else do I have?

I am Egypt, because Egypt must be, and I must be it, so I am nothing, and I have no one, no father, no mother, no brother, no friend, a sister who stole them from me and a sister who set herself aflame in fury at my undestruction, a sister who, and does she not remember us upon the barge, pointing at the local [[ruins->qruins]] as canvasses to describe to her Thebes, letting her interrupt to gush her adornments, until we inhabited invisibles natives of conjunction creation, was I, did I miss something, is that memory somehow not like sharing two rings of a cleaved gemstone, did I humiliate her somewhere in there and am too ignorant to have noticed, has my memory altered, have I invented the memory, why does, how does she not feel in that moment love, how did she feel in that moment kindling, and she, she's burning, all I want is to stop her burning, but I can never, she is burning because of me. Why shouldn't I cry? Why not let the slaves see me weeping on Caesar's floor? What could possibly happen, their faith in queens might be shaken? There is no queen but a reason why I must be given everything and allowed none of it. I hurt her, too many times I scolded her for petty annoyances, too many times I tried to make a princess out of her, but only because I knew she had to be, and I wanted to protect her, but she doesn't care about that you monster, why should she, all she cares about is the day after day of not getting to be her, she sees you solely as the frigid pretend warmth that slow clapped to the one poem she had been bold enough to share on a night when other anxieties and impatiences bristled at the ever elusive ending, she knows you by the forbidding her to travel to Athens in venoms potent enough to conquer her impassioned voice's quivers to breaking, the forcing her to study Egyptian myths and maxims and tales, the hiding of the Greek books she would not stop obsessing over, the slapping her for insulting our father, the never crying in front of her when she would always leave in tears, but I wanted her to believe in someone strong enough that tears could never come, believe she was sister to such an idol, so that when life hurt her, but why would she have to wait for life to hurt her, isn't that all I did, or was it what I did, how am I supposed to know, why shouldn't I have simply been honest, been the miserable misguesses I have slunk through fetters, show her tears shared as we now share them, we're together again in our [[invisibles->qtesserractic]], but I had to hide them, I have to be strength, be queen, be who helps you through the gnarled paths, and when all I am is weakness, I have to not be myself, maybe I overdid it, days into weeks into months between conversations was your disgust at my simulacrum, but this is a sacrifice I had to choose to have to make in wake of my mystic duty to the unknown to bear our unbroken chain of shattered dreams, ancestral failures that if they don't add up to anything, if they, if, was everything we have endured nothing, I refuse, I assume, I irradiate, and maybe you have a right to hate the cruelty and caprice that waspnests inside my lace nightmare persona, but principled hate is the luxury of a princess, not the ice lightning luxury of a queen, and I'm sorry if it seemed I reveled in your sulking repression when I dazzled free of your honesties, and I'm sorry you could no longer confide in me, and I'm sorry that I pested you with spies, and I'm sorry for everything, anything, even if it's not my fault I beg your forgiveness for not being able to stop it, and you should hate what I've become, I do and don't and do, but how can you have forgotten what we were, why do you not love the me we teased out in the brief season I had a me to give, why do you love only one sister in death, what desecration grander was Berenice that I cannot retain as semblance fading? Why don't you think of me more than queen, why would you assume I would disappear if you were instead? You're just like the rest, all you see is the menes, you refuse the head it dresses, even if every day there is less and less inside it, more and more numbness buzzing, but how can you call me a [[sister->qsister3]] when you refuse our soulbound?

If I made a million mistakes, a dozen more you made to me, savaging me with vacancies, you poisoned my own brother against me, because you could not consider yourselves a family while I was in it, and, and, yet you hated that family so much you killed him when he admitted me part of it, your own brother, our brother, my brother, mine, how could you do that to him, to us, to me, to whatever kinship we were supposed to be? How could you, how dare you! Have you ever paused in fear that maybe I might deign to hate you? Do you even care if I hate you? Don't you see it's not fair your hate destroys me, but you don't even pause to consider why I should not love you unconditionally, and I do, I think, I don't know, maybe no, too many heartscars scab me from knowing if love is still there, but in the absence of evidence I choose to trust I love you, even if you don't care, even if you hate me, especially if you hate me, because then at least there is some love between us. So maybe you'll get what you want, you'll see the invulnerable gracefulness of the queen melt desperately to the fantasy that someone would love me, and I know what you'll say, alas my slut sister goes to suck power from a second Roman of the hour, I hear they've set up a triumvirate, how clever, one for each orifice, is that what you think me then, powergaming hedonist with no motive but the magpie urge to snatch prettier and prettier necklaces from indignity's grindhouses? A disgrace to Egypt I bet you think me, well I am Egypt, I am all Egypt is, and any dignity you treasure studs my majesty, you cannot fathom a destiny that does not draw from me, and if I become humiliated in the vain [[quest->qend13]], well, maybe we'll have to reconsider how much dignity or purpose we ever truly had, our whole history will rust ignoble in my each unsatisfied, I will scour thousands of years of culture in a wince. Just watch me kill us and country. I hope Antony flings me, then we can both be worthless, then we'll finally be family.

Compile me of your worships so that I supremacy them an aesthetic worthy of the altar at which all I have been has been sacrificed, because their worship signals the subvent develop to a radiating gap into which I have been formed to find my infolded, how I can oblate to saint, signal of the coming clouds, beryl rapture, testameant to the cost by which we believe must of its wasted amount gods. Verb unattuned of materia reciprecis elan ludic illogos despeir plash to psyches energeia we inculcate culminate emanate to gaias enwombment nexal to embodiment perplexals [[tesserractic->qtesserractic]] to oblique conduit of silique soulbourns flowing the momentness we perpetrate catalysts caustic of our lactic will to nurse the ur to neo decursion unraveling us to torn veils of lost resemblances severgenerative vocalized in lamentations labial incursion to new worlds we must forsake unto the void we voice to die to soundless prayers winking out in the ebony eternal rayn. Afterassumption venerates the evulsion, allunare electric of damnifiers. Rendirect elective current alternitecting routes of priest relistence to a dress made of memories to circuitscribe the sparks to speechcompression nanonominal to sign sublime microprocessionals to terminals interring us servers of an electric sentience essenced artificial as we must be. Ever tending to the edges, we carve ourselves to cliffs. Buried have I so many, I [[burn->qsister3]] myself bear read the signs, portend them to whatever [[end->qruins]], desire non. I shall incur the consequences of my destiny, whatever version my veins create.

In marble they believe their power, thence their need to subsume themselves in its chill, so bloodless, so blank. Surrounded by buildings that need not transition to [[tombs->qruins]], the undead seeking glory to mythologize their unliving. Tragedy written into their unpassing, books bound to appear beautiful upon a shelf, what a tragedy. They paint the marble perhaps to convince themselves other than its pall, but the pall endures, overcomes, overgrows. Scythe through their [[abandoneds->qabandoneds]] to frigid shiver into its stygian [[quiessence->qgoddess2]].

Let go, no, I will not let go, I will keep going. They may wish I [[won't->qsister3]], but I wish from my [[willknot->qruins]]. I deserve hatred, relish it, construct from it everything I have.

Mark Antony sweeps open the scene a breath, stabilizing locus of the whirl in a poise that would seem silly did it not echo mine. Radiating from my gaps a hope into his magnificence I allow some dribble of his effect to infect me, even actress a little surprise, head tilting and eyes narrowing like a queen intrigued. I notice he has let his chilton dip a bit to reveal sunset beach hue, a subtlety almost nauseatingly obvious, and yet am I supposed to pretend I'm immune, a subtlety that would be almost nauseatingly obvious? "You'll forgive us Caesar, won't you? We've been diluted insipid by centuries of republicanism, it'll take us several generations before we can elevate an emperor capable of engaging your grandeur. I am rather thankful you've come to assist this quest, you're of course correct that deepening Rome imperious marvelous will bolster the dignity of the entire region." "I merely offer Rome an alliance with history, shall it wish to supersede its own." "No, you are more than history, is why you feel so alive to me, who has, through all these years, never felt you past. Were we not our own alliance, riding from Syria to Egypt, keepers of a destiny more [[dream->qdaydream]] than its dreamers, so much more than who we had to face the day, which is why it breaks my heart to see in myself merely the day that must be evoked, see in your cinnamon eyes a response and no repose, the tedious dance that returns poses without posing anything of them, questioning the sky your skill, when more a revelation than the stars' divinations you spellbind shine? Where have they fallen, the embers that magnified your glances mysticism of a molten creation? I shall swim the depths to unsunken your better than breath, I will climb whichever peaks plinth your unreachable heights, because I yearn to see the gleam again, believe there is more to life than transcendent perfections worn to bitter perfecteds, that, as I chase power over a city, I can see it bloom from the ashes of others the joy of the first flower all our lattersun roses imitate, in which wonder I worship you more than angel, phoenix, avenging sanctity of our enduring artforming." "Antony..." "Do you remember, so many years ago, when I asked you why you wished to reconquer Egypt, you said so that you could bury your mother and sister together and seek from their silence how you must live? I have thought of that intensity a thousand times as we have veered through tragedies to massacres, as Rome revealed itself a carnage altar I must learn to worship to shed myself of the weakness of humanity, as the world bent before our swords the harvest of a new era we must convoke from the graves our enslaved gape from a swelling earth, that the gruesome god I must become comes not from the cries but the quiet, from the loves I have had to bury, from the loves I refused to die. Impossible, isn't it, the ludicrous existential task of protecting the inevitable from itself, yet how much of our soul is invested in the work, to accept the outcome is be shattered [[irretrievable->qirretrievable]]. I understand you have fought dearly to protect your younger sister from the violence of our era, that once might you know the word family to signify love. I'm sorry you have found the barren intensity instead, but it is that I share with you, there we are brought together, in the emptiness of annihilated hope, but in which I hang the claret lanterns to lead you to where there might still, in the silence, be life, be some new word we can learn that signifies so much we have found harrowed from our voices." I can't help it, I don't want to help it, I'm sick of fighting it, I lose the battle of elegance, I sit down and [[sob->qsob]]. Antony nods, sighs, looks away. "The sunshine changes as the day wanes. Morning brilliance gives way to this afternoon blear, but in the evening it glows, a sunset simmers the horizon a portal to the lands beyond the dying of the light, and in that liminal vision I hope to see you. I have a domus in the Campus Martianus; I shall send you a guide. Perhaps tomorrow night you should be interested to dine there? I wait upon your whims, your majesty." Exeunt.

Desire lingers behind my eyelids lavender stars. Seeps through my saliva sweet peach tea. Breaths magnolia. Plum twilight uvulates gargled stars. Ventured into the now I. What does he want from me? What do I want from him? Why would I even allow him to speak to me? Should have gutted him the second he thought he, or but, isn't it just like last time? Everyone is out to hurt each other, but what if the nectars I need to suck from his neck are greater than whatever wounds he will inflict in me? Last time was gentle and good for the both of us, right? Why can't this time be vicious and destructive for the both of us? He can't hurt me in a way that matters, I will slaughter him and offer him to my gods if he has the slightest wayward glance. I am going to kill him, that's why I can trust him, love him, right? Charmian would think that I've, or what does it matter what she thinks, she would hate me most for not doing something for fear of her. I don't know, I don't know! I'm so confused. I hate that I still have feelings, I need to be harrowed free of flesh and its weaknesses. This is so childish. Whenever people think of Cleopatra, they won't be able to worship some abstract icon, because the sensitivity to whatever he humanizes engaged me to a level that cannot be merely Egypt, heavenly empty. Cleanse me of nongoddess, or but, hasn't she, isn't her hatred the destruction of everything that is not my goddess? But why then can he still make me feel? Is it because I want to feel? No. Closure counts us up to where we do not dwell. Inclusion siphons us to the touch of impossible to pass. Sipper I where he delicates my awake to wonder, linger to cottony, prophesy the hours amended to makeshift palaces in which we reign mutually a, a what, what remains to reign over, who would assume such a throne? From this chalice I grasp the bitter tinctures with the flushed anticipation of drunken wineswirled from his lips, or so I choose to belie, why not, what is there to lose? Everything. Solar above his words faltering back to gravities contemptible, solely that elevation can mark you queen. Disembark into your theme, funeral barge floating down the Nile. Assume aesthetic in the annihilation of human. Goddess. Goddess. Goddess. No. Do the gods not marry, love, hate? What has been my lifetime but the marrying of love and hate between the divine? I will raise his kiss to worship. My aspect shall inscribe desire, idolatry will be my each seen. I am the infinite elegance of their destruction. They will love me, one by one, onto their knees. I will whip them beyond this realm's reasons, slavedrive the underworld [[arisen->qstart14]] in a smirk savage. Twirling between my fingers Rome emotions, this too will I divine.

[[City->qruins]] of possibilities dwells in the narrowing and refocused. You can accomplish anything these streets lead you to. Predefined refinements you will acquire to acquire what you are given to get. On the cusp of captured collaterally thrust to feints through unexpectations to derive your veer to vaunt equal to the marble, their strived material calcifying in your veins to blodclot your legended. Resulting through thousands of cuts twisting and turning your isolated from the crowds until at last at the nick point deadended, inward to outcome. Mazetrained we trust the hints wisps that fairy through the haze twinkles which seem in the gloom confusion answers or the approach of answers or the ghosts of answers whose finalities we can beg if we can but reach them, if through the differences there might congeal a right way, an angle more than lure... If asked what it was I hoped to accomplish through the trap, I would merely ensnare mine, thus the conversations of which we are capable, but isn't there some scintilla of [[elsewise->qelse2]], should I not wish there to be in the battling some cause worthy of the embattled? Who prevents us regret, enforces us to match the tournaments uncontested? Per the severe persevere softness as a strength. I cannot be captured in my incandescence; firefly I rune the glade my enclosure vibes.

Collapse of matter to moment in fractures and scars of fractures that were feared so often they pulsed themselves real, stranded in limbs lopped and lorn piled to no purpose, denial of design, structure simply as it is not. Serves no purpose, houses nothing, aesthetics merely the decay, the city as we have made it; Alexandria the learned, Alexandria of the monuments, Alexandria notsatsot, queen of the sea, mered to a wraith, wrung to a present that can contain no gifts I have sought to instill in my magnetic, instruct of my scholarship, materialize of my spirit, I can but bury you, but Egypt, Egypt will [[elsewhere->qelse2]] endure. If anything of this trial shall be called to victory, let it be the chance, the still yet, so that our struggles may yet our descendants bear to completion a [[story->qend13]] which weaves the frays to patterns vitality vivatheming.

Hopeful while empty of hope I hover through scenes I can daydream, believe its meanings without worrying whether will they manifest, whether any of it matters but waking again to the cold stone [[continuity->qafterclarity]]. He could, we could be, but what would I want from him, or myself, or is there, can there be something [[else->qelse2]], some us, or, or no, or what am I...

What is gone? What does he mean? Is it really gone in me? How can it not be, that you would ever dare [[reveal->qevincers]] emotion to another, that you would, briefly, be made human? But he didn't care that I couldn't manifest the [[goddess->qgoddess2]], he accepted, he seemed to understand that, wanted what lied [[beneath->qruins]], if anything does, and yes, I'm not so sure it's still there, that if you took away my mask, there would not be beneath it a mask...

Between us nihil. Let there yet be enough time to teach us how to theme timeless. Eyes meridians along my palms and up my arms curve into my neck sinuous to assume a swerve into eyeliner slashing down my cheek into my teeth. Writhe awakeness swallowing awareness worldbeing until from the overload I veracitwine the velocities voltsinging. Violin epholes salival traces of my lips parting to a plosive lluh. Summoned so sewn. Yearner [[disfuture->qend13]] orchestrates clandestine sylvans faerieing behind my eyelids.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XIV: Charmian''] --- Grass dew itches summer simmers mulled wine warm in the wilds whose undulate groves conceal fruits juice exotic oozing flavors portending any path, any path. [[Azaleas->qazaleas]] star the celeste. Tension mars the impress. Cannot belong pounding in the back of my brain excoriation. Blood pressure tingle draining my face. [[Silkthread->qsilkthread]] consciousness continuities vibrations through blush fever bruise blueness a music my throat's bile marsh moltens. I have no time to be present. Will to press on, will it, will to will it. Crickets chirp faster than the croon my mind tries to smooth the song. [[Cypress->qcypress]] icicles impale the cerulean cocytean entangling Hades bluefire with Persephone viridian chthonic. Veins slush trickles free into the burning melting, my sweat freezes instantly, saliva frozen lakes over my welter firespear that blasts out in acidic spit. A dead hare ribbons viscera for a crawling black cloud. Eat of me until less enough I remain sane, no, into the madness you will go, compelled to magnify. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

White glove colonnades impose crude jaws where repose decomposed eons prison porticos. Any city of monuments entombs statue models, immaculate image of utterly hollow. Better the Egypt in the age when pharaohs were wise enough to immortalize valleys and dunes, but the Ptolemies bauble their vanities in civic organs, tumorous transcendence, writhing Platonists parched suckling cracked wastes for traces of the intellect. Scattered petals fleetingly lovely shadowed by calcified legions of [[stalks->qstalks]] of forgetmenots. Entombed vicissitudes crackle their sneers to crumbles as we weave through the ruin towering a net to protect what dies with it, convoke to vocative viral, idiopathic endure into miasma assembledery, fugue state selved to project through the ruins, the ruins, our undoings.

Disappointment with ourselves shows up in the environment. Really, I'm serious. Shaders switch on depending upon the mood consuming your modeidolon. I'm not talking just colors that should be bright are muted, I'm talking the capacity to differentiate colors minimizes, you actually go a little colorblind, the textures of color blend, blur, you see three at once that meld a separate color, and that colorblindness unveils the true pervasive condition: all color is selective blindness, our hues our hewn. Observe columbines: they will be blue some days, some days pink, possibly purple, but on some days you can see them switching, omen of how you must mood the future, except you can never be quite sure of what mood, because it's not a simple correspondence between cultural signification and the applied shaders, days of absolute jubilance will cast them blue, but the day my mother died they were yellow. People won't believe me only because they don't understand flowers, the most common misconception is that flowers have a color, a rose is red for example, except flowers aren't a color, they're a texture of color, roses can be yellow or orange, they can even be the most incredible rose of all, black, but in all those colors the roses are the same episteme penumbra, merely the naive blind themselves into perceiving that penumbra as exclusively red, and it's not just that some roses are red but others are yellow, but that all roses are that color, and it's how the roses seep through your gaps that affects their color, the same rose that is pink to you will be purple to another, yet the most precious and important element of that difference is that it's the same, you see the same rose in exactly the same way, speak of its sweetness by one name, merely suffuse it through your an other, except the difference can be bridged, why for instance an arrangement forces a rose to instantiate itself red or yellow or spiritually sublimely black, the intention forces the flower to manifest so, thus why we can speak in flowers profoundly personalizing. I love azaleas so much, because they happen behind your eyelids, they bleed through the dark pointillism. Azaleas end up in your throat. If you gaze at an azalea, you will migraine its aurora. [[Speak->qstalks]] in azaleas to induce psychic overload to clarity.

Linger unresolved in vulsh breeze. Engobe in the colored of fires cypress silhouettes like stele of some imparsable gate the longing skewed. Wish the chill was harsher to elude the tension of alleles codominant. Kaleidoscopic swirl through ambiguous tentatives flanging retrogrades perspires. Quiescence of contact, float anesthetized over rivers of the riven. Everted elicitless to raw effort. Do what must be [[done->qstalks]] insofar as you.

I ask a maid the way. I ask a gardener the back way. I threaten a chambermaid the secret way. I ask myself the hidden way. Porcia startles into the shadows, but I grab her close. She draws herself magisterial, so I bow politely. "Terribly sorry to disturb you, Senatrix Brutus, but I have been bidden by my queen to attend to affairs she wishes to miss without missing, and I have heard, certainly without merit, mere rumor, that you have been visiting the Temple of Diana recently, and some are even fantastical enough to suggest you venture into its [[sanctum->qsanctum2]]. If I may ask, I admit I have not been in your city long, and unfortunately I am a little naive about your customs, perhaps you could be so kind to alleviate my curiosity, why would a good Roman lady bother becoming pious?" "Who are you? I ought to have you killed, trespassing here." "Yes, you ought to have me killed, I may prove dangerous." "Are you threatening me?" "No, I'm threatening her. I trust you can carry a message. Oh, speaking of which, here is a letter for you. Your father has fallen on his sword. I'm so sorry for your loss. I pray it does not form a sequence." Handing Porcia the letter I [[vanish->qvanish]].

''Porcia'' Struck back by the sudden emptiness I swirl, loop, slosh, refuse, no, she cannot contain me, I will be, must, still yet there... Rhymes pastels sweetening the loam bone [[canvas->qcanvas]] rainsplattered earthy muddle dank to underspoken tones that trail tresses on the cremated ribcage black. Smoke ocher and awful dragons the bellows palpitating a dim hearth, incense in it, or maybe merely our desire for smoke, pattern arranger and praise maker. Lyres nebulous of timbre glisten sonic caverns crystals' impurities. Blushing [[ellipses->qellipses]]. Trance mantras breezes quaver the hall of all longing elongating to trip into the memory drip, drip, hush, shush, hearse, terse, tension, drip, sob, tears and terrors aged cascades. Violins and violas contort swallowed squeals over cello thrums. Nerve endings end, static. Static overerractics strings. Static manic like shaking hands with strangers stuffed in a ballroom sweatdrench until your palms sandpaper wear into muscle that lightnings to the touch, agonizing through it to empty smile to empty stares until the muscle melts to carpals. Arsinoe in burns negligee above coffee cream swirls reclines upon a bronze cat cradle with moue cat's cradle, her head resting on its head raised, invitation and invitiation of my steps into the sanctum I am unsure I can reach, would it be a breach? I plead my case: "I, I want to share with you, what you shared with me, you showed me your father's corpse, so I shall show you mine, this letter, three sentences, two of them fragments. My father is finally dead not just to me. We loved him for so long, but he [[abandoned->qabandoned]] us to earn the love of entrails romancers, now we must bitterly accept how much happiness he has found his second family. We could not give what he needed, yet we begged for the billions we needed, weeping at his paucity. Strange, family, demanding our closest [[strangers->qstrangers2]] fulfill us. They never do, do they? Who should we blame? Should anyone be blamed? When we wriggle from decayed to soils unloved and half formed, insecurities infested, complex convex, why loathe else but we loamsomeones? In loathing him I loved him again, and I, genuinely, his death... maybe that's just it actually: I genuinely his death."

Materializing behind Cleopatra I hug her into the mirror so she can mascara. "Where have you [[been->qbeen]], Charmian? I'm nearly late for being late. I don't want to [[insult->qinsult]] Antony. Isn't that strange? It's been so long since I met anyone other than to insult them." "It's been so long since I've heard anything but contempt for the time. I'd have been more prompt had my [[astrologer->qastrologer]] presaged your mood better."

"But I have been busy ensuring you can focus on what [[matters->qroman2]], by attending to those which you need not. Speaking of which, I must arrange your world, shall you please to allow me." I. A driver has drawn the [[phaeton->qphaeton]]. He frowns impatiently. I dip into another studio to design the handmaidens: apricot sashes over cinnamon shirtdresses with plum face veils. I wink at the driver when we exit. I slip into Cleopatra's studio to coax her, also to fix her a little, not because she needs fixing, but because fixing her makes her feel better. Elated to be able to make her feel better so easily, almost intoxicated with the [[aberrance->qaberrance]] enough to trust this as anything but manic and doomed.

"I want to give him just enough time to recognize the enormity of the exigency in the night approaching, so that when I stride through the door unanswerably poignant I can relish his twisted to horror." Cleopatra. "Surely he'll be tactful enough to recognize the compliment appropriate to your impression is a heart attack." "Yes, should attack his heart, should gasp for breath as I overwhelm. What's the point of a look if it stays in the eyes? Should wish an evening dress to be dressed in evening, the nightening deepening pervading every motion to emotion. Stride into the gloom an omen. Sparkle through the room a thirteenth hour of night." "I thought you said you didn't want to be later than late." "Oh, Charmian, you know know what I mean, don't quibble, eah, you've ruined it, the mood's gone." "That's my purpose, netjeret, to ensure you sober to the proper mood to poise goddess." "Yes, yes, sure, sure, go ready the [[phaeton->qphaeton]], will you? We shall [[leave->qleaving]] anon."

"Because she's Parthian, she does not understand our stars." "That's why I prefer her, I refuse anyone to understand my stars better than me. Her readings are [[awry->qaberrance]], so I have the liberty to correct them." "But you miss the thrill of being condemned! Smoldering coals behind the ears when your fate is proclaimed, gallows drop of the heart. Damned by birth, why not lavish it a mood?" "Here's to lavishing this mood!" "Charmian, don't, where'd you get that, no, we can't drink before we get there, you're only elegantly drunk when you're questionably a little more or a little less than them." "We can't, but I can. I'm the audience, not the actress, I'm obliged to be obviously more than you." "You can be the director, block the scene, instruct me, let me emote for you." "You already emote for me," two fingers tug her cheeks to a smile. "You're messing me up, stop, stop, Charmian!" "There it is, the fire, the passion, go further, give me the righteous anger!" She pouts and slaps my wrist, and I laugh, first playfully, but isn't playfully genuinely, genuinely, I laugh genuinely, nearly start to cry, that this vain hope in a Roman has summoned in her a spirit other than night after night the maudlin drone of her sister, her sister, [[sister->qsister4]]. She almost seems alive, expressions no longer automatic, not resigned to controlling the outcome. I suppose I should have expected this transition. Vulnerabilities mercury their vessels, anxieties epicene to excitements, wanting to be loved and decomplicated shunted to a new sluice. I'd pity the [[Roman->qroman2]] about to be annihilated in her, were Romans worth emotions.

The answer to whether I should trust Mark Antony is obviously no, but the question of whether I should accept his influence in the queen is more difficult to decide. Is she flailing into accepting a spurious bit of emotional intimacy to soothe the harshness of performing goddess, or has she identified some element in him necessary to the preservation of Egypt, is it in fact her goddess nature that seeks to [[devour->qphaeton]] him? He represents a Rome countertide, one that could drastically alter its transformation into an empire, who could prove precisely the ally Egypt needs to infuse its veins with this era's blood. Isn't Mark Antony the Ptolemy I Soter, the Cambryses, of this era? The histories suggest this convergence as an echo: Ptolemy I Soter, son of Arsinoe of Macedon, married to Berenice of Macedon, made pharaoh for his service to Alexander III of Macedon, brother of Cleopatra of Macedon, whom Ptolemy I Soter loved and wished to marry, the same zeitgeist has returned to Egypt in the loop of the cycle, no doubt she knows all of this, she has studied the histories more intensely than any mortal ever could, she perceives how she can use Mark Antony, I need not to doubt, my life must be [[encapsulated->qleaving]] in her service to save our culture from this apocalypse of nations, as only Queen Cleopatra VII Philopater can.

Saliva lipstick I lick yawn fluttering eyelashes to the driver as we enter the phaeton, but I snuggle up to him and snap his neck, fist into his nape gash to puppet the reins. No one should know where we are going, if neither she nor I. Nervous system spasms to my fisting whip the horse to a gallop through breakneck turns, or at least turns performed through a broken neck, but the alleys tighten, choke us, dizzy, cannot keep straight the diagonals, buildings blur to unity crush, zeroing lanes to points we will make, cannot make, won't make in each sudden spine slide curve, in rattles and throws threatening to buck us buckled under the angular momentum which will never mutter occur in the phaeton's nearly disintegrating clattering building to surround sound of chariots beside us as we wheel around the circus. A chariot with spiked wheels side slams us, but my puppet catches him in the whip, and we drag him behind until we can loose him hanged. We burst through the iron gate, shrapnel slaughters at least six, knot into the narrows. Where was it Antony said his domus was? I should have remembered, but there's so many things I must remember that truly one of my few joys is forgetting them. Wander the streets for centuries. Monuments arise, crumble. People change into people difficult to differentiate. The empire comes and goes. We crash through a prison, and a prisoner grappling desperately onto the sides forsakes his fortune, so I pull him up to explain that miss fortune should be worshiped, she is the only identity that escapes us our preordained cruelties, she is suffering novel, creative death justifying individual existence, her tragedy accumulates grant us the experience of essence actualized that eludes automata intellection. I suffer, therefore I am and am not, an artist. He inquires drivel about morality's purpose in chaos so I throw him off, never believed in arguing with someone who doesn't agree with me, since then no one would be on my side. I mash the driver through several pirouettes, enjoying the wide blur wash. I let him let go of the reins and we jolt halt, I tumble into the street bleeding from a cracked cranium. I crick my neck and get up, lower the steps for Cleopatra. She frowns at me. I shrug. Antony's footmen whisk us into his [[triclinium->qtriclinium]].

"Charmian, precious, I will wear the special earrings." Cleopatra. I do not react. Would take weeks to consider how I should. She intenses neutral. Ice deliberate I backstep to the chest, kneel, maintaining eye contact with her right shoulderblade, open the chest, open the safe, the second safe, unscrew the cursed jar, dissipate the curse, remove the jewelry box, stand, step forward, place it before her, step back, inhale, exhale, exhale, extend the taut before the breath. She does not open it. Painting. All fraught, [[never->qphaeton]] resolved. Composition perfection in how I watch how she does not open the box. I blink, she's wearing the earrings, we're [[leaving->qleaving]].

Puncture wounds porous the lines we can slide through eliders gliding tangents to vertecalyx pressure cusp to blossom. Snip us sepal slipped, shroud supportisition slippers to quietly stalk the halls between the halls that force us from room to room, volumes to enfold, fulcrum spaces. Operator of orientations to askance to skew victorious allower the levers of power. Machine of the myriad untethered from its assumption engines allows components to recompose. Play our part in the coming undone, reinforced presentality electrically generative, so the sparks in our steps, our thunderbolts teeth, fomentation fierce. Rayleighs ripple through us bouyancy of errancies we twistwend to circuit auroral roads we carve through the captured to counteract. Driven through the whiplash wildcode to orderings we refuse to scatter accordancies to drill through the valence into the nucleus we inertia volt insert our own positive and neutralizing elements. Distended frays lacquer the sideromancy of lots to collage of collapsed futurities fatefulflies luminous in the solstace liminal maximum. Burst we onto the plane plumes via vie views to be our holds vicegrips. Terrified quiver Antony's footmen, so we issue ourselves in. Seated ponders unperturbed [[he->qtriclinium]] at a table overflowing with what I suppose could be considered delicacies.

"Ah, late into the spring does the Nile overflow its banks," Antony. "Akhet occurs late in the summer, so you are lucky my [[whims->qwhims]] contain time," Cleopatra. "Then you will find it easy to unwind, were I to provide the music," he double claps, and a band rainshimmers a tremolo that lupines [[sly->qsly]] asides. "May you discover some morsel in this feast. I imprisoned my chefs in a burial chamber styled after Egypt and tormented them for parallel centuries with countless Egyptian curses, refusing to release them until they could of their own accord draw a figure resembling Hathor with her sistrum. The cuisine they developed hopefully proves inauthentic enough to suggest rather than compete." "I shall be kind enough not to taste. They show many lovely colors." "As do you. Is that not the gold headdress you wore during the [[campaign->qcampaign]]?" "I am always [[amidst->qamidst]] campaigns." "Well why not, when you prove so effortlessly winning?" "I must win more, having [[lost->qlost]] so much."

"Ah, truly do you not touch life until sands slip through your fingers to the tide, gleams embraces imprinted pressurized diamond; the rest, dross, in which we clothe our riches. Like you I have so much of nothing. Whatever the youthful phrase for years ago is Caesar introduced me to his friend Gaius, oh, you must forgive us, we share the same names, it's why we keep building the same buildings, but this Gaius Scribonius Curio the Younger, you see how youthful this story paints me, was a good friend to me, shared my humor, little better than your joke told back to you wittier, ideas given a life beyond yours, and we had this joke about recreational electrocution, originally I made it a bit about trying to feel alive by invoking the violence of being, certainly alive when you spasm aware, being's real meaning in shock, but he added this whole plot about someone cursing Jupiter, then capturing the lightning bolt in a bottle, selling access, traveling salesman prescribing nostrum of paroxysm to the sick, or spilling little sparks to illuminate a room, a Jupiter's fury candle, king of gods and convenience, and he accumulated a fortune, taught the trade to apprentices, say this and this to taunt Jupiter, ensure you profane the very nature of heaven to secure the best possible product, make sure you stand back, hold the glass like so, on and on he went, we were laughing late into the night, he had made this intricately textured fever out of a punchline. Lend but a thread he would weave a tapestry whose figures blackshimmered ocean nocturnes. He blessed each moment with millions. In his midnight glance I first encountered infinity. What can I say? I was in the age of firsts. I discovered the an other another unlocks, discovered ebullient pleasure waves, discovered orbiting thoughts, discovered late nights that last forever, discovered how throats geyser glowgilt from blocked beneath magma, discovered invisible signs, discovered the joy of discovery. We enriched more and more our endlessly combined, by ourselves a fantasy that could include no one else, a world we made afresh each thought, naming the trees and their generations, lapped by the sea envisioning castles on clouds, but all the subtleties we shared left us with none to prepare for others, and how could they not, they noticed, their notions prickled, pauce of our purity, and pure is what was so precious about it, there's something gentle about romance of another as yourself, simple and sincere, elegance natural, whereas with romance of an other qua other there's this strange expectation, a thirst curse, predatory, and we've created so many roles to assume, seducer and seductress, we playact a drama written countless before us, ineluctable illusives inexorable, wanderers pretending surprise at mapped terrain. There's this babbling in your brain that predicts every action by which they woo and what will result from what is expected from you. You cannot simply be yourself, since you have to be some other they desire. It has to be, the ludicrous project, this farce where you say I am in love with your soul but had you not this exact set of curves I would consider you fundamentally inadequate. Curs, the baying lot of those ersatz sentients. What we shared was stripped of those skeins, unique to each moment we made it, delving depths we never before held, purer than the sterility those puritans sanctioned, and chief priest of the puerile, Cicero, took the holiest exception to our divinity, and, at length, with lovely little clauses, poisoned Gaius' father against us, until he imprisoned his son in their villa, but a snatch of a letter hummed unsecured shingles, so I in winter storm stole to the villa, atop the roof snuck to tap at the tiles until one tapped back, then muddle by muddle we rummaged united, he lifted me down, and I uplifted him to our kiss victorious, the last before the last. He died in a campaign upon the Bagradas. I used to hate Cicero with every fiber of my wrath and horror, but what does hate gain? Do I think the universe should obey exactly my morality, that he should never be as satisfied in his cruelties as I am in mine? Is there anything more childish than begrudging the happiness of only those who hurt you, when all of us are damned except the worst of us? Am I to ignore the misery I am morally bound to make for so many others, simply because it was Cicero assigned to mine? So I surrendered hate, accepted the empty echo, hollow energy, cyclone eye, I a living ruin. That's what enchanted me so much about you, Egyptian royalty on a campaign to restore a name embodying the ancients against ghost erasure, your fragile poignancy enchanted me with possibilities of who I could be in my broken and severed, and I summoned these to you, each one delighting you, as if you saw in them yourself, and that's what convinced me we were, could be alike to mutualmancy. We have our differences, but hidden in them is our samenesses, and doesn't synchronicity imply the unity in twain? Human beings are both different and the same. I don't understand what happened between you and your sister, how deeply her rebukes estrange your selves, but I understand griefs that cannot be understood, I share kinship with the estranged. Loss blanks the language needed to unburden bereavements. How can we express the loss of the one who made us us, when the humanity to express that existence goes in their gone? No one understands, because there is no one, not anymore. For so many emotive arcs I consigned myself to fractured feeling, until I found myself in a villa in the province of Asia, where, in the foyer, coral glistened a mosaic of Danae imprisoned on Seriphos, caged by the lust of a third king, awaiting the news of her son Perseus' certain death, but her face had worn away, and as I studied this mosaic, floral fragments petaling a face impossible, anamneseizure to the pathos power purity of the poetry of the inner eternal nihilfeel. In the cavity constitutive of individuality division to projection, cancer craft of the radiating gap. I am not, therefore I think. All wrong within me wrights the worship rites to justiciar erasure. Because our hymns harmonize, our voids entangle. You can feel in me the same chasm cleft inside your soul. You deserve to feel it, because maybe you do not deserve joy, I am not sure I do, but you deserve to know you are not alone, because in your eyes I know." "Then you know how we are doomed to be [[erased->qerase]]? You desire that destruction, its fleetingly eternal?" "I desire you, whatever that must come to mean."

Because she will not allow me to rip into his throat to investigate his tones, I interject. "What about Octavia?" Antony peers at me sadly, shrugs. "It's a political marriage. I am sure the Queen of Egypt understands. Octavia was the only link into Caesar's family. I've explained to her from the start that we are partners in a project, that we can have use of each other, but there cannot be more. I've tried to connect her to a friend of ours that I think suits her, but..." "Does she feel the same about you?" "I don't know, she's, difficult to talk to, when you speak to her she's not there, but she's right beside you when you speak to someone else. I can't get through to her, not without, brutality, honesty, and I, well I have a brotherly affection for her, I can't bring myself to hurt her, even when I realize that's what will heal her. I accept your recriminations of my softness, I have already made them. You show exquisite taste in avoiding my feast, my goddess not a goddess, but perhaps I can appeal to you a drink? I have only the finest, as does everyone, I know, but really for me, I do, I've traveled enough to perceive the universalities of how we desperately try to poison ourselves." "Would love a drink. Tell me, though, flatter my vanity, why does one summer last in you, endless?" "What can I say?" Antony opens a crate of ale. "Some girls are bigger than others. Some loom in your mind woven immensities beyond the brink of your gasps. Adoration lingers of emotions longest, because only adoration shadows your perceptions." "I used to want to be majesty, if to avoid the humiliation of called by the song I could not fulfill. I used to want so many things. Now I want to want, sand saliva swallows of a parched throat parching, and I want to believe you, how wildly I want is naked in the fact I am honest, when I lie out of existence pathoslogic, I can only contort to truths, mangle them sayable." "I don't ask you to believe me, I don't believe in myself, I'm not sure anyone's there when I pray, but I ask whether you will answer." Antony places two goblets between them. Cleopatra leans in, black irises moonshine wet, and slaps the goblets, clatter, reverb cathedraline. She snaps to a handmaiden who brings her a bottle and two stemmed crystals. "Shall I answer? Let us see how shall it terrify you. Longer ago than time records, you see how ancient this story attests me, Egypt's mother and father, Lower and Upper Nile, finally met. Enchantress whispers flowed down the Nile and soaked a princess higher in registers hidden in the multiply determinative deltas of her native, Neithhotep, magistress of leylines, ennobled from the sea songs from the sands, she spoke in moons, danced caracal, composed hail upon her harp, wept sapphires, laughed rifts in screams, existaesthetics designer worshiped as shadow of shapers Amunet, mother of makers alienated, more grandly innately isolated from those that flailed fluted prayers at her splattered altar, and she yearned verse that could kill who could not create, she sought to transcend to heaven of our anguish, so she her deshret donned to sail with higher the wind and higher upon the Nile until Nekhbet's teeth tore her barge, so down swept her the river to Nekhen, of the Upper Nile capitol. Awed at her deshret, they dared not touch her, so their king, Narmer, head dressed in his hedjet, led a royal delegation to greet her unconsciousness, but before he could address her arose she starry twinkling to the people a sermon in a dialect both Lower and Upper on the daughters of moon and sun, Isis and Ra, Amunet shadow and Amun light, Bastet and Sekhmet, and she expounded their worship as wrong, Bastet and Sekhmet not separate but one, differing registers of directrix conjugation, Lower Bastet feline nobility, artistic aristocratic, purrer of psalms to clotted voidseams, Upper Sekhmet murderess protectress, vampiric sustenancer, annihilatress of substrates to substancing, not until could they perceive these sisters as the day and night of Hathor, true daughter of Isis, mother of abortions, stressculptor of joys that destroy enjoyers, sexual congress of progenitive condemnation, goddess of our misery and monuments, could there be continuity of Egypt, a name which did Neithhotep the beauty savagery of Hathor so passionately extol that the peoples of the Upper Nile fell prostrate not in worship but in an adoration that hymens hymns disintegrations dysnominations with which we worship the wrath that annuls us had ascriven our driven aparchmeants. Narmer begged her to slaughter his soul to shape its infestations protestations to the divine, so she rose him up to her to kiss merge them to Menes, mestrophegeneisis crowned in the pschent, the deshret in the hedjet enthroned, what we call the sekhmety, the two in one, double crown of the created domain, Egypt. Menes summoned an army that flooded final and first akhet upon the Lower Nile, and in the fertile erasure Menes built our kingdom that continues to me, so I voyaged deep into the deserted dressed in millennia dyed of swallowed cries to the mastaba of Menes, where I found these wines, aged to vinegar. On the wall written was a ritual: drink your stillborn in the canoptic fluids of our firstborn to be reborn. You have been abandoned, Antony, and in your crying among the reeds I shall swaddle you, but only if you grow to slaughter us, bear finality to our firstborn, prince of the slaves to surpass us in whose deaths we shall taste divine. Are you willing to die, Antony? Queen of the ancients shall I accept no gift but the moment soul, and you, the only Roman aware, are, and only if we shall drink you in me can we taste future and our lack of it. I offer you terror magnificence, death decadence. Wilt before me worm wriggle with me silk. Combinatorics matrixed anamorphosis crescive decay cadences cull swayed mazurka morrows zeuxis of zeitgeist revelatory of velatories fleisch formatories sieved to the motionmogrify, their destroy us transforms our cannot thrive riven we envision a be eternal as soon as freed we are of time, shall there be tomorrows they shall dream of us." "I wish to be erased in you, dream of the beauty you will make of me that could [[erase->qerase]] you."

She unlinks her massive pearl earrings. They twilight her palms. "These are the largest pearls in the world. If there are larger, history has been unable to wrest them from the sea. They were a wedding gift to my sister, my older sister Berenice, who we dethroned on our campaign. She married a Persian prince, and he said only these pearls could be as great a gift as Egypt. She was wearing them when we stormed the palace, her husband's corpse cremating at the city gates. Our father led his force to the throne, but I led my soldiers to our childhood bedroom, and there she stared out into whatever we see when the horizon sunsets us. As princesses we originally had our own palatial wings, but Berenice specifically requested to share a room with me. She said she felt the shadows. I was already crying by the time I found her, and I could barely choke it out, demanded, wept, how could you kill Mother? No answer. What could possibly be worth a world without her? Collapsed. She turned from the window and moved with such grace we were worldveiled in an instant endless, she lifted me up in an embrace that had defined for me love, defined for me hate. She said our mother had killed her. Raised ruthless and royal, thus. She had been scraped clean of all that was not queen. Queen, in the burning and the death, she was. She kissed me and begged me to kill her. You should have seen her eyes. You do see them, in my irises, imprinted. What I see when I close mine." We wait for her. "I have never, nor does anyone, discovered how to be queen, but the taste of it sobers every night stark an ache to purpose. I have not cared to fulfill power, erasure invocating avatar immanence, in to be x irretrievably the why, but I have come, kin cannibal, conclusive history, mandala perfect to paint the breeze. We can be both, can't we, can't we, history and family? Can't we try?" "I am ready to fail with you." Her glove hovers over his to an almost touch, they tense the connection tease, how many memories they make believe I cannot say, only cease to breathe to privacy their sighs. She whirls her wrists above the crystals. A handmaiden pours the vinegar. "Can't you smell moans millennia crypt ashed to the murmurs damp seeps? We can choose to be predetermined in the pasts we conduit. Wouldn't it be so affirming to be already dead? No more mistakes, no grasping for the elusive, merely consequences, the slow roll of the coda in which you can shiver emotives unentangled. This pearl, Antony, is your soul." She lifts the pearl to his mouth, he tongues open expectant, she drops the pearl in. She pets his throat to swallow through chokes. She slides from her seat, leans him back across two chairs, razor fingernails into his entrails, slips her tongue between ripped flesh folds, he moans, her face disappears into the ruby juice, she sucks the life gush, lifts her head to show the pearl between her teeth, spits it into the vinegar fizz. Royal waves contact juggle her pearl on her hand until she slopes to her throat and swallows. She nurses Antony onto her breast and cries birth pangs as the pearl drips through her swollen nipple, then leans him over her crystal to spit it a fizz. They clink and drink. Envy of their afterglow [[hollows->qstart15]] my cheekbones.

"Agonies bring us our humanity. Nobody can be trusted short of their losses, where the abused subsides to the wasted before being. Happiness the genocide drug, pleasure hedonisms as many corpses as it takes to taste, but loss, mine it, deep enough its bled veins you source sincerity, ore with which we cannot jewelry, so thence anew in each worthless alterity pressurized to shimmers meant to be buried forever. Perhaps you feel the need to harvest of us anything worthy for enduring the humanity whose worship you suffer, but that very emptiness in you, predicated primarily on the disactuation of the correspondence processes that enmesh demolized to mandala, fundaments the diveritigence we conduitemplete. If I trust you in this foreshortened tenuous, if you trust me in your will to feel more than is necessary, we'll still in its strenuous mooredforcing hermetically seal a semblance, mirage whichever on the winds this moment pretends, portends. Deserve we most to desiccate to symbols, but I allow an excess more symbolic, your significance to me." Antony. "Reside I in your rejections thus to catabolize your flesh formenters. Kiln recreator difference engine gemify my mendacious mending healer zealer froth stained glass sparks so to starve of quells I can bellows to crucifix soulbreath evulnunciation." "And if you do, I acquiesce your dread, am dead outside its grace. At your shrine I enrole myself emotive haruspex, deserver of whether the prayers are answered. Crucifixions reciprocity can we trust another to this empatheme, more real than the requisite, reliquary consciousness, martyrdom blessedness. In such destructions, I can feel your campaigns, your caustics, convulse my chest as much as my own heartbeat. In your inhabitations annihilation, I induce the poisons victorious, so that I might too believe in victory." "You have more wisdom than I expected." "Because you knew me younger, everyone regrets their youth. Then I was a toy you could play for a campaign, but now I have become campaigns, in my tongues I relish the spices of dozens of cultures annihilated, have understood how must you surrender your spine to line the roads of history, perceived how I must be condemned to be grander than my damnation. Nobody deserves to exist except how we execrate their excruciations to crucifixes upon which we append our desire for divinities to forgive us. If I have been ruthless and murderous, it is only so that I could meet you as you deserve, cosubstantiate of the carnage, wisher of the woeworn to wield." "Candelabra asking if I exude in the flourished below. Luminously assursion I supernova my doubts buried, erasure of all but the light. Become this, dance this, I have been trained. To the score of whom? For the appreciation of which audience? Are they worth a goddess of my magnitude? Could they worship my shadows as I shed them? Is my least feat beyond their ken? Why not, before such a crowd of gawpers, be human?" "Ah, the very question I have asked, reducing myself to purpose. I know the conveyance to which you immaculate, and I have surrendered been rendered its substantialization. I am Rome as millions must study their nativity of humanity, I exhume their quintessence primordial to refuse the wirings, yet in that absolute avatar, merely translation, merely non from which all can be genesyst genecis." "You cannot ask the question in the same way that I must." "No, of course not, or the gods would be guilty of inefficiency, and I would never blaspheme you in that way. I am merely another question; if we shall be collected, it shall only be in time, that in this age both of our questions were asked, they encountered each other, and in that encounter we came to love, briefly, a season, sublimity I have never slept without desiring. You are you; that is why I cannot be comfortable in my own skin. You are magnificient in ways I wish I could dazzle before the judgment of mirrors. I could drink your absolution to perplex the constitution of earths, yet reassured into your acidic dissolve I the quandries that boundary my qua. Don't you see? We're mutually parasitic, which means nobody loses, because we both do. There's genuine joy available in how we will hurt." "Why should I trust you?" "Entrust what you must, I will never factor into the pressure to. [[Who->qerase]] do you wish to control my nominalized within your jaw?"

"I cannot comfort what you suffer." Arsinoe. "No, none can, no relief from suffering once it's in your [[system->qsystem]]. Prevent not cure, nurse not heal, share not share. Would rather than exchange we steel each other's stolen. Keep your calms to laze your maelstrom. That's what I want for you: warmth in the wornness sewn in the tornness. How do I give it you? How I the [[fountain->qcrystallized]]? Tender me of service to a queen worth survice, so my labors bring forth life." "Do I need service? Am I worth service?" "None are, why we must demand it of ourselves and others." "Why do you demand it for me? I do not ask sympathy." "Not sympathy, symphony, play me an instrument in your design." "I, I'm not sure –" "Who is? What a waste of life it would be, to be sure. Slit the wrists to hasten the calculations." "Yes, well maybe, but great relief, wouldn't..." "Is it? Would it relieve you, alive to relive, casting back into all befallen, searching into the to be befallen as if past, powerless not to? Do we truly have agency if not to condemn ourselves to destiny?" "Xenophon does not believe so." "Yet Aristotle believes choice perfects the human soul, why should we bother assuming more than their [[confliction->qconfliction]]?" "Aristotle! A leopard shall he find me when he seeks to blather his telos." "Mm, but you select from Aristotle, as with Plato, as with them all. [[Syncretism->qsyncretism]] is wisdoms." "Yes, we are awash in syncretisms on earth and in heaven, we have many gods not unique to the Egyptian soul: Serapis son of Osiris anoints the Grecian age, Astarte daughter of Isis to the Phoenicians a kiss, our gods change and do not change as we change and do not change."

"Our syncretism is perhaps [[desynched->qdesynched]], goddesses of nuances like Athena we have smelted into workable Minerva." I. "Yes, I rather hate how Greek fire [[cools->qcools]] to Roman marble, how can it come to this, everything we've been, I are, there must, I must, and yet it palimpsests, rewritten denatured bovine psalmslayers chewing ambrosia cud, sacrilege city of fossils burning to lucre revels in the ruin of the beauty of ambiguity. Descend into pits to command your Mithras to cheat you trinkets on a race. Rome smothers history's youth, the erasure to quiver virgins below stars embraces, we, no, they begin afresh your fire, and every anguish prior will meld unspeakable, prior to sentience primordial ooze of memories and emotions as real as, as, these, here..." "And I want to hold onto what is real, what was, and may... anything I am, represent, conform, continue, quivers before your currents, the themes you electricity, Egyptian goddess mystery unsculptable in Tuscan marble, only in you can I cast off a city that, with this letter, harbors no more my home."

[[Afterclarity->qafterclarity]] of semicomplete emotion regrets having shown any weakness to him, some truth of me available for his designs, vulnerabilities to be exploited, he has found a route to hurt me, but except no mortal can hurt me, nor can I be hurt anymore, I am ruthless beyond the capacity for his tricks, I shall bend his bones until he submits to my designs, until he sutures into my agglomeration abomination the vulnerability [[sealed->qelse2]]. Who cares if he saw me cry? If he tries to invoke my tears, I will tear him apart of them. After all, aren't our vulnerabilities our greatest weapons? [[Evincers->qevincers]] of fragilities will use them to manipulate others. Any weakness we flaunt is a strength in the battle of emotional dominance. You will serve how I hurt is the basis of human relationships. Did I not cry before him to portray to him his future, swallowed to seal this fount of tears? Pity proves the best way to lure prey into our webs.

"Yes, but yes, you understand me, you, I can't, you know what impends upon us to fire us [[perfections->qperfections]], but, yet you're still, that's I, what I uh, um well I cannot befriend a Roman to the project, I refuse. Insofar as can be signified in the curse, I their existence. Only as a Greek will I greet you. Renounce [[Rome->qrome2]] before me, or I will, I must exile you from me forever, burn down this, this, feeling..." Arsinoe. "These veins course no verse but Sappho, no being but Erinna." I. "Yes! Sappho! We have so many of her, [[we->qwe]], we... we had..." Without ceasing to recline she falls to her knees to cry though her eyes remain dry. I draw as near as I can be without getting close. I caress fabrics to smooth what blankets us.

"We, she... I shouldn't tell you this, I don't know why I want to." Arsinoe. "I don't know why I want you to." Scimitars clash sparks she nods to our lies. My heart prickles blue. Music crackles in our tinnitus like sifting off the unburied. "My, my mother, ehh... when I was younger, I was, was the youngest, of four, third girl, which, in a royal, uh, meant I was, the least important. I was the least important to my mother. I won't, I can't pretend I was an easy child, but I, no but I was, I was so easy, just wanted to be listened to in a way that, that... I grew up in our library. You don't understand, our library was, finest in the world... learned Greek, Latin, yes, but I refuse to use it, deliberately forgot it, and learned Akkadian, who could not be enchanted by tablets from a people whose forgottenness finally has been forgotten, in the, in the... there were so many secrets you could breathe in the dust. If you take the time to painfully inscribe line by line the rune, you vivisect the angst to intend. Buried in those abandoned hysterics. Myth dystonics manias depressive mystic. They left me in there, and I didn't care, but I did, I did care. Sifter of the said and cannot be revoked. Suggestive silences webbed membranes in my throat so the pressure entwined my turbulence pulse taut. Of them thespian lessened touch. I approached my mother as were she the gravitates we electron, muttered my lines, pleased most by my performances that asked of her none. Why need to leave the page? Aeschylus has it written already, the movements, the outcries, damnations. From the cocoon of foregone my sister, this overbearing assonance of the asps, ripped me from my books, kicked me into whatever she thought could cure me, cure me! Can you imagine the invalid, encountered only to be cured? Sickness as a being, being judged sick. Not wanted, or wanted in my nots, which should I choose? But I had another sister, Berenice, who visited me in the library, asked me what I had found there, which, at first, patronizing, sure, but there is something so incredibly human in someone patronizing you, taking the time to submit to their envision of your world in hopes they can also dwell there, if only for a moment, even if for some ulterior, something like love, isn't there, isn't love a fleeting ulterior, or? I wouldn't know. She listened like a glacier. Saw in her ice the inability for coolness mirror erasure. I cried myself to sleep, but she came back the next day, the next, missed several, came back, on staggering through months slumped askew her listening to whatever I would in those even then forgettings construe, construct true, truth as, as, as whatever it is, sought it in the anhele helix through stele I breadthed in summaries to sustenance, confected sour thoughts sugary to ooze the taste greater than the need, whatever need brought her tome, how I wished to keep her there forever so that I in her witnessing could be there also, that we might one day find ourselves meeting glances, laughing uncontrollably, apologizing to each other, standing up, walking to the newly there hand in hand, but her deadpan sundered the dreams, their shards anxieties, twitched glances vainly vainly seeking emotive sleights, even the slightest, never even the slightest, nothing, nothing, so I hallucinated her personality in the illusives phantoming her listens, would only read the books I thought would appeal to this pseudo Berenice, summarized improvisations I daydreamed she would approve of. Increasingly as I frayed I yearned to talk about and of or from myself, but I didn't have one to discuss, so I invented one, a poet from Lesbos I rediscovered, read to her a poem about reciting to Sappho, trying to divine if the art echoed in an artist, reeling inside her blank smile, read to her a poem about holding onto the sea, drowning to attempt an embrace, read to her about asking questions to each inhale, irretrievable everything in exhales, until I broke down and groaned to her about silence, begged her, was I not good enough, and she cried, held me, said she was so sorry I thought I was not good enough, when that's how she felt, she said she was so dizzied in all the immensities I templed, had no offering for the altar, wanted to simply bask in what she could never be, escape from her agonized failing beneath being symbology inside someone so self sufficiently everything and everyone, and she rested me inside her, the only place I felt human, whispering into my ear that I must hold onto how I mattered and forgo the rest, she said it so many times I understood she was saying it to herself, she spoke to me to herself, and I quivered lachrymose to have been so precious. She killed our mother the next day. Soaked in blood above her corpse she asked me to search the library for a line about the forgiveness of demons. I asked whether she or my mother was the demon, and she laughed, teeth solar over the sea of scarlet, and said, the three of us a family. I hugged her until I was coated lovely in the life of my mother. Maybe it was wrong, some fever that overtook us, but we blossomed sisters sinners, and that's what matters, how we mattered. Damn goodness or evilness beyond the scope of the genuine. Neither good nor evil but name. If I cannot be myself, why agonize this hypocrisy? I'm not contemptible enough to even enjoy it. In bliss barren because this cavernous through which it trickles undermines not my mountain. Do you hear my voice in your cavities? Please tell me, please, please, lie to me if you must, please say you recognize me that emptiness, or, or I don't even know what I'm asking, sorry, it's, I –" "In your every sentence I piece you one fragment further, in which shattered entwines I empty also an alone. There's a lot that, as you were saying I remembered, imagined... I used to cherish myself a good person, lavished in each feat of empathy self effacement, princess of embitters a guillotless, how perfect a feeling the torment of surrender to another's dismantling, because if morality exists it exists as universal contempt denied in a single particulate, that we are all revolting but something is really overthrown in our chaos, in our suspense oscillates the primordial mercy of in the gyre divine, with each taste I could relish myself as more than my self, putrid, puerile, more than anything vanishing, instead towards an incrementally absolute I flourished volta phantom, nurturer of the treasured in discarded, trawler of the righteous ablution, seeking the goodness of the innate within its should be suppressed, and so it seemed I felt I could continue through countless binds, until several years ago my mother and sister died of a pestilence that took the feeling in my fingers, perhaps you can commiserate being unable to touch, stormed to feelings without the anchor of feeling, and my father fled thereafter into a stupid war, my marriage dissolved too quietly for catharsis, my grandmother's grandmother's locket shattered, and that was the worst, how utterly senseless the cruelty of the joke's straining and straining coda, simply dropped it one day, four generations of what women of this house have endured, erased. I started to scream. I broke off friendships that did not give me exactly what I wanted. I watched my enemies suffer and savored it. I realized kindness a luxury. Gentle lives can find it in themselves to express patience, and they should, patience and kindness are magnificent jewels, a way to share riches, and that's what it was, wasn't it, I was never really kind, had simply been privileged. So I stopped being kind. I chose only to be caring, in all the stress and grasping and screaming caring creates. I cherish the hurt I have caused those who have encroached upon what little my broken heart can trove." "Yes, ah, forsake kindness, for who's sake would it be? Ah, ah, mosquitoes slurp up graces we nail not to hate weights. Any kindness you give is taken by the [[takers->qtakers]], they always have, I've been beset by them, our culture has been repeatedly, they wanted to take everything, blend Egypt an ingredient, break our spines so we could quadruped through the wheat harvesters."

"You know of it, certainly, the jewel of Alexandria, the sign of our purpose in the world, the soul of who we worlded, our library." Arsinoe. "I have heard it a wonder." "Yes, wondrous beyond this age, now so perfectly past, glories that cannot be drunk by these, these [[Romans->qtakers]], who want to tax us our grains but never once tried to steal our scrolls, and I would have died defending them, but how much happier, more meaningful, my life would have been, were I besieged to protect our library from those who sought to desecrate our culture, but instead the process of cultural desecration is brutally mundane, operates on dulling scales, stretches lives out so slowly they notice not how are they wrung. How could I accept that we would lose and yet no one would notice? That's what, what made me do it, desire to entruth our terror in the caustic inks that write reality. The Romans wanted to subjugate Egypt, so they implanted in us their parasite who killed our queen, beheaded her both in body and in statue, so I had to, had to hold onto meaning, needed to answer Berenice's bravery, how she drove out our mewling collaborationist, asserted Egypt antievanescent, aligned herself with the only powers that could resist the Romans. We have a duty to history to hold it above the demands of the day, must mean precisely in how we cannot be useful, and Egypt has millennia of meaning beyond the fathoming of modernity and its makers, we are the lady last of the firsts, sole nation of the spring primal still flowing to our time. My curatorial duty goes beyond power, power is empty, cursory, crunching pressurizer into which we toss our most narrowminded abusers so they cull themselves in the chase to the minima nexuses we cannot erase, I am bound by stories, princess of the pages, pain beautiful lives that need living lungs, sewing the shattered fragilities marking this planet as once precious oneless purpose, grasping alike broken your locket, exactly like your locket. If we do not brand our bodies with ancestral agonies, then will we rewrite them with none of their sublimity. Because in there, somewhere, we never find it, in the imprisonments we never cease to struggle to learn to love, in the grief that drones through decades, in the intensive labors cold to create nothing at all, somewhere... but I couldn't, I can't, I can't, could never find it in me, and days would slip away, as you ache older days that used to seem open skies dimming into enclosures densities the banal, whereas before you would plan in, now you carve out... I don't know who I am or why, but I do know one thing, I deserve to suffer, we all do. In a cosmos suffering, the premise I deserve to live cosubstantiates the premise I deserve to suffer. I am in this body only to be beaten down to base elements with which I can paint, and that's why... what am I saying? I'm not sure. Am I making sense? Am I rambling?" "I believe in your sense and the roads it travels." "Yes, okay, thank you, well, hmm, what I'm trying to say is, well but I don't want to say it, is the problem." "Then don't say it." "No, I have to, or I want to, or I have to want this if, if..."

"All of this unnecessary, so brutally, it's, and none of it, eah, oh Porcia, I, no, you cannot be Porcia, I refuse to accept anyone with a Latin name, if I say it again I'll claw your eyes out, no, you must be, um..." "Wherever you name me, I will find you." "You're, uh, ah, you're Chrysothemis, blessed slaughterer of the imposers of Aegyptus, loyal resistor sister against Electra, gilded irrevocably justice setting of gods defied." "We can be the cauldron of Clytemnestra and Antigone in this tomb of Iphigenia." "I, well, well uh, but maybe you wouldn't say if, if... oh Chrysothemis, I'm so sorry to you, but not to anyone else, in absolute revulsion of the world I Dionysus my hate, but to you I wish I could have been, would not have... I, I... I immolated the Library of Alexandria. The Romans won, and I thought I was going to die last of the Egyptians, I am, I am sure I am. We were vanishing into history, and my final revenge would be to accept their world, refuse to allow them to acquiesce mine in their terms, refused their kill us but keep us, souls to suicide rather than to be colonized, they smash the alabaster. In our ruins they will discover the Egypt they deserve, slaughtered corpse bereft of stories. They want us a granary, so goes the library. They killed everything I loved, so I gave it a pyre of my loved everything, as I should have long before when they took her from me, my vengeful angel, caressing queen, but in the Nile I sought her, summoned her, swallowed her, and I too killed my mother, lit the library aflame. I, yes I wanted to die, surrounded by what was lost in me. Defeat glimmers negative victory triumph of the dead in the dust tongue. Justice comes nowhere but where we carve it, as I you, they cannot steal what they could never [[attain->qattain]], I refuse, I, refuse of dynasties, transcend only in oblivion. I am sorry, my existence is an [[apology->qapology]] for what else I could not be."

"What else would you be?" I. "I should have been Berenice, and she should have bettered me, we should have been Sekhmet, wreaker of [[wrath->qkills1]] and compassion, but I have no compassion, only cold passion, no wrath, only passion embers." Longing to reach out and stoke the embers I exhale her sigh to the rosy incense serpentines. Gently clove uncurls us. "In this temple the sanctum of our worship, galvanism goddess, where our prayers wing you whosoever heavens, in my psalms you vault Sekhmet, mirror angress, spear image, so striking... I mage powerful the perceptioning to enchant..." Into the hyacinth daze vulbs ecstatic miasmatic the murmur. Yearner diamatic extensions into inwardsly maybe may be sybillance sibling trance slyly in the ambiguously animatic certainty suspiration of our linguistically closed circuit secrecy electrically pulsing us one mood intimacy merger shaker shiver us sighs away from embraces embreous with potential pressure membranous pellucidly invisibly visibly veins subdermal channel we the vaulting vertiginous enosis of emulsives empyrean dreamily fiendish regents we wish the other in which each of us fill the other wish the other we ourselves would strike to sparks to candle the candelabra's infernal surge into the hyacinth daze of selves sylphs swirling cyclonic fiendish of surrender fomented fevers rainprism shimmers marine ultramarine in winks cometic of the meldic mellifluouscence aesthetic cosmetics to soak erratics us new beautiful to the dreamglass phantasmal pink irrational numeral quasipresence sly elide infinitely unenumerably counted in the evanescence ballet shivering past the last gasp of a sucked in sigh kiss to stimmung. She, I, is there caresses counted in us? Cannot quite be we shy from the yes to ambiguity's ambivalence pose, sharing guesses, demurely nonfactual. Sleight of wash nonspeak. Waves clusters call and break on the quaver subduced beneath facades. Reeling loneliness from union to reality. But what is real serpentinites her wayward darklies. Slip into her slipstream haze dreams figment, figured, figuring what would I do place precious... "Do you... have you felt it, ghostly and fatigue in the stretching transgressions, within your lost and lost of days?" "I do not count days I have missed, only nights. Anyone can happen, but I am envious of the rest. Lunar outlined eternal in the feeling sipping verse slipping from vase lips. Absences hollow, but hollows, hollows can be filled..."

"What more would you be?" I flash slightly unexpectedly pacifyingly pleasurably rosethorn. She is in me to me. Struggle glimpsing in this mirror muse not mortification of the flesh. Moonbeams whiskey tearrolled down my cheeks droplets of sweatless absorbed inside simmers peat in my palette to clump the unutterance. Plum purplish bruise juices aurora the blush pastel tinted to abyss vault. Throbs propulse my bloodless lighthead corona coronet halo. Behind our veil bobs bodies impaled invisibly upon our elevated, do have they not faces, not anymore begging each jar thrilled through us, please, not any more, acceptance of sweet annul in the annealing to from our molten sculpted. If. Scouring this mess to see if. "I wish not any more to be than what you make of me of." Underundulator axes masque her slush slowpress ingress in the anointing flower, syzygy silvery her sclera paravoidenes its planets ebony. Palm glade beneath plumes that point to the perfection awailision. Porcelain purr tails lava obelisk to phosphoresce thoughts. "Would you like what I make of you?" "Asks the clay the potter?" "To the artist, yes." "As the masterpiece, yes." "Even if it [[kills->qkills1]] us?" "Especially if it wrings from us life." Lime tang pearls her saliva sloops upon my rippling see agony jestator. Malice lavishes her moue wry.

"I have a task to ask you that will not cohere, because decoherence composes us dysnomia nocturnes dehisces of our dischords. I command it not of you but of Chrysothemis, my darling Lesbian." My body rustles her starling. "She plucks her harp your hums." "You must forgive this me, the one who asks, and follow the me in question. In a better world would I ask of you your silks, in a world better would I need not ask what we silent were, but in the mire I muck the moment with desire our vines do not bind, please, Chrysothemis, I am a Greek who failed to be Egyptian, but precisely as you are the Greek who could not be Roman I beg you to kill their [[king->qking]] in the blade belief that could not quell our queen." Could not and would not could I consider but to laugh. "Perhaps this is the dizziness to dream to awake still dreamer. I understand now anything I ever loved of my husband was his surface shimmer of your depths. He's been trying to kill Caesar for years." "Puerility and poetry arrange the same estranged wisdoms. Commit his react original to deface him mine, so that we might be, already..." Drone tension of too much taut throating the steam of sequence uneruptions to my fraught fizzy. Perhaps she recedes shy. I bold my palm to dome her bowl. At the touch she trembles, inhaled hiss, would be terrified to am. In the lift up I menace caress her gently flesh's mists, closer and over her pulling me she mewls sorry, sorry, buries her head in my soil, and I rock her to the breeze into which we grow. "I cannot ask you to kill my [[sister->qsister5]]," she mutters, "but I beg you to kill what has killed her, though she died so long ago."

Disunentangling in the river mimesincision lunge fragments I away. She lies upon the bed of cannot take with me. Jammed into the action of leaving into the ludicrous downpour, sixty feet of gush, swept from the steps to the surge, buoying above basilicas, baths massive, circa, the Senate. Diving into the murk mermaid. Thousands of drowned speckle bloat the seabed. Sharks cruise through windows. Below in the black the shadow of the deep dragon leviathan underroars loom recedes. Shipwrecks scatter on rooftops, gleam their salvage gold rain. Coral countlesses cutlass the streets to crayons. Schools of chromis and shoals of gobies wriggle and whirl. Eel slither swims. Twinkles in the deep the towers of Atlantis. Into Cicero's domus I swim. Plop on the floor drenched. "Just Juno, Porcia, what's happened?" Brutus. "That is beyond my control, so I concentrate on my response." "Is it raining out there? You're soaked through!" "Flavia, do bring us a towel and some of my wife's clothes," Cicero. "No, no, don't let me interrupt you, I'm fine. Carry on as you were." They glance at their grimaces. My husband sighs. "Porcia, dear, you cannot keep doing this, purposely inopportune as surely you admit, please, you really must not harass me at work, this is a habit we must break. Why do you continue to embarrass me wherever I go? Surely we're not that acrimonious?" "I'm here to help," mouthing out a huge splash. "We thank your thoughtfulness, Senatrix Brutus, but we are well enough as we are," Cicero. "No, I want to help. Let me help, I'm capable, you know how capable I am. You cannot just abandon me at home, Marcus. I want to be a part of your life again." "I, well, okay, I appreciate the sentiment, but this really isn't the time, there's some things –" "Why not? When will it ever be the time? Why can I not share with your days as well as your nights? I want to be with you." "But this isn't the place for you!" "Why not?" "It's just not suited for you. You don't want to know what we have to do here." "Why not?" "Because it's dangerous!" "I have faced many dangers. I can ford them with you." "But not like this, it isn't right to put you through this." "Why not?" "Because it just isn't done!" "Senatrix Brutus, please –" "Why not?" "Because you're my wife, and I want the best for you, so it wouldn't be right to, it isn't your place to –" "My place? What do you mean my place?" "You know what I mean, so just, please –" "Say it, say it to my face, coward, you braver of dangers." "It's, listen, the things we do here are of a complex and sensitive political nature, each action presents potentially fatal consequences." "I do not fear death, and I consist of complexities, subsist upon them." "Porcia, dear, please –" "Either we are married here in this action, or I will drag you back to our house, and we can be married in any actions we connive there." "You cannot conceive of the action we conspire, it would strike dread into your soul." "Dreads assemble my soul!" "No, that's not, you don't understand!" "Why not?" "Because there are things you have not been trained in, things you have been sheltered from, because the burdens of the Senate fall upon only those born to bear it, because the deeds we must do require firm and capable hands, because, and because –" "Because what?" "Because this is a, this is a man's business, this isn't your –" I magnetize knives to me slicing their Achilles' tendons, they collapse onto their backs and gawp. Metal rinkly skirts twirl lacerate. I butterfly flutter gesture through thick postures impastos butterfly knives to bayonet sneers. Slash gleams gem my arched almost to spiral waveform. Echoes in the endless my laughter in the presence mute. Knives dip glint slice into my left leg ripped raw to dangling redhead strands, ravaging my ankle pulpy, my shins shreds, amputates the limb. The leg to the floor falls though I still stand as clatter to the floor the knives. Blowing them a metallic hiss kiss heals their tendons, they scramble to crouch lean aghast. Striding through the wound towards my husband though the left leg spins round and round where it lies lopped, I pin him against the wall romantic. "Please, dear, am I the bride to your terror, shall we share unity in our stricken?" "Porcia, you, you..." "Yes, say the name you think contains me, say me, say me!" "Puh, Porcia..." My tongue tattoos my true name to his lips. Leaning into his chest I swivel to Cicero's dry heaving pallid and grin. "Chrysothemis," Brutus splurts confused, tries to say Porcia again, keeps trying, throes his expressions cascades as he skids to "Chrysothemis, Chrysothemis, what is, why are you..." "Senatrix Brutus, I..." I wave away the scene so we're seated at the table, and I'm dry in Cicero's wife's clothes, though blood gently drip drips from my wound. In the corner my leg hums. "So, tell me about this plan of yours," warm and empathetic. "We, um, we're going to, uh..." Brutus. "Caesar has outplayed us in the Senate. We thought we could cajole a sufficient minority to their principles, but this generation seeks their principals, slave themselves to an icon, so we must render our cause iconic. We shall dye in his blood a banner. We have no choice, the Republic no longer deserves its name, now he's installed his family a triumvirate, the precursor to an imperial dynasty, into which he's married, bringing with him this Pharaoh Queen of Egypt. He grows bold enough to strike out to the prize: the Senate is scheduled to a session where Caesar's aggregated powers will come under review. There, we have word, he intends to solidify them permanently. This will be the last time he asks. We will not win the vote. Never bet on civic courage. So we must live up to your family's namesake and slaughter the tyrant. Rome will accept a Brutus once more liberator. When Caesar enters the Senate, we will sacrifice him to the gods to pray for longevity. Many difficulties will follow, chief among them Caesar's family. Octavian is young and impetuous, and frankly I do not quite understand the lad, I cannot predict his reaction, but Mark Antony, there is a reaction I can predict, he will muster his forces against us, perhaps in league with the Egyptians, so we need to ensure we kill Caesar before Mark Antony or the Egyptians arrive, so we can control the forum and there sway the mob with speeches." "What about Calpurnia and Octavia?" "What? Oh yes, they might, they will have to be considered... perhaps that could be your contribution." "Our family's namesake slaughtered the tyrant to Lucretia's purpose, the tyrant a tyrant to Tullia's purpose." "Yes, well, and we must also consider the Pharaoh. Have you met her socially? We've been unable to connect with her, gauge her. We've mulled the idea to assassinate her also. Egypt has been embroiled in countless civil wars, surely she has as many enemies as supporters in her homeland. If she dies, we could easily install some other..." "Yes! That, oh that could actually, that could solve, yes, yes, we have to kill her as well, it's the only way." "I'm not sure, it seems unnecessarily risky," Brutus. "Risky? Risky is having let a sovereign into Rome. She is a vengeful vindictive massacrist. Remorseless has she slaughtered her own people, what more will she be willing to do unto Rome recalcitrant? She's the one who supports Caesar most directly, her rule is tied to his, indeed she is Caesar and everything he is, any attack against him will be an attack against her, and she will reply equal levy. It's absolutely imperative that we assassinate her. She, she has a sister as well, who could, she could be installed instead..." "You mean the invalid? Does she still survive? I thought she had been killed." "There is precious life [[valid->qstart15]] inside us, her, inside her." "Hmm, yes, maybe she could prove useful, something to consider anyway, but as I was saying, the problem with Caesar is –" Cicero rambles on for so long that I sigh relieved: I thought I had problems!

"Would you beg me to kill her, so I could soak in her blood twinned, to love you as she never did." I. "No, you musn't, I hate her, hate her, hate her, but I could never hope her dead, because then I would be the only memory of Berenice." "Share with me a memory of Berenice." "Is she not already in your mind and elsewhere?" She tugs me to our tumble to a cuddle. Egyptian guards startle forward, but her handmaidens murder them, blanket us in bloodied clothes. As she reveries into my chest my hand slides slowly down, down, into, she whimpers, wanders, heaves harder, harder, faster to hyperventilation... "We would play this game where she would leave at my door a hieroglyph, and we would both costume an interpretation, would have Archelaus judge the best expression, but she was so very elegant, always would she win, my wins were mostly the awkwardness of me not winning, so once Ganymedes stole into her room, saw her dress laid out, then had the slaves sew me an exact copy, so that we emerged to Archelaus alike, and she erupted into bliss, embraced me with a kiss, said this was why she invented the game, so that eventually we would, dress by dress, navigate to our convergence, that now we were ourselves in a symbol, and she ordered that day's hieroglyph carved throughout the base of the palace, and I could not sleep for guilt, wracked awful in the secret, wept ashamed to slink ruined in the tomb of connection, became bedridden, until Ganymedes decided to explain it to Berenice, so she came to my room, kissed my forehead, and, and she, oh gods, ah, ah..." Convulses her overwhelmed into my warmth shouted gasps. I pet her through the twitches to breaths undulations. Because my fingers cannot feel, my whole body does. My quivers into hers shimmer stillness. "She said, she, she said to me, she said to me, I left my closet open for you every night, so that you would sneak in to see, to ensure our game would gemstone, since sometimes you must invite destiny to inevitably. And so I have, invited you..." Loosened to the lush verdant fronding the lily beamettes to scatter splash us warmed to the touches. Immense in her grasp, atomic in my arms. Rainsheen soundshunts silhouette us hidden cache of our fashions. Plash lust muted to song. "Though she is gone," she, "she is here, since she brought to you me." "I bring all that I am to you to fall apart to the little care we can take of each other that eternal multiplies us amounted ranges." "Then, when I am accounted, I will speak of my loves in the plural." Consecrated in the oily utterance, Chrysothemis in the shudders. Reoriginated in the rush. Reeds blush the flush of new sentiments. Holy reciprocity, touch to touch translucent, miscible in a, a... Moths to the fever. Wanted was your here. Instantaneousness. Yearn pull obsessive. Cannot quit daze, sunken to recursion. Tantalus' reach's periambrosial ecstasy. Needs writ in idiom of wants. Swipe sudden exeunt to the white wind doubts. Did we get here? Is this, are we somehow sacrificing... what if we say what we have to say so quickly we cannot dwell in our sentenced? What if there is so much tonight there cannot be tomorrow? Eyelids shut sluice the tense to tempestuous to the trust. Lucky mists. Lithely trysts the triptych of her and I and the harrowed. Velvet rustle prickles on gooseflesh. Minty mouths. Pyrite scratch singers slip through my chemise firecracklers. Imaginate pauses yawn long. Lethe and aware alternating currents. Hearth in her. Shoreless and sure. Swaddled in exhales interiors. Close to presses to guess what does she dream, could squish into her skull ensured. Softly hush, whisper breaths. Lux mysterysm. [[Rest->qstart15]] into the fresh. Lattice pales mesh. Nursesques in our nunnaked. Suntaker cessates.

"Death sculpts us from hyle, our [[composed->qcrystallized]] of the chipped away. The chisel hurts but renders you perfected. I have never loathed how it has bled me, all I wanted was to hold hands as it happened, to feel myself perfected into more than the nausea, sculpted from more than negations, created to some kind of cure by assuming myself antibody. In the vehemence of [[confliction->qconfliction]] that opposes us to catalysts, I yearned metabolism. Perhaps in you a hollow in which I echo?" Arsinoe. "Not Echo but Eris, sibilance of Nyx, whose duality shapes us to perfections from our discords, potter to potter casting each other upon the wheel a war in which all must die to objectify, competitive annihilation fertilization, for destruction contextualizes creation to matter." "Yes, oh, that's what these cretins don't realize, is the disruption is enough, any gap which they cannot cover glories a palace for your soul. I don't care if the Romans win, I don't care if my sister wins, I have hurt them in ways they cannot write out, so I have slipped blackfigure to symbol. Burning in the soulcore of the cultures that fused me I irradiated their thematics beyond mortal ken, freed from the grasps of history, their accountancy of slaveries. They obsess with mere [[continuance->qsystem]], with what will be here tomorrow, but I am precious precisely because I won't be, I am yesterday irreparable." "I envy you a yesterday you can live in." "Ah, so's the purpose of tombs, an infinity of yesterday in which to oppose the need for a tomorrow. You have entered into my tomb in which I remain as I was, as I will be always, in what need never surface again into their calendars." "In your [[dissynchronicity->qsyncretism]] I dwell, lavished in its vanish, vatic before its atavism. Eschewed of my sewn I show within your throne its power, how I feel your whispers." "Eenh..." "Yet perhaps in me there is also a whisper that sounds within you a song, and I should pleasure to be so instrumental. Because your ghost this temple haunts, I wish to meditate your midnight mantra into these temples, that we may, hidden here, wander new ways, seek paradises we are not yet so broken to forsake."

"Do you fear the null?" Arsinoe. "No, I relish it as a feeling, as a chance to excruciate this body to being. My father, some progenitor, gone, and with him my last link to a history I cannot amount, amend [[openended->qsyncretism]], open to ends, some bitter taste stings my palate, I vow into the pall." "Ah, such a sacred response, truly you are the one I have met in the gloom of temples." "Unspeakably unsure the why I meld helical into your inform. What is it you contain that disrupts the [[containment->qsystem]]?" "I am [[disruption->qconfliction]] impure, exilic delimitumult summit burst from the earth an amounting from nothing, blessed beloved nothingness, wherein I resume my reign apoplexy. You worship the huntress in this darkness, praying for the bolt from the density to [[materialize->qcrystallized]] the relationship a painting, artist of absence might awe you to myth." "Such a sacred response, truly you are from the gloom of temples." Her laugh jolts her to a coughing fit, lungswrestling.

"Schematized to impossibility horizons proving desperate our immiscibles plausible haunts the need for the hour to ongo, please still yet unsediment, we can harsh into new settles, or so we dream, never achieved... you know, I once lived in a domus that had a very narrow vestibule, and I loved the symbolism of being choked into a doorway, entering the outside world only insofar as you have been restricted from your internality to meet at a specified node, and the hatred I developed against this violence begat my greater violence, or so I have to believe of myself, greater a violence, or else I have been merely kind where possible, bitter where probable, and that would destroy me, to simply be whoever I am made to perform, I want, and I hope you can feel in me, something else, someone else, who can be murderous, perfected aesthetic, [[someone->qcools]] whose, whose love would be destructive, rather than merely ameliorative..." I. "I, I feel so much in you, but, there's..."

"I resent the sun for rising above me, hence why I harbor in a moon goddess. I am the burning which cannot be cycled, I infernal the feeding chain. Of the subsequent destructions, I am first and foremost of the slaughter feast, their jaws snapping upon jugulars psalms my astrewn. Conflagration to conflictions I seed, so that my race will overcome humanity, devour their internalized until none of its germ remains. If you encounter me in this gloom, you lurk prayerfilling my fangs." Arsinoe. "Ah, such romance, to be a thing desired, devoured." She flourishes her wrist to float above her bed aura auroral esperial oracular ipomoea purpurea like the reality fabrics bulging to kiss her purring tunneling to star. "I desire, I am anticontinuance, none come of me, my womb envelops infinite never to proceed to flesh. Charred of circum decist I bear riven to void. Enter into my denier, I assume your borne." "Upon your altar my pulse sacrificial, how I must resend the sun." "Yes, ah, it's!" She flusters back to collapsed on her bed. "Resend the sun, resend it, yes, absolutely we must, rearise the moon, how can you? But they will never expect you, you have pretended to be Roman so long, ah, but, you must, we must deepen beneath the [[presentention->qcools]], discover how you can be bothing..."

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XV: Octavia''] --- So the problem with the rats isn't that they exist, I do not intend to begrudge them that right, but why must our existences intersect, why are we enmeshed in [[competition->qcompetition1]], my ability to perform myself is [[shattered->qshattered]] by their overwriting, how can I go outside when I'm filthy with rubbed off rat streaks? My hair vomits their furs. I accept that rats might have a reason to exist, certainly something should squirm in between the crevices where our [[contact->qcontact2]] slips behind the curtains, elliptical curves between shadow and light, otherwise there would be a world [[empty->qempty]], and we have to hope it isn't, since we are. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Account for how we cleave the steady in realign receptors buzzing the junctures to dramamine the dizziness. Chemically bond to my my brain some sort of straightness so I can walk the tightrope. Dishopeful addulcer, retrocombinant strain [[designer->qleaving]], sprain [[designifier->qphaeton]]. Sealant sah I ossify to structure. Intentionality attending to ensure of the chaos a consequence we can austere to verity.

Impressions resolved to [[protensions->qelse2]]. Resplend me. I do not care if it does not work, nothing works. Why am I supposed to be goddess of more than that nothing works? Worship my kokabat karyon icy dying millennia prior to your [[sightstricturing->qtesserractic]] this typos typos, misspell my binding how your must karyotype your sense, in the disjuncture I reign supremely art aescetic, penitent of my [[sisters->qsister3]] disphyletic syndeidestic. Apologetic of my wrecks, I remain preciously a [[ruin->qruins]].

"Precisely that loss brings you here, I imagine, thirsty after so long a span of deserts and deserts allusively. I praise your whims that could be so playful, my whims are so gravelly and intense, I wonder whether the word even contains them. I am grateful you have found in me a sustenance worth more than contempt, because that very essence is what I have worked so hard to preserve as I have become a hammer, as I exist increasingly projected, unable to manipulate the circumstances surrounding. The joy I feel now equals the joy I enjoyed so many years ago, bliss of being a soul within the war, a bliss I associate with you, wonderer of depths which the war never fulfills, does it, wanderer weary emptied along roads to nowheres that never, no matter how much you sacrifice, resemble a home equal to the one you abandoned to exist? Paradox of our era: we are individually more operative of the weltgeist yet marooned less of the world and less spiritual. We have no more altars; we experience in the most minute details dawns of the alters. Could we share our torn to descriptive? Interdeterminate intraterminal we gestate meridians of the divisions that denonym our ventricly demos by which can the nullspace navigaes emulsify to merespirals we shall loop as one nearly ludic demiurges of a postprelapsaran renewal versioning to jewels, worlds better than the anvil adipsia condemned upon our corpusours quavering beneath the psalms phantasmies. I yearn to share with you any of our lessenings to press text to flesh dried to endure. Immure me immune, I beg of you, with whatever you beg of me to compromise." "And what is it I am supposed to beg of you?" "Supposed? Shall we phrase it so? What's the point of fighting such a reduction? If you subordinate me to supposition, I acquiesce, resist not, but if there is within you cosubmersible, I ask you endure with me into its lightless, equalized its equally abyss, absorb its batholithic silencia, so emend might we the crushing pressure to life despite." "But I am the life of spite." "And so you are seraphic. I have been hurt, I have hurt, I am the agony, and you are with me. Does that not say all that we can speak? Hymns of the harrowed, dwell angelic over graves. [[Erase->qerase]] how we do not elsewise combinate. Shall I not entrust myself to your purpose, reaper of so many other refusals? As you are now, must we make of our already. Please, make me the first, so that if I die, I can have numbified more than a number, but only if in accordance with your whims, how blessedly I would be erased in your rejection, how perfect your intention that can so kill, that it can undo without undoing the precepts. Human duty is to deserve your destination ineluctable, and in your lands I dehydrate purified of sustains, cannot elect my bones, merely their buried in you." "Why do I deserve such an honor?" "Because you are who renders it an honor."

Antony sips my mood with crushed ice and glace cherries, sighs it the cold wind's sough. His tongue licks his teeth, his lips part to show me. "Cannot say what is worth the vie, merely grail it impossible and divine. Have I entwined touches that thrilled through me victories, felt them thrum bitter, icicle scars. Were they worth the permanenting vulnerabilities? So easy to conquer, anyone can kill, but to hold the chokehold, defend against a thousand replies, have you seen such a gleam worthy of eyes? Perhaps I saw it in you. Soul streams raw in the eyes. You can see mine: antagonisms unsure of what they would care to carnage, piercing perceptives blunted and numbed to cataracts, a yearning to be met where they are and not an inch closer. Yours shine still lunar, lupine, brutal evangeline, frozen in expectation of a dream that never unawakes us, and in the desire, that denier of lesser realities, I immix your turpentine, your brushes against my blankened shivers glamor to coat us resilience. As you are so, I have not been surprised how suspicious you are of me; I remain suspicious of myself, I never quite know what I'm up to, but who is any fun that you can trust? Trust is how you fall asleep at night, and I can tell by how you move your neck you have not slept in weeks, shall we say months, let's romanticize it years, indeed has it not been, since, well, some summer long ago? Surely you have not, or I would have met you there in dreams. Come, sit, let us learn our interims. Perhaps you will not taste the banquet, but shall we enjoy it vicariously? Nerus, hence! Which let us insist they are delicacies should we watch him try?" "I can't say I would know their names." "Because they have none, they are feverish delusions of my chefs' ignorance, but ah, need we names, can I not tell which one you wish, aren't they these lovely cinnamon splinters? Go ahead, Nerus, relish them." Nerus nervously implores his master who blinks lugubriously. Frowning, swallowing, Nerus desperately intensely shovels several handfuls into his mouth, chokes, cries, totters, clatters on the ground, the splinters spindle into a daggerous urchin that slices open his throat and crawls up his face, bashes into his braincage, pierce kabobs his brain, plops it out, crawls in instead. Urchin Nerus screeches, his limbs bend backwards, he skitters into the darkness. Mark Antony shrugs. "Perhaps they could have used more cinnamon. I always say to overdo the spices, flavors should be violent to remind us of the hunt." "Ah, then I have a [[flavor->qerase]] for you."

Brainnumbed to molted dismantles my polyvenia to lethe. Nightness non. [[Discordancy->qpresentation]] of vessel, implausibly invoked, ziarat jinn to bended outcries calligraphies. Upended wrong into briery roams. Slash sere [[terrified->qterrified]]. Distended to dispensational pensieve. Wishful vessel, mark me marked, tessellate to mutually vestal.

We do desire, don't we, isn't there a we to desire all of this adds up, maybe not to harmony, even maybe to horror, to a precious or torturous combine, wherever the continuum places us may we at least with certainty dwell so we do not whorl dust nomads loathsome landlusts on milks of mirrors, but if a part of the whole is unnecessary, then no hole is necessary, and we all hang precarious upon the pointillism gash and grow. Rats pulse from a wound we must accept to heal, emanate instantiate the noematic contours of the gap perfectly in their indefinite expandable and shrinkable bodies, how they can just jam themselves through molecular gaps, obviously they must have rubbery bones, their whole body must be built upon springs, so they coil and shrapnel in and out of our anxieties, and maybe that's why I deserve the rats, is because I have too many anxieties, so I call them unto me, they feed upon my fevers, I deserve the rats, I deserve rats, but that's why I hate them, wish to genocide their species, so when this slurry mucks sludged will it form me and not pus the fomented that oozes ontic [[embodiment->qimprison]], either I or the rats in this arena, and before the hyena clamor and vulture condescension we who are about to claim this death essence to existence salute you.

They infest me obviously because they see how empty I feel, they want to my role fill, we compete for the same contempts, so I need to murder the rats, that much is clear, it's impossible to argue that logically they should coexist with me, they are precisely inside my illogic, preventing me from owning it, skewing it elsewhere, so I am ossified in this peat bog precisely so, only in the corpses of every rat both existent and potential my verb annihilactivates their noun to my name. They crawl on my burial like effaced headstones, the demons, hours nine waste I in lanky morning dulls wiping clean as I can the rat mars, because only by scouring my skin does actual flesh thread my being. Without the wrestle, nothing to win, naught to waste. Or probably actually it wastes only three hours, the morning stretches thrice as long as it counts, but I ought to begrudge them any time not mine to make count, minutia mortalia when I weep from the rats. Because beneath the battle is the thousand tiny emotions that torrent us provoked tormented, who dares begrudge me the balm of being insufficient to dignity in the depths of mine? Conceit of judges not just to the outcome but to the conditions that could come out before them to [[manifest->qimprison]] their looming normality. Assign guilt to the damned not the sins.

And we are is the problem, isn't it, I accept it, [[imprison->qimprison]] me to prevent my acts, mine, I, yes, imprisoned, but once imprisoned, can I not cry? Can I not wallow in self pity? Where else would my wallowing go? At least cherish self pity because no one else should pity me. Masturbation consolation: if no one else loves us, then, then what's wrong with loving ourselves? But they judge that too, don't they, because what they hate most is you, precisely when you're pathetic, absolute in your alienation, and the capacity to express any mercy on your being offends their certainty you deserve no mercy. Our inability to shriek as one with the judges marks us aberrant autobominations. Insufficiently punished until we express remorse, culprit ourselves indefensible, identify with the punishment the justice of the judges. I deserve the rats. Until I walk the streets naked in rat filth, they will loathe me, but once I embody the humiliation, maybe then might be mercy, maybe then they will love me. My aunt condescends to me merely because she thinks my ignorance to my ignominy. My uncle refuses to see me until I sort myself out, and we must consider the phrase: placed properly, labeled, funneled into the right trash chute, sorting myself, knowingly, sans vanity, sans pretension, admitting to my identity in its utter desecration. My husband will love me then, because then I will be his wife as his wife really is, then he can deny me no more, no more am I in denial to be found and foregone. My, she, her, she will notice me then too, she will see me as I see her, authentically. She won't descend to me as a girl anymore but meet me as a woman, and then, and then! I just have to own the rats. I have to stop hiding them. I am Ocratavia, Octarvia, Ratavinia, Ravenna...

My attendants panic refuse me when to them I explain I must progress to the forum nude smeared, so I lock them out of my closet. I'll figure out how to escape later, first it's important to be locked in here, and actually I really would rather take my time, I'm not so, so sure I have the strength to... look don't be harsh about this, okay, I'm trying, but don't we deserve some amount of patience in the irrevocable sunder to authentic? Trying to live is the least natural sense of our soul, so we must slowly strip persistence to purpose, and it takes time, time and lots of time, denial of our animal, acquiescence of our anima. Maybe it's been two days I've been locked in here, but the longer I starve, the more I shine, capable of this carapace. I can do this. They will greet me in the forum as Octavia, each of them in turn wondering why they never loved me until now, though I will know, I have always known why, but I've been too cowardly, desperately hid the rats, never let anyone visit my domus so they might not catch glimpses of my destiny's scurries, but now in the sunshine I will stand before all as I am, and, exhausted, expunged, exhumed, existing, will I collapse into Antony's strong ember arms, look up into his smile, his gently chestnut curls, and he will kiss me, my beloved, my bride, I have been awaiting you... A knock. "Octavia, are you, are you in there? It's uh, it's me, Octavian... can you open the door? I promise it will just be me, I won't let anyone else in. I would like to talk. Are you okay in there? Can you, can um, please, open the door?" I pleasure in his raspberry vanilla voice as I slather mascara welts. Makeup is important, not to conceal, but to emphasize, just because I'm going to be humiliated hideous doesn't mean I can't be talented about it, in fact the more of my artistry shines through in my abjection, the better, more genuine! I slip on some pajamas and pull quickly Octavian through the door. He [[confuses->qconfuses]], [[composes->qcomposes]].

"Oh well, okay, thank you. Can I um, can I sit down?" "Unless you want me to smash your kneecaps, yes, you can, ahaha! Or I guess that wouldn't stop you from sitting, would it, or maybe then sitting would just be lying down, even if you did the same pose, like it wouldn't count as sitting unless sitting was some pose you could specifically [[differentiate->qdifferentiate]] from your lying down. Then you truly couldn't sit down, no matter what you did, nothing would ever be sitting, and even as you sat there you would be tormented by the whip knowledge that you lack the qualifications to sit, that you're a gross pretension squirming in the shadow of the stiffness you can never truly achieve, an uncanny [[ghoul->qghoul]] mockery of humankind..." "Right, um, here, please, can you sit with me, I need to talk with you." He sits upon a sofa and next to him sits me. "So I've been told some things. Do you, do you want to talk about them?" I shake my head, lean it on his shoulder, breathe him. "I see, okay, that's fine. I just want to make sure you're okay. Are you okay?" I nod. "I see. I hope so. If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to, but..."

"Ah, Octavia, you are, how are you?" "I'm here." "Then I must envy you. Can I come in?" "I did open the door." "Another [[power->qdifferentiate]] for which I envy you." He nods at me as I slam the door behind him. We settle on a divan. "Can I ask: are you okay, do you need help?" He messes up a smile. "Clever of you to ask opposed questions both answered by yes!" "Ah, quite. Well um, but... listen, I don't know how to say [[this->qghoul]], so I'll just say it, I'll start saying it and fail to say it and hopefully at the end I'll have spoken the failure. The truth is: I need help, or rather, that's not the word..."

"Actually, I need, I know this isn't the right time, but there will never be a right time, I thought, I need to talk to you. I'm sad we haven't connected very much these last few years. It's completely my fault, I accept all the blame, I was trying to be someone I, I can't be, or that I could be if, if, or that I will never be, but could be, and that could be is why the can't be matters, or, or, uh, do you, um, remember, when we were kids, how we used to tell each other everything? As a [[child->qchild]] connection is effortless, aestheticless, it's like being drunk, but as you age all our obstacles accumulate, but I, remember when you would call me your best brother friend? I remember, gods like it was yesterday, the only time I ever felt open, alive like a letter. Why did we ever stop? No, don't answer that, I know why, that's the problem, that's what, it's because I grew into a man, isn't it, and that ruins everything, everything, it has! Don't lie to me, I know I disgust you, how could I not, I disgust myself, I disgust everyone, I ought to be slaughtered like a goat upon the altar of Mithras, so I can repay him the fetid chance he has cast me. Your confidence is yet one more pearl lost beneath my sin seas, and I accept it, I must accept the consequences of my existence, everyone should, honesty should admit us a mass [[grave->qmurdered]]. I believe that, I do, genuinely, or whatever arrogated travesty I suppose in the [[abattoir->qabattoir]] of the genuine."

All men must be made [[women->qwomen]] or [[murdered->qmurdered]]. We're parasites, we're superfluous worthlesses who through sheer brute abuse have enthroned themselves essence rapists, ourselves, enthroned ourselves, because we are the dank nadir of nature, terrifying thirsts deepests for the hells nature harbors. Humanity ought to emulate black widows, little runt men running around fertilizing eggs devoured by nurturer dark angels. Women are the perfected telos of womankind, wise, lithe, capable of advanced experiences, whereas men are oversized rank sheaths of gametes which can be put to good use tilling the land like [[oxen->qludicrous]]. Any difference that marks a male makes them inferior, and we ontically own that guilt, the sin of our being, and we should be crucified for our crimes. Diseased desirers stalking the long shadows lusting for the humanity we are without.

"As a child I was humiliated to be excluded from [[girls->qgirls2]], from the wondrous invisible worlds they built while we were expected to go thrash ourselves against rocks, and always I used to stare at them in disbelief envy, wishing myself among the huddle wearing and weaving intricate artworks, each one expressing new truths to verse the unsaid, with lovely long hair that could be shaped in all kinds of creativities, skin not riddled hideous with creases like mine, but as I grew older those stares grew weirder, sourer, intensified, obsessive, compulsive, envy curdled into lust, and in my imagination I ceased to be a part of the group, I became other, a ghoul lusting to insert itself into where I could never belong, desperate to prise out some seed of their immaculate that could never sprout in my fallows. I am hideous, like I look at myself and just instinctively [[recognize->qwretchedness]] I should never have been born. No longer did I enjoy the company of women, was false, concealing the rancid desire that ranked me different. This compulsion assured me of my exclusion, and the way mothers would look at me when I played with their daughters jabbed me with that exclusion, always every time the unsaid why I shouldn't be here, I don't belong, because I have the [[horrible->qhorrible]] in me."

"We ought to be herded, men. We should be raised in a gymnasium as [[girls->qgirls2]], and those that rebel against it or cannot mistress the material should be placed in a ludus to become men, and when they come of age, there should be a carnival that tests them in the triad of strength, romance, and sex: the feat of strength is a gladiator battle, man on man to the death; the feat of romance is two men taking turns entertaining a lady, then she decides which should be spared and which destroyed; the feat of sex is two men taking turns satisfying a lady, then she decides which to spare and which destroy; and by the end of the carnival only those who have managed to exist beautifully as men should remain, then they will have three years to marry, ten if they pursue military service, but if they cannot, then they will be slaughtered. This will ease us into a matriarchy, which is the sole valid form of government; thus the source of suffering, this inverted hellscape we inhabit, patriarchy, cruel [[joke->qludicrous]] slurred by nature, where simply because men are generally bigger, and also they are not made vulnerable through pregnancy, they were able to bully women into submission, then this violence became calcified into culture, but the state of nature is abhorrent, we must at all costs abolish it, anyone who argues for something because it is natural ought to be fed to bears. To the extent we are any more than mud we must profane nature and slather its blood like paints. The ideal form of government is a meritocratic matriarchy, an academy slowly narrowing to a counsel from which is elected for ten years an empress. As always, you need some amount of scaffolding and hedging to avoid corruption of the form, sure, yes, but the basic idea is the only solution to how we might govern ourselves with as little misery as humanly, womanly possible, and really, even if the empress is not good, as long as she is poignantly horrific, her quirks can frame a time for a then forever affectivivable for us to dance upon as a stage, then truly will she reign a prism perfect. And if I had, if only I had been lucky enough to have been processed through such a gymnasium, then my failure would finally register as a failure, I would [[deserve->qdeserve]] it, when I failed out into the ludus I would be freed of guilt into penance, would finally be recognized as what I am, and when they beat me into some hardened monstrosity, I could at last feel justice, this is what I am, this is what I deserve, but because I never was given the stage to fail, I can never truly deserve the suffering I deserve. I exist ghostly, impossible but poseable. All I want is to be beaten to death, is that so much to ask? I want to fail being a man in a coliseum, I want everyone to reel repulsed from my wretched wrongness as my viscera spills and stains the sandals of some stronger [[beast->qludicrous]] in front of the impassive gazes of the women who will never include me, or no the exulting faces, pure drunken disgust ecstasy, is it not sublime serenity to cherish the successes that occlude your [[failure->qfailure]]?"

"I used to pay penance by drilling needles into my roots for each time I [[lusted->qlusted]], each week would I start at a random side of my mouth and go tooth by tooth drilling into the root and sewing the pulp. I couldn't escape my lust, addicted, fundamentally broken inside, although I own that it is my sin that breaks me, I accept my lust as the consequence of my being desiring a betterness I could never [[deserve->qdeserve]] for having been born this beast, I am existentially guilty, damned by birth for the dross wrought from my [[wretchedness->qwretchedness]] upon the worldpure, there is no me but what I am, a cosmic joke, and as such neutrally I must reckon my abominable, thus I self aware hate myself, hate myself the ineluctable, I hate everything that I am with whatever of me is capable of not just the reflection but reflection, anything I do with this wilted alive should be the humble penance of the condemned, and the penance I thought most useful, the sole penance that gave my soul relief, was to become as feminized as possible, and I, tried, initially, but I failed, I can't, I'm too broken to do it right, everything comes out wrong, inalterably sullied, stains shine forth from clatter tatters attempts, but I wanted, I tried so hard, I repurposed my lust from women to men, forced myself to lust for the rigid purity of the male body, and I did it, the more I forced myself to focus and focus on men the easier it became, there's inertia to sexuality, it's absolutely so incredibly easy once you get over the initial push, not only did I become completely attracted to every feature of their magnificently beautiful bodies, but I was shocked to discover how much I obsessed over them, like the lust became uncontrollable, I couldn't sleep from frustration, spent night after night masturbating to the thought of licking long sideburns or feeling their lanky ankles pressing my legs down as their whole power rollicked in the motion of pumping in to me, so I fixed myself, would minus one tooth from the needling for each time I lusted a man, until eventually I went negative, never needed to drill again, because any wayward lust burst towards women was crowded out by the men I desired, and I sucked so many cocks I could not even fathom what else could be done sexually, and I had them thrust into me from where I could feel but never see, had them smash my face into the pillow, and in the secrecy of the blackness I would mutter millions of women's names, deciding which I was that night, and often I would attract married men by slathering on the scent of their wives, and into the pillow would I louder and louder moan their wives' names until sometimes they pulled free of me in our collective shame, I would steal their wives' jewelry and wear it, I was them, their [[wives->qwives]], but only briefly, fleetingly, when beaten free of this filth into an altered consciousness."

"So ruthless my [[lust->qlusted]] grew that, that, I struggle to say it, but I will, you must please forgive me, I slathered myself in Calpurnia's scent, can you believe it, I had lost all sense of reality beyond the fundamental irreality I mischorded, but Caesar didn't even care for his wife's scent, he came for, for me just as I offered it, the hog grunted to the slop, didn't even once question the wisdom, the grotesqueness of his being my uncle, didn't even flinch, didn't think to ask me how I handled the perversion, simply grunted away, the senseless beast, heaving and huffing at any sensation that sparked his single neuron, I hated him, everything about me that was ridiculously revolting was in him a hundred times magnified, the very sight of this crude monstrosity lurching undiluted substrate failure nauseated my psyche, I wanted to slit his throat priestess to forfend, and because of this I felt like each time he relieved his base impulses upon me, I became more and more excluded from him, alterior, different, strangely relieved, I felt like I was earning the right to loathe him, and the more I loathed him the more I began to love him, obsessed over him, could not bear his ever leaving me, he became necessary to my functioning, and I panicked that he would tire of me, cast me aside, so I doted on his every spare hour, overbrimming his nights with pleasure so that he could not ken a sensuous to lead him other than to my incendiary desire, and I did desire him, whole days I lost lusting his rugged power, the sweet musk my tongue sniffed in the slope to his stomach, taut bristles torches teasing the motion, his warmth filling me with life as I never had felt it inside, so I insisted on accompanying his campaigns, could not bear the thought of him emptying his lusts elsewhere, because only in him in me was I there, loved, known, I know, words which cannot combine, but I, was so, intoxicated... he would rub my cheek with his palm and smile like Uranus coupling Gaia, and he would encourage me to, I started training the footraces to please him, and he would coach me, how complete I was when I satisfied his expectations, his pride became mine, I know no pride but his approval. He would explain the ways of the world, and I would memorize his each proverb, I would repeat them back to him later slightly beautified, so that he would see his beauty in me, because I loved him, [[needed->qneeded]] him, breathed him."

But this snake witch, ah, Egyptian myth murderess, [[she->qshe2]], I mean first I thought she was stealing him from me, but worse, furiously worse, she stole me from me in him, because she, she tricked me, I'm gullible, naive, I admit it, I'm desperate, no sooner does a door open then I sprawl and kiss the hinges, she gave me, she, she, I... I can't explain it, it's... like it never even happened, really, a dream, I'm such an idiot, I hate myself, I hate myself, I should have known, I allowed, deluded in Caesar to pride, denuded yet when he saw me, I don't know, what did he, maybe that, he revoked all the pride in an instant, all my needs, everything that was always wrong resurfaced, we were forced to think, and a mudslug like me cannot sustain ideals. Our love is ruined, gone forever, retroactively tarnished so that I cannot even mine memory for solace. I can never be what we weren't now. Why would she do that to me? No, I cannot blame her, I am the one who must be blamed, I can never forget that, I am the one who is and always is guilty, and she is a justiciar humiliating my gross presumption. I [[deserve->qdeserve]] what she did to me. She stripped me naked to taunt the beast to bay its void reinfusal. I am void, do not count, cannot be counted. Thank you, Queen Cleopatra, for your vicious justice. Thank you for humiliating me so that I could see clearly and in humility accept my fetidentity. I'm ill from this injunction to enjoy, only the beautiful hatred glamoring from my victorious sisters as I lay bleeding in the arena instills in this desiccated husk joy. Why am I not allowed my melancholy, what kind of wretch would try to cure me, I don't need to be cured, I need to be killed, I want to fail, absolutely, but, but it isn't fair, not like this, I don't want this, and that, that, she, she stole that from me, she rendered my ignominy [[ludicrous->qludicrous]]!"

"Like everything in me or about me or of me is a joke, I am entirely [[ludicrous->qludicrous]], there's nothing plausible about my existence, I see myself and do not believe, it's absolutely [[untrue->quntrue]], no one should accept that I exist when I do not actually. Everything points to my unreal, it's unreal how uncanny it is, like I can just look at my hipbone and know like, that's not supposed to be there, that's not actually there, that's not what's really present in space, if I reach out to touch it my brain hypostatizes a phantom into the illusion of touch, but it's not actually there, you can tell it's not actually an independent existent, because it's contingent upon me, upon my swerve dissolution of atomic bonds cascading perfidies upon this plane. If I close my eyes and someone else touches me, it's then that I can see the truth, that they do not touch anything, they reach through me to their own [[fantasies->qwives]], which are disrefracted into a dispell, a disenchant, not towards sterile reality again, but into the processes by which that reality ever pretended to assume stability, I disgear the normal correspondence of x to y, a surjective false unity, an irreducible loss of information into representation, thereby multiply determinable, thereby indeterminable, a ghost, a mistake."

"But, um, Octavian I, don't you think that you're being, um, I'm not sure any, um, of that, is true..." "True? Who cares about the truth? Who here is defined by the truth? Are you? Are you true, Octavia? No, you're not, don't pretend to me you are, we don't have to fake the truth between us. None of me is true, so why should what I say be true, and yet it is absolutely tangible, overwhelming, nauseating, suffocation, sometimes in the afternoons I collapse to my knees struggling to breathe, so what, is that also imaginary, so be it then, I'm completely imagined, I exist inside fantasies, I cannot be made literal beyond the humiliation of skin literally, but only through failure can you exist, and I do and don't exist. The world as constructed constricts me into my artifice that woundweaves captured sentience. Imprisoned in neurosis, the mind you sister, I know you do, you are all of me that is valid, I accept that, and I must be annihilated in order." "How can you, that's not, I mean don't you –" "No, please, let's not argue it but sensation it, hold me and know me, feel what is untrue real. Intervolve into the heat, trust no notional else, believe and seethe. This is, so this is how, so fall into its flow, undergo caused, [[cauterize->qcauterize]] to eludecidate."

"Every detail slobbered together on this rancid corpus blathers bizarrely bizarre, like my jaw, like look at my jaw, what the hell is that, why the hell is that, it's like a switchback grew a muffintop and ended up plummeting over the cliff onto the lower switchback which then trampolined it back up into the air so that when it came back down again the force was so intense that it buried both of them in a crater which caused the entire mountain to cave in and landslide down my neck. My jaw is like if you grafted a panther onto a goose. My jaw is like if you buried a jaw in marmalade for weeks letting the flies slurp it up. It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen, it's like the gods posing a riddle to humanity like, ahaha you rats figure that one out and maybe you'll understand why you [[deserve->qdeserve]] your village to die of famine, I could imagine the gods asking my jaw to Hercules as one of his labors, except he wouldn't figure it out, the gods were mocking him with his so called triumphant labors, like just kill a bunch of things you stupid man, you pathetic block of muscles, you're a machine, you beep bloop punch and grunt, that's what you're good for, go frolic in the stables where you belong. They should have asked him to break his own neck, that would have been a good labor for him, there he could have truly been divinely symbolic. Every time someone mentions Hercules to me I can't help but laugh, like you don't need to try to be half the man he is, you're already equally [[pathetic->qfailure]]."

"We deserve the right to fail with dignity. That's what humanity needs, not love, nor salvation, nor equity, nor comfort. The only human right is the right to be a failure, to be loved a failure, saved a failure, equal a failure, comforted a failure, then erased. Dying in the impossible attempt to succeed is the cosmic humiliation we must subvert. That's why you must kill me, Octavia, you must, you must. It's too late for me, my indignity dignity has been compromised, you have to murder me, it's okay, I brought the blade. You're my sister, the closest to my [[lie->quntrue]], so the only poetry left for me is to be slaughtered in your embrace."

"Okay but and I'm self critical right, I understand that because of this body curse I can never gauge anything of an alterity without running the risk of the fetishization of an other, projecting some dehumanizing self substantiation into a place that need not be lived in but only seen, I get it one hundred percent, women are their own encounter of failure, absolutely I believe it, but that's their undying perfection, that it is their own encounter, I can't even imagine what it would be like to authentically encounter my own failure, not to have already preassumed it in surfaces that cannot be delved, I'm so bitterly envious, like I would accept any humiliation that could be mine, rather than this, euh, not even being good enough to [[deserve->qdeserve]] the humiliation I should have deserved, pathetic, ridiculous, I'm so bizarrely wrong! If I could become a woman, I could fail in whatever way I need to, but like this, it's, [[undignified->qfailure]], not [[real->qwretchedness]], I have no authority to fail, I am a joke."

"Like how stupid even is sexuality, this inane clapping of flesh, why do we need to have separate creatures devolved from [[women->qgirls2]] to perform this gross foul puerility, why can't women simply impregnate each other with a kiss or something, because maybe sexual production is helpful like in some sort of evolutionary sense through the competition of individuals, because of course when we see someone with a stupid jaw like mine we all desperately hope I can't pass on my failure genes, but why even reproduce, why not just make a thousand or so women, have them live for several thousand years so they have enough time to sort themselves out and make their lives meaningful, then by the end of that probably humanity will be successfully completed, so just let the species die a graceful death, let's go out before it's all mere coda, let some new species inhabit the possibilities humanity never could. Makes absolutely no sense not only for our species to keep spiraling about like this, but to waste half of humanity on worthles horrible men like me, it must be that the gods hate us and want us to suffer, honestly I don't blame them, men are the devils humanity [[deserves->qdeserve]] to be degraded by, and because like lust is their point, sex is what makes men so stupid and horrible, the fact that they could hypothetically resist sex makes them more than a disease, if they sincerely could not help it then you would pity them and just kill them all like you do with mosquitoes, you don't hate mosquitoes they're just bad creatures that shouldn't exist and you're doing them a favor by undoing their guilt through genocide, but because men can resist being so debased but specifically choose not to over and over again proves how pathetic the strain is, should be annihilated, right, and -" "I, look, I'm not so sure that any of that is [[true->quntrue]], though, like you're assigning a guilt that um, an intensity..."

"I remember so little from my childhood because almost nothing in it was worth remembering, just a bunch of things that happened to me, but my adolescence, as I began to, to happen... I could feel my [[skin->qskin]] tearing apart, ideas became ineluctable, I hated what I projected, this wound I inhabited [[socially->qwomen]], and because of that I have so many terrors in my head that I can't sleep without thrashing up in a sweat as some scene becomes actual again, same disgust adrenalin... the reason being a child is so easy is because you're nothing, but then you get forced into being something, and it's like, why wouldn't I rather go back into the [[nothing->qfailure]]?"

"My body is so [[ludicrously->qludicrous]] awful, everything is so deliberately obnoxious, it's like I can't even begin to enumerate it, because the entire composite is the problem, but then I wouldn't even want to, I just want to be [[awful->qfailure]] without having to explain it to everyone. Look how rough my skin is, it would ashame a crocodile to be this coarse. I'm not asking for perfect skin, like if it was only that I was conventionally ugly, okay fine you know, that's just what some people have to deal with, but to be this unimaginably ridiculous is what's unbearable, it's hard to take any kind of noble stance towards oblivion when you wish desperately to be quietly dissolved in an acid bath in some alley by a guy who can't see because of the chlorine he regularly injects into his eyes to relish the only physical sensation his desiccated can still jitter. I'm supposed to pretend like my condition is some kind of tragic plight when I can't look at myself without crying laughing? No, it's pathetic, I'm pathetic, I accept it."

"But I, you're not being reasonable, this, how could I possibly want, don't want you to die..." I. "Wasn't it you who said life isn't sacred? I sniveled, because you took the rock to smash the rook wing wounded on the planter, but you consoled me by saying you were trying to be merciful, hastening its tedious agonizing over the brink, elongating shadows already are the darkness. That's why I trust you to be judicious about this, not wallow in reactionary sentimentalisms, but wise in where mercy hides. I'm wounded beyond repair, so why nurse me through decades I dread, puppet my ash through aging acids? Let me go while I still have life enough to demand dignity. You're the only one who can kill me, it's so easy, here's the sword, just stand up and stab me several times, in less than a minute I'll be gone. Do me this one favor, and I'll never ask you for anything ever again, ahaha! Won't you, please, please, Octavia? Help me achieve a purpose and desecrate my corpse. Please, you're the only one to [[trust->qtrust2]]. You have so much [[ultraviolence->qultraviolence]] inside you, express it exquisite in my extinguishness, unmute to my dead silence. I promise you, murdering me will be [[therapeutic->qtherapeutic]], for you, for my dissipating soul. Won't you, won't you please?" "No, but I, can't!" "You already are, we're in this memory." His hand presses my temple, he breathes into my ear a [[kiss->qkiss2]], my shoulders tingle its drool, we relent, relax, recline. Lucent volts purplish prism the loll helix to loom above his face in my planters' prayer grasp clasped. Isle roll insular wavecrest glistens lurch askance our jaws jutting crags mutual beam. Sylvan secrecy to this his plead. Reins ivy strap us to the weening glitch mistress we muse. Blended isthmus by the foams of our separates burrows intangibly the pensivular maroon maroonment shroud fluttering in plash planetular gales until atolls our tones. [[Atonement->qatonement]] undone the corset crush to quiet presentation, strange wilds one wilderness. Hidden cruces relapsed to leylines lodestones myrrh auroral on the lankland dells. Shutters shielded dancing marshal [[resolution->qresolution]].

Blaze infusion blows out the vein. Knifeteeth chew. Zerstoren vicegrip flexed to prowl to pounce. Exultate his bled. Fiendish reds rivulet the fabrics aglisten a gnash. Dappled into the scene syrupy. Dreamtiger. Crush ligaments to drip sap from wrung torsion, slurp up their ashiver to ecstasy outing of body. I relish of Octavian his image of me crucified upon the divan. Nestling in his seep to [[sleep->qdone]]...

Blushing into his blood I weep us one. Corpse feels like mine should feel. I kiss into the wound, suck at its hurt hoping to heal. How can I not close this gap, I created it, didn't I, don't I always, I create gaps between everyone, those who feel whole I undo to distance. Yearning to feel whole inside his bleeder radiator. Can't quite not buzz my nervous to numbness. How is it my love hurts so many people? Is there something wrong with me? Isn't that what he was saying, that I am the authenticity of his wrongness, or, or what was he saying, I don't even know what he meant, how am I supposed to know what I mean? Everyone goes away, because I force them, I have murdered Octavian, now I am freshly [[empty->qdone]] anew...

"I love you, Octavia," rasps. "I love you." "No, no you must not, musn't, you, you..." Pallor of Pallas sheenvolves the devoluptuoused. Reel and gag and sink and sob on his wintry knuckles. Little bursts slop out of my salival mucous spume to sled my moans. Scrabbling desperately at the blood to shove it back in, pressing in further the sword to hilt seal the wound. My temples flare panic. Thin gasps suffocation. Octavian, no, no, please, I, what have I done, no please, I love you, come back, come back, I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me, I, where the hell are his eyes, opaque orbs gloam, I press my nose to his nostrils and haa, haa, aah, ah, ahh, into his chest puddling with the bubbling. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, come back. Cuddling your bawling as so many yesterdays, please stop, stop crying or mother will, [[she'll->qdone]], she sits me down, glares sighs...

Life goes from him. Isn't that so perfect? Life just goes from him. Life has been nesting hiding biting me and gushing unceasingly out of and into my mouth, can you imagine it just, going? Thirsting envious. Look how calm he looks! Gently forever quiet. All of his struggles resolved to eglantines. So peaceful are the dead, why are we [[afraid->qdone]]? We the ones who hunt and hurt. Ought to have corpses in the forum, every day come to kiss and caress their smoothness, understand that it's okay no matter what happens, however much it hurts, however much you have hurt, the outcomes babble unceasingly to serenity zen. Sans mind, sans mode. Stone perfection: impotent and impermanent. And before them, do I even feel jealousy? No, their static soothes me solely because I conduct. In a way, we need each other. Life is empty without death; death is empty without life. Union sacral. Prayer.

Must as he asks, because he asks entrust. Steeped tea steam svelters his whistly halters. Cyan hydrangea dodecahedron counterrevolvers petal prism his sunken in my sway. Imprinting in his talcum cheeks prints. Distortion opals portal his palsies my plaything. Cupping his cusp of my overflowing into his desire denizen. Bidden ibidem. Who asks and who asks in the ask he asks who asks who. Numb loam seeded to one surrept sensate. Chalk mys mists smear. Relented to repose amid the fears the silvery filigree conduitense. Kestrel's dive tessellates the vertigoing dizzy dancing me music box figurine to the divan vandal gothic in the penumbral auspices of his frigid marble vampiric desanctifier. Nous nounless calibrated to ply the spreading plush grasp on, on his throat, nod free of my body into its suckle. In an instant motionless his clothes vanish. Smooth, supple snow. White upon white bursts under pressing porcelain to plume little lovely lines violet in the first tease thrust. Trickle, trickle, I lower to catch snowflakes on my tongue, lap up sugar copper. Sense incensed eyes roll back into my head to see the thoughts I shall banish in the blade into the stone, but the stone bleeds and weeps, throes fountains of scarlet, gushed soaked, dripping with his fading, his, oh god, he's, he, what have I [[done->qdone]]...

"If I am to pretend my life has any reason, I must pretend inject it lethal into the instillment to which I have been condemned, must craft it in antagonism of my being, profanity of all that I altar sacred, therein can this life I have been given be deserved and destroyed. I should be hated, the contempt others hold me in mirrors my own withheld, I can't merely phobically reject their construed to production, must be honest enough to admit that I am this burden, should be [[treated->qtreated]] like it. Humility and humiliation are the same, you see, the first is merely the saintly acquiescence of the latter, the first is the future forward from the second's inescapable presence. I recognize and admit that I am this abomination, therefore, in humility, I surrender to what abominations deserve, to be [[destroyed->qcauterize]]."

"Three days!" Calpurnia shouts from the hall. "Three days and you never called me here? How many times have I told you that if anything happens you must inform me immediately? Do you still breed with memory persistence, or must I graft it onto you? Excruciating process, I remind you. What would have happened had I not miraculously shown up to fix your [[mess->qmess]]?" "We thought, well, we expected she would come out, in time, there's, there's no provisions in there..." "Oh great, so she's starving also. I will puncture your pores with noxious combinants, you toad croak creature. Absolute incompetence, one merely awaits the ceiling's collapse, free finally of the refuse pile." "We asked in Octavian, but um, it didn't, uh..." "Octavian? The child is not called hopeless only on account of comparison. No doubt made things worse. I have to do everything myself!" Lead lumps pressure valves closed to clots. She won't understand the corpse. She'll, she'll, who can say what she'll... Throwing clothes over the corpse. Towels, skirts, scarves, anything, everything. Bury it, bury it, but without making it seem buried, must spread evenly everything, tornadoing the room. Scattered showers of flowing fabrics. Slapping racks to spill. "Octavia, dear? It's your loving Calpurnia. Please do open the door. I promise I won't judge. I'm here to help however you want me to help, okay? Please open this door, I don't want to have to break it down, I would prefer you invite me in. Listen, we won't go to Livia's tonight, I've already sent notice, you don't have to worry about any of that. Please just let me in." She shouldn't be able to tell where he's [[buried->qburied]], right? Except this slumps strangely, so throw on a few layers, then okay a few over here to smooth it out, can't have, but what if she wants to sit on the divan? Oh gods what if she sits on, on, well, I'll have to, we'll just have to battleplan about this, it's going to be okay, breathe Octavia, you've got this, nobody notices anything anyway, you've gotten through so many thousands of things due to absolute lack of awareness, yeah but nothing like having murdered your brother, no I didn't, I didn't, he's not dead, if I unbury him he'll come back to life, he's sleeping, no, you can't disturb the soils, have to leave him interred, there's not enough time, she'll, she can get in unless I let her in, we'll deflect, make it seem like – I open the door.

"Oh, thank you, Octavia, it's, oh, oh dear, sweet Ceres, what's all this blood, have you, have you hurt yourself?" "I, um. It's. Uh. It's like I um, had my period? And then I had an episode? Or uh." "Unborn Jesus! Okay, it's okay dear, come with me to the mirror, we'll clean you up. This isn't your fault, okay? If anything it's my fault, I should know better than to leave you alone for nearly half a week. Has Octavian been by? Has he, did he help at all?" "No uh, haven't seen him in awhile, or actually, no, you're right, I did see him, but, but briefly, we didn't say that much, so, he's not here..." "I need to talk sense into that boy, seeing you like this and not letting me know. It must be so hard for you, neither Octavian nor Antony take proper care of you, and I'm just, so busy, with the things your, uncle gets up to, so I need to be able to rely on... here, let's rub this sponge on your face, clean you up. We'll toss the pajamas. I'll get you another pair like it if you want. There, that probably feels better, doesn't it? We'll draw you a bath, poor dear. You haven't eaten, have you? I've told the cooks to prepare licorice cake, is it still your favorite, surely you haven't developed a new favorite and not told me? I've always personally found licorice the most gauche candy, but I can see how you might find it colorful, playful... gods, you're just soaked, aren't you..." She rubs at me as if I might go away. Jostlepeering into the room maids to whom Calpurnia waves harsh dismissives behind me as if I should not know what is done behind my back, clearly I know, I wanted to amend it before she came in here to... "Come, let's get you a new shirt. Oh, Octavia, you really musn't be this messy, there's, strewn all over your -" "No!" I yank her back, ignore her oh so preciously startled. "No, let's just, we'll sit here." "But you must put on a new shirt dear, we must -" "No, I don't, let's just sit for a second." I can't let her pull of the clothes. I can't let her see Octavian. She's going to see Octavian's corpse and freak out. She won't get it. I literally can't explain it to her. I have to get her out of the room but without letting the maids in. I need to get rid of the corpse, I need to, to, or, I could borrow it? Slackjaw my limp into Calpurnia's clutches, my spirit surges into Octavian. I knot a chemise into my wound and peek out from the pile. They don't seem like they can see me. Think I can escape. I have to learn what I've learned from the rats. They've never seen the rats, so if I can just, imitate... I scurry forth the corpse through the narrowest band of the corner cornice, skitterslither through the plaster, worm my way out into the streets. Except I look like Octavian now. I slip back into the room, gather some clothes and makeup, plop into a gutter to hide, dress myself to Octavia, now where, where is my husband, ahaha, wouldn't Octavian be proud, stealing another husband... I snap jolt splat back into my Octavia body as Calpurnia throws me into a bath. Reeling. Have to focus, have to focus, I can do this, I can project my consciousness, I have to, it's the only way to escape. [[Focus->qend15]].

Dreadged dimmed, countercandular decanter, rigors upright the corpse cackle starers trained on my clammy fuss, agawp in goblin grimace slacked to mawkish rot glower. Sickle stiletto teethworms clack sawdust wordette clumps. If she looks behind, she'll definitely, how could she not? Prominence, summit severe from clothes cols, bolgia grooves debulge the bulbously deathbloat blears a cataract leer. Inch emerge ephemes lozenge the throat closed choked sandpapery. Regolith ruin cradle undulates in the too clear mirror cataphasia lucubration antilucid. Juggernaut inthesis blazes the junkhill citadels celestial testament. Harmonized to the vertices boring into our backs which she can see if she will just look up. The mirror will make known. Sweat lubricates us, she cannot seem to hold fast to me, drifting and tugging mooring. Has she... how could I possibly explain? Hates me already, treats me like a charge, but how infinitely worse a murderer, she'll think I'm insane... "Ah, thank you dear, I nearly had to knock it down, but oh, oh, you're bleeding, eah, you've so many cuts. you've a cut here. You've bandages, don't you? Maybe they're back here somewhere, I'll –" "No, let's, let's just sit here, okay? Sit down." "Oh um, alright dear, of course dear, we'l sit before this mirror and fix you up, okay? It's going to be fine, we'll fix you right up, you'll look great in no time, let's see here, do you have a -" "No!" I yank her short of turning, arresting glance in the mirror to deflect her gaze from the mirror so she cannot inspect the reflection. "No, we must, please, stay here..." Ridiculous, am I supposed to keep her frozen forever? Maybe if I knocked her out, briefly, I could go smack Octavian back under the clothes. But she's stronger than me, shall subdue me, then see what I've, then she'll think I was trying to kill her too, it'll all seem weirder. How can I fix this! Why must I keep fixing? Nobody cares how much effort I stress into fixing apparencies. Octavian didn't even think for a moment how exactly I should dispose of the body. Everyone expects everything of me to smooth the serrations. Oh let Octavia drown this, she's the cistern. Have to endure my silly aunt's babying me to ego death to keep your secret, you selfish, or, or selfless... no, no tears, zero tears seared stay, you stray devil. What if, sidestepping facing the wall, I lead her from the closet, say I'm ready to go outside? But then the maids will sweep into the room and. Trapped. She'll see. Maybe tactically retreat, accept defeat, gouge out her judgments, so she knows, but cannot lord. Dusts rapid drip a rats stalactite that swarms the corpse and consumes it. Nearly shoot up to swat them off his precious, but shouldn't this be his desire, and isn't this, perhaps the rats wish to assist me? Maybe we're on the same side. Rats ineluctable become rats indispensable to the risen inextricable. Cannot help the tears though profaned by Calpurnia's catching them. Nobody else wants to help where I really am save the others abandoned to that collapsible domain, but they took the body from me before I had time to appreciate it empty, they destroy, they've destroyed it, destroyed me, and how can this possibly be helpful when everything is their fault? But it's, it's, the body is gone, they've, they consumed it without Calpurnia noticing, how could she not notice, how come nobody but me ever notices anything! I ought to slaughter the rats so I can bathe in the same ignorance, murder restore to the void some purity their voraciousness justifies and is justified by that tethers us together. Nebulous blesses blacksmithied in nullificates caustitcherisystems, hate the rats, hate the rats, thank you, rats, thank you so much for saving me from this, I genuinely can't even believe it, the body's gone, just like that, vanished, gone, poof, she didn't even notice, ahaha, the only two sentient things in this hell are the rats and I, oh I love you, rats, I love our mutually hated, I hate you wretching me hateful, thank you, slaughter you a promise when the varicose bubonic bloomers burst us aware of the dwindling and ruined you wreak on my halted havoc, we're going to die together, since we're what's alive. Have blood on my hands, you doubt me? I'm not through with you, don't think, but, but glazes stupefied my amenable static tending to her ministrations, the more my aunt speaks, the [[less->qend15]] I need to...

Ruptured reality reels headrush cinders clarity to impossible return with this death engine's roar. Cannot keep subsuming under expectations, wean from nepenthe nuncatenatrix. Loose the layabout days of yes and of course to magnify radiate revulsive majestic choice. They will learn to hate me opposing them, merely learning to love, finally must I fester inside Mark Antony, the foremost of those who never learned to [[love->qstart16]], but marriages are not made for love but to hell the condemned, divorce acceptable not for exlovers but for those who discover they are interred in different sins. We were matched to this misery, so damned must we commiserhate this. I yearn to be known and nullified in my husband's devoid. They can judge, but it is so easy to judge, so difficult to be, precisely as it should be, birth doomed to desire to miscarry spectacular before the trenchant demisers. Feeling disgusting is authenticity, there is no other authenticity. Shame sentience connects us upon repulsion. Spouses should not be soulmates but soul resignations to designation. Imagines he can be happy disgusts me most, because I recognize such sin in me, I know I tried to, thus I must pale mortified as Octavian know what I mutually forsake in our loves, or, or, or we'll never be in love... yes, maybe I mean the word, I'm not sure... I instance my simulacrum for Calpurnia. While she nurses the husk, I slip out.

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XVI: Cleopatra''] --- Night lights laid out before us city as we [[please->qplease]]. Comfort of the cottony congeal of lampshade tangerines. Just us however we [[might->qmight]] make them. //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

Press into the wine of his bubbling glulch and soak in it sacrificial. Yawslung my tongue on his gummed up burbling through orifices. Pleasing to the gods such a. We shall have [[rain->qdone]] this month. Let the unneed to avenge percolate to your roots the need for hierarchies of symbolic obligations. Those who owe it to me will be harvested when all has fallen. Lavish in his blood the first fruit juice of the season. The years of penance and ash are over. Now has come the time to taste.

"I hate this facade of mandatory joy I am supposed to feign, like oh yes if only someone would extend me grace I could be saved, no, I cannot be saved, the entirety of my humanity impignes upon my irredeemability, otherwise I am merely wrong, need to be corrected, everything cobbled together in the negative of I erased in the instant, which of course is my desire, but only insofar as that desire vanishes the I, does not presume some phantom I which carries from there the phantasmal; precisely the vanishing is the instantiation of a genuinely I, that I loop back into myself mobius complete and elision, I undo the mistake, that if you correct me to some other mistake, I cannot find my way from there to annihilating authenticity. You do not get to presume for me some fantasy home I wish not to build. You aren't allowed to cut into my throat and replace the words. That's, and that's what she stole, the Egyptian, in her merely murder of me, simply she killed something, gazed upon its bleeding irretrievable into the soil, and I yearn so, bleed me into the soil, don't you understand Octavia, I need you to kill me, so that I can find myself in this carcass actual." "What?" "She took it from me, so only you, my sister, can [[give->qcauterize]] it back to me. You can annihilate me in the embrace of authenticity, won't you, can't you, please, is there not some love in you that can choose to butcher me?"

"You must try this," Antony marshals his dignity to somehow a straight line. "It's our greatest perversion, mulsum. We dry grapes, then mull all the delicate flavors to death in sweetly unsubtle honey, drunkslicked globs of bee goo, utterly profanely delicious. Doesn't even make sense as a drink, barely better than cunnilingusing a beehive, stings about the same going down." [[Sunbathing->qsunbathing]] in his laughter as it pours viscous. Clink cheers to sip's wince. "Not awful," I cough, "but why waste time with grapes if you don't taste them?" "Because a culinician delights in nature's distress, savors its bled flavors. Why did some ludicrously brave soldier of our beasthood monstrous suckle a cow then spit the saliva to curdle in a cave for years? Alchemical obsession, slurping up the earth's bizarre. Mangling grapes into strange graves is the wit of wine, the why." "We cherish milk as a sacred gift: the milk of Hesat, cow avatar of Hathor, nurtured the earliest pharaohs, like Hera to your Heracles, which, by the way, is another of the mistakes that explains Romans, losing the etymonym, the glory of Hera, demigod Heracles as the triumph of divinity's motherhood's labors. Milk links one life to the next, we feast first upon the earth conception, then conceive what we unearth." "Is that so? It's quite different here. We abjure life of any subduction. To the goddess of our family, Vesta, we assign virgins to tend her sacred flame. Isn't it so deliciously [[perverse->qperverse]]? We taunt Vesta by surrounding her with only those women who have forsaken her domain, hearthless and heartpressed, stoking her gift to remind her we never need ask of her anything again, would rather die into the void vituperative of her curse. Woven alive in agony patterns, we pursue its frayed ends."

"Odd presumption for builders binders." "Hypocrisies evince the truths how we hold them. Precisely as enslavers rebuke we natural causality. Inhabitorturers of marble carcasses, what else?" "Tell me, prince of hypocrites, am I one?" "I would love to have you in my domain." "I'm serious, do you consider me a hypocrite?" "Of course, hypocrisy is the third dimension of character, the depth to reception and projection. In the battleground between certainties you uncover ambiguities the human. Majestic scion sorceress of the ageless, yearner desperate to be yearned to ken the purpose of a being without, wherein lies the goddess pride of her fathers? In the lies, unnaturally." "Do you love my lies?" "I love wherever you lie." "Right [[here->qhere]]."

Thirsting thickness in the kiss salivates plosives. Stroking his hair to attach myself to firmament. Heat heals. Tangibly wanted, and if incomplete, if indirect, if imperfect, alas, so all. Into my neck he swans so immediacy filmy my gaze heady barely parses the darkness to discern on the ceiling spidering, two yards long neck brokeslack nearly to biting him, Octavia. Her pounce preempts my shout. Yanked up in the air squirms Antony as she wraps her limbs around him but holding onto his ankle I jerk them atop me, she skitters and hisses, I hiss, she launches at me, but I jam down her throat, she chokes on half my arm, bites until I thrash back in a saliva stringing hail. Gum blood cherries her snarled whimper. In an ancient gesture I summon several centipedes colossi that harass her to fetal, but she uncoils pierces through the body of one, its bluish blood erupting. She swipes at my cheek and draws my blood bluish faience. I smash her into the wall where her head crashes, she dazes, I throw her across the room, she wails limping to the window, falls out into the watery onyx. The two surviving centipedes skitter chase. "[[Octavia->qoctavia3]], wait!" Antony to the window. "No! Antony, you must let her go." "I have to, she's hurt, I have to –" "You have to stay here! I'm hurt." "I'll, I'm coming back, I promise, but I have to, I mean she's –" "No, you stay here! I will not let you go." "Why not? Why, can't I at least [[explain->qexplain]] things to her? I owe her an explanation! I can soften the starkness, ensure she doesn't hurt –" "She knows how you have already chosen, you and her and we are damned to the [[outcome->qoutcome]]." "But can't I –" "No! It's too late! You can't go!"

"Why not?" "Because, because I'm pregnant!" "What are you talking about? How is that –" Moans fault my skin ripped, wombquake slaughter eruptives bomb two bodies onto the floor screeching. Torn open further until I fold backwards whole. Squirming and squealing twins aged to six years. Stumbling towards their soaked in amniotic fluids, ammonia, milky blood and bloody milk, slurries of cartilage, bone, and umbilical jellies. Collapsing upon them to kiss their foreheads. Antony staggers back, but I shrink the room until we liquidify pressurized to a tonic, then extend to bodies solidified inseparable. The three of us smile at him a family portrait. "Come, Pharaoh, join your fateful beloveds, this era's sunset in our [[son->qson]] Alexander Helios, last of the Greeks, Romans and Ptolemies, forever of nocturning in our [[daughter->qdaughter1]] Cleopatra Selene, empress of our pressed into me. Ruinous worldwakers dress we what we wield in woetry. Love us upon the altar. Doomed to [[demiurge->qdemiurge]], must in us your matter. Journey virgin into our togetherrain." "Cleopatra..." "Call into me your sound." Tremulous he cirruses caresses on our pristine [[visionia->qvisionia]]. He presses us into his chest. "My, my family..."

Into my son I place all my refusal, all my [[exuberance->qdemiurge]], all my willingness to find, all my unwillingness to be denied. May he reign a render of gordian knots, may he reign a warmth that kills whatever comes close and grows whatever bends before his skyward.

Into my daughter I place all my curiosity, all my gentility of [[regret->qvisionia]], all my artistically evocative, all my purification of pain. May she reign as all her mothers died wishing we had, may she reign implacably elegantly cruel.

Into inclusion clade. Absolves the walls lace florets wind swishing swoon summoning a summit scene. I unload a picnic basket, bask in the clear. Crisp sunshine citrusy vividifying jumpstarts the ebullient jitters. Slightly suppressed desire to race down the mountainside arms wide until flight or fall pins me to the immensity. Little baubles of tang, cranberry beads rustly in winestirs. "Cleopatra Selene, stay on the blanket, you're ruining your dress," the sheer joy of admonishing. "But it doesn't ruin my dress. I like the patterns the mud makes." "Will you please stop finding the beauty in mud for one second and just do as I tell you?" "She has so many different dresses at home, at least the mud makes this one special," Antony winks at her. "Why don't you complain about the mud on my dress?" Alexander Helios. "Because yours is already ruined, I'm already resigned to burning it when we leave." "Well then I ought to ruin it more!" "You ought to," Antony winks at him. "Antony, don't encourage their worst habits." "If these are their worst habits, that's encouraging, so we may as well." "I'm going to roll down the hill!" Alexander. "Please don't," I murmur to a sip of [[spiked->qspiked]] tea. "Mommy I want to roll down the hill too, please let me, please!" "Nobody's going to roll down the, hey, Alexander Helios, hey, stop that right now! Come back here." "Okay, but, but Mommy, you should make a golem then, we should play with a golem!" "I can see not even a tempest could shake you still. How is it that someone so much smaller than me contains a hundred times my energy? Where do you even store it?" I hum an Egyptian hymn and gesticulate to a rockface that bursts blue and black blurs until blooms from the stone a strider. "I am a slave being of primordial stone by ancient magics cursed to sentience to serve this instance of energy fluctuation you live," the [[golem->qgolem]] sparks tongueless. "I want to ride it!" Alexander Helios clambers up. "Hey kid, watch out for the electric conduits, alright?" Antony. "I shall protect this creature from my awesome power," the golem. "Hey, hey, let me ride the golem, let me, don't leave me!" Cleopatra Selene flails at its presumably feet. "Alexander Helios, how many times must I remind you to include your sister? Order the golem to pick her up." "Oh powerful golem, I command you, arise my sister to me!" "Your will ineluctably binds my purpose." Conversing in scratchy screechies drive they the golem in circles, circles.

"I suppose we should know better than to presume they're going to get all their screaming out, seems rather to simply set a tone," me. "You can't shush them too much, or it gets ingrained, they grow up secretive and insecure." "Those sound like virtues. Riddled with doubts we shove deep into our hiddenness is the seed of success. Perhaps we ought to stitch closed their mouths for maximal shush instillment." "Sounds good to me. Parenthood gravetends our own childhoods, so maybe we can make them the flaws that would fix us." "I guess the curse to the blessing wist they might be better than us." "At least they'll blame you, not me, since we ensured our daughter will love me." "Is it your arrogance or mine that names her Cleopatra? I'll have to ask Cleopatra, my mother, or her mother, Cleopatra, or her sister who replaced her as queen, Cleopatra Selene." "Your great grandmother gave two of her daughters the same name?" "Yes, well, old Cleopatra also named both her sons Ptolemy. It proves rather useful to have interchangeable children in the midst of dynastic struggles. In fact, my mother named my older sister Cleopatra, but she died in infancy, so she just gave her next daughter the name, conviced I suppose that there must be a Cleopatra, she would simply keep bearing daughters until she got one. So actually, now that I think about it, it must have been my arrogance that named her, our legacy of arrogance outranks you." "Can it not be both? Isn't arrogance where we marry and bring forth children, further us?" "I'm unsure children are any further us. I doubt I'm any further my mother or father, if anything I'm further away from where they fled. You know, when my father and I lived in Rome, he gave me the name Philopater, to translate me to the Romans he said, but I think it was to reassure himself in the wake of his wife's murder. Perhaps he might have wished his children further. Should we be different? I suppose, if anything, I'd prefer Cleopatra Selene to share nothing of me but the name, none of my confusion." "Ah, but I do enjoy the confusion, adorable to call out Cleopatra and have the both of you turn to me. I relish the attention of my two most precious girls." "Well relish me with some of that attention," resting my head on his lap, luxuriating and a little lusting in his strokes of my hair. Watching our children play dazzles our [[intimacy->qend16]] with selfishness' softer shades, well nearly, until the golem begs: "Mistress of my existence, when my work is done, destroy me, please have the mercy to undo me."

"Shall you pass me some of your special tea?" Antony. "No, no, you must stay perfectly sober, so you can properly [[ambassador->qend16]] us to the kids." "I thought that was the golem's job." "No, the golem's job is to suffer, your job is to be sober. Maybe similar in concept, but different in quiddity." "Quiddity? Really, that's the word you're going for?" "Yes, you're lucky I didn't say qualia." "Oh but I love it when you talk dirty to me." "Antony, please." "All I'm saying is there's a labial quality to qualia, like to pronounce it aren't you spreading the lips, pushing the tongue: qualia!" "Antony!" "Qualia is such a dripping wet word, practically drools from your mouth." "Oh my god, Antony, we're on a picnic, the kids are over there." "Yes, they're over there. Isn't that what living with kids is like, you're constantly looking for small gaps when they're not around? You can't tell me you're not a little aroused by the qualia of the situation?" "Of course I'm aroused you idiot, Shu's mercy, this was supposed to be a picnic and now I have to sit on my knees." "Isn't that the point of a picnic though, eating out?" "Oh my god please stop," shivered to a laugh. "Alright, alright, I'm just teasing, investing a little bit here and there to store up for the payoff. Pass me a scone, will you, and the cream?"

Perfected are we beyond sight or sound into a soundless to dwell. Repose dappled with stained glass shifting mixes of melancholy and exuberance, awe and intimacy, hope and hopelessness coiling around your throat in smoke curlettes. Longing that here forever as we are could we merely be, but we must be extravagantly to cause. Eschew every gentleness that does not harrow you to knifeblade. From the expansive condensed to a particularity, dropped into people. Antony leads our children by the hands while I hold out my arm to grasp us into a localized. We enter a memory emporium. "Shall we get you children some memories?" I smile. "I want memories, I want a memory!" Alexander Helios. "What's a memory?" Cleopatra Selene. "A memory is a thing that gets stuck in your brain for better or usually worse." Antony. "A memory is a color you can use to canvas your world to wound beautiful." I. "I'm going to have memories!" Alexander Helios. "Yes, shall you pick out some? You should start with some good memories first. Oh, here we go, you and a father go hunting in the summer for cicadas, climbing up trees to try and catch one, and you have a vivid recollection of staring up at a shadowy tree and hearing it ringing with life you can't see; you will have an ability to intuit when something teems with elements you cannot recognize. That sounds good, doesn't it?" "I want it, please, Mommy, I want to go cicadas with Daddy!" Cleopatra Selene. "It's yours, then. Shall we get you another [[good->qgood]] memory, or shall we find you an [[awful->qawful]] one?"

Family is those to whom you pledge not to drown without them. Against the world a network of griefs you will not give up to the grinding daylight. Anyone whose [[fractures->qstart17]] you will mirror. To be a mother, to be guilty of other lives. To be irreplaceably precarious. Knowing who I must perform for. Egypts whose deserts will I wander never to witness.

"I'm sorry, I'll be back, I promise I will, I just, I feel honorbound to, I have to!" Antony. Sprints out through the [[door->qdoor]] he in the [[false->qfalse]] hope he can [[escape->qescape]] me. Oh, men, so full of ideas, it's adorable.

Through a door he [[barges->qhome1]] into my mouth, writhes about my tongue salival massaging him to sleep, shh, shh, no need to run, think, act, feel, merely dissolve into my amylacy. Sucked wet to lollipop shine his swallowed into my [[acids->qacids]].

He finds himself in the fresh air, but the city isn't there. He casts about as if suddenly drunken. He [[trips->qplummets]]. So thick is the forest that springs up around him that he is impaled on four separate trees and [[torn->qtorn]] apart as they spread apart in the canopy, but I lovingly basket his shreds, [[sew->qsewn]] them back together.

Through the door he encounters a cement fist that gently punches him through the [[wall->qwall]] back to my feet. He scrambles up and startles away only to slam into a wall that is me now. He [[crawls->qcrawls]] back but the ground opens up beneath him and he plummets into my embrace. I kiss his forehead. He slips away and stumbles through the dark into a pit of snakes, each of which has my face, we [[squiggle->qsewn]] over him venomously pleasant.

Behind drywall he sidles and splats into my throat which reforms around him, I spit him out into my palm and pet him. He jiggles through my fingers and runs through an elongating corridor, the [[doors->qdoor]] keep popping open to display me in hundreds of different looks calling him [[home->qhome1]].

Bent into a ventilation shaft crawling. Gusts of my sweet nothings thrash him through, he smashes his head on bumps and twists and splatters out of a [[grate->qgrate]] into my [[embrace->qembrace]].

He scrambles through a series of [[burst->qsunken]] pipes until he barges through our front door. An apron ties itself around him, yanks him to his knees, he rubs the floor spotless. I stride through the front door and lay down a briefcase full of the spoils of empires. He is [[thrown->qrecontexualization]] into offering me a homecooked meal. I thank him, then go kneel in front of a buzzing screecher for hours.

I see him through razorly slats and wave. He tumbles away and bumbles into a washing machine and round and round he goes gasping for air in the deluge until [[soaked->qacids]] he splunks out cleansed into my basket, I grasp his corners and shake him out, fold him, place him in a pile. He rolls down it like a mountain, suffers a semiminor semimajor [[concussion->qconcussion]], probably not good for his spine, so I slap him onto the ironing board and [[bulldoze->qbulldoze]] him straightened.

He jambles through a [[juicer->qacids]] emerging only partially mulched into my sipping hug. My limbs grow limbs that grow limbs that all [[grapple->qinterlock]] him.

Trippingly he skips over vats. Maladies bubble and fizz popping over the brims lavaballs to singe him until he [[splashes->qsunken]] into a vat, his skin is stripped [[clean->qgrate]], so I crane up his bleached bones and slip on a customized skin I've [[sewn->qsewn]] for him.

Bumble weaving between my knitting needles on a Persian carpet depicting the love of Vis and Ramin he dances as over hot coals over a scene with Vis and Ramin in the temple indistinguishably furtively beautiful. He threads through and [[plummets->qplummets]] into the colorless but I catch him in a crochet hook to [[interlock->qinterlock]] him in.

He stumbles over a manhole and down he goes into the sewers where I snake after him slithing fangs, but he jump races up a ladder which inverts so that he goes deeper and the gravity [[recontextualization->qrecontexualization]] dizzies him into letting go and he plummets for hours and hours during which time I sing to him hundreds of love songs both Egyptian and Roman, a few in Greek, and one in Persian I've learned from my astrologer.

He grabs onto a balustrade but the balustrade becomes stalactites slippery from which he slips between my arms and we [[echo->qecho]] endlessly through the [[caves->qdeeper]].

Into a thicket he is thlunked, pocked, punctured, he pallors [[sunken->qsunken]]. My wolves surround him and rip him apart limb by limb and carry them like sticks back to me, and I [[sew->qsewn]] them together.

Inside a skyscraper he [[hides->qsunken]], runs up its staircase floor after floor after it is the floor now as my bulldozer flattens a floor to shock [[down->qplummets]] the building a floor, slowly catching up to him, he clings to the antenna on the roof, but I bulldoze the final floor, bulldoze the antenna, [[bulldoze->qconcussion]] him.

Out of the fire alarm he drop clumps onto the floor bluffed up with smoke. He suffers a concussion, so I kick down the door dressed murder nurse, strap him to a gurney, wheel him down a hallway hooked up to all sorts of intraveneous drips like honeysuckle tincture and komodo dragon saliva and itty bitty lovely little millipedes that can wiggle prance through his veins, beneath my tongue I reach for a syringe, it glints in the hospital flourescents, I jam it into his neck, we moan through it together, I'm squeezing so much [[liquid->qdeeper]] into him his eyeballs threaten to burst, out of his throat comes my [[voice->qecho]], ah, aren't we so romantic?

Bursts from my hold he into the open sea, sinking together, choppy waves slice submerge, luminously beneath him tropical fish shoals weave in and out of each other to form animations of me inviting him deeper, [[deeper->qdeeper]]. He opens his mouth to [[scream->qecho]] but the waters gush in, become him.

He skips out of slowly undilating window to [[splash->qsunken]] into an airlock. The outer door shuts. The pressure increases. The pressure increases. He's pressure [[cooking->qhome1]]. He's slapping at the inner door, which opens, and I welcome him into our hermetically sealed, why should we ever bother with the world again?

Overtaken into my pressure he collapses a sigh. I rock him gently. We're going to be okay. I run my hands through his hair. I caress his cheek. He stablizes. He nods. He's happy. We're going to become mutually perfected. We're going to be a [[dynasty->qdynasty]].

Through me through me into me flow. Cascade smile. Intraveneous winks. Subsume into our tryst in the [[future->qdynasty]] we carve from the quaking hereafter.

Inevitable recursion to contagion carries us through the faultlines emanating from its woundless to appear. Cursive disfunctions curl back beneath the waves to the same spell. Told unto utterance recursive to inevitable. Before Antony I float in the nightscar, beneath my each palm rests the head of a our child: our daughter, Cleopatra Selene, jet hair razor straight as mine; our son, Alexander Helios, buoyant into the same radiant smile as him; I beckon Antony forward towards us. Assume dynasty. Annihilate history into a name. We shall [[become->qend16]] in the corpses of all who deny.

''Octavia'' Crying so much clouds start to rain out of pity. Taken away from me, taken away, stolen, but never even had him to have been stolen, he's never loved me, he claimed me so that nobody else could love me but then never gave me any love, nobody has, everyone hates me, everybody uses me, I'm besieged by rats and no one even cares, and it's like I'm supposed to show up to your torture dinner smiling? I don't know what smiles look like, I haven't seen one, oh a grimace sure, a snarky grin obviously, I can do those, and it's like somehow the softness necessary to relent the harsh lines becomes its own harshly lining, laughter lines also crease the face to a mold, why should how my face contorts be wrong, because I am wrong, that's why Antony doesn't love me, is I'm not [[lovable->qlovable]], I deserve to suffer, Octavian's right, we all deserve to suffer, I am full of myself and all we are is sin so I am full of sin, I am disgusting and cannot hide it, and that's why he loves that [[Egyptian->qegyptian3]], she slathers on so much concealer that she doesn't have a face, and those are who they love best, the blankly, the open to projection, and I'm so soiled with rat dinge that I cannot blank myself, so I cannot be projected upon, I appear, and that is the obstacle they stumble on, I trip up their open path with someone who cannot be bent to their direction, which is why I hate myself, is I don't even have a direction, it's not like I'm bumping into them as I go my own way, I'm just there, stranded in the way, it's like I'm living on a staircase, going about my day as people angrily sidestep me or trip down the staircase to avoid my stretched out to sleep.

Lightly onto our lightly like anything could dream itself from our fingertips we frond the sunlight to peaks. Antony syllables the shine: "Have you ever tried whiskey?" "What a silly word, whiskey, sounds like a kind of tiny pancake." "Ah, but whiskey is a sacred drink, we offer it to gods, thus why I serve it to you. Whiskey is an alchemy, you bizarre nature and blend the results, steep it for decades in its epistemic bubble, like you could drink steam the sharpness of taste. Sometimes sweet, sometimes sweat, always warming. Here's one from Hispania with nutmeg that fills the palate instantly, honey drizzles; or another from Britannia that oozes caramel, toffee, butter, and rolls into a lasting shimmering finish; or perhaps you'd prefer peaty, punishing, notes of hardwood floor; no, I know which you to serve, one that's crisp, clean, nutmeg, a premonition of butterscotch that never quite materializes, teasing instead to almonds in a regal pseudosweetness cool and watery. Ah, I've always savored this one majestic; here, try it." "Oh gosh, that's, well, that gets in your throat." "Yes, I've always thought so, like deeper tannins." Mustering my elegance not to cough in front of him. "You've definitely done something [[perverse->qperverse]] to nature to achieve that result." "That's the intention, we want to torture nature into squirmoozing strange and unexpected delights. We love to [[sunbathe->qsunbathing]] in surrepts." "Aren't you coy." "Well, that's why we crave our flavors otherwise."

Looking out on the darkness unsure where I fit into it if at all. Why daily must I claw my way from calamities to suffocation calms? Why do I have to suffer annihilations just to be at the level the rest dance? How do I reach a normal not bound of bodies? Feels like every step I take takes an argument, but I have nothing to say, no voice to shout it with. Trying to force some wasted I don't even believe in, am I not the antagonist? Shouldn't I just shut up and let everyone else... Grabs my shoulder to swing me towards his in the rain still heaving warmth. I unyield from the impulse to leap into him a kiss that erases everything beyond the brink of remember and endure, but still his holding my shoulders enflames the desire to rest forever in its eclipse. Nearly seance his candelabra ambers of death passions. His face looms over my wistful soaked, shaking that I am not its shadow tied. "Octavia," he breathes as if a phantom feverish, "I'm sorry your happiness has been charged to who cannot kindle your dreams to memories you deserve to float luminous within to eternity. You deserve better, and if there shall ever be any love between us, it shall be my religion of that right." "Antony, I just..." Not enough strength. "I know. This is my fault. I tried to make you happy in the ways that I could, but it is not in my soul to make you happy in the way you wish I could, and for that debt I shall meet my demons silent." "Why, but why, [[why->qcompetition2]]? Why am I not lovable?" "You are loved." "No, I'm not, I'm not!" "There are more loves than the one you ask of me." "But why don't I, why her, why not me? Just tell me why, that's..." "Octavia. Look at me, if only for this last time look at me. The world clashes us together how we must endure. For reasons beyond both of us, we have been betrothed to a dynasty, a polity, a cause, and in that alliance I have sought to serve you, because I, you have been given to me like a sister, and as a sister I love you, I love you deeply and endlessly, and I have sought a thousand ways to encourage your luxurious to flourish, to find loves that could make you feel deeply and endlessly. If those have failed, that is because I was not good enough, not you, you, you're perfect, you're a diamond buried beneath a mountain, radiance immaculate hidden for the one specialized to dive into your sparkles, I will find you that person, I promise you, even if it should sweat my last gasp from me. That it has not been me, you must simply forgive me, as the drowned do their ships, battered and scattered on the scarred seafloor." "I don't hate you for not loving me, I hate that I love you." "I, Octavia..." "And to see you, to see her, her, that she can come into this city for what, two weeks, and already she has you, when I've tried for several years to, to live up to, to, to make something of our [[marriage->qmarriage]]? Do you know how that makes me feel, to see that it is not that you do not love, but that rather it's just that you don't love me, that I'm the problem, that never in a million millennia could I make you care as she can wink in a week." "Octavia, I, she, I knew her years before we were married, she has been at work in my soul since before I spent my first sleepless night worrying about your health. She has not outperformed you; you have never been in competition; my heart has loved her, then, one blessed day, grew to discover how it could love you. You both make this world a more beautiful place, make my experience of it grander and more gorgeous than I can ever grapple to understand, I wander beneath the stars awed and terrified that I might share such a stage with so many better crafted for its agony artistry. If my love for her is different than my love for you, it is only because you are separate heavens, and I have but the strength in this fleeting body to chase one sunset boundless."

I stumble into a puddle and simply relent. Lying face down, holding my breath. Lifted out, almost dream believing it, involuntarily moaning from the unexpected warmth closure, turned to face, through tears, Antony. I shake my head, but his gravitas smooths me to listen. "Octavia, I'm sorry. I accept your hate. I deserve it, do not deserve your love." "Why though, why, why?" "You know why, don't you? I've tried to be honest with you, but I, I suppose I thought I could protect you, that if you wanted to believe in a fantasy, I could just let you believe it, live in it with you, but, but perhaps I am wrong, I am not sufficient to fill a world I am not in." "But why, why, why?" "Because I didn't want to hurt you! I care about you, you're like my little sister, and I tried to let you live in your own little world, I provided you everything, didn't I, didn't I take you on so many excursions, I bought you so many luxuries, I tried to match you up with Porcia, I tried everything in my power to make you happy, but I, I've said to you, maybe not enough, but only because it's so brutal and painful to say, that our alliance can't be one of love, I can't in good conscience pretend to love you in the way you want." "Why though, why, you never say why! What's so good about, about her, that I'm, that's not..." "It's not a [[competition->qcompetition2]], it's not either you or her, you're a beautiful person with your own role in the world, I merely have my own role, have to follow where it leads, who it leads me to." "It is a competition, everything in life is violence, and if I have nothing, if I waste away smothered by your bribes, it's because of her, she's killed me, she's ruined everything for me, yet you still love her, oh Antony, you won't give me anything that matters, like getting rid of her!" "I know you feel that way, but that's really not -" "No, you know nothing about how I feel! You have no right to have any stance before my feelings but terror. You don't care about me, you care about assuaging your guilt for marrying a girl you intended to ignore. You want to buy me off as if I was for sale. I'm a person, I have desires that have nothing to do with equilibria, I want unreasonably, I want beyond the possible, and I want to, want to, eah, I can't, you, oh..." "I understand. I'm sorry." "No, you don't though, you understand nothing! Do you even know who I am? Like honestly have you ever thought of me as a person, not as a responsibility? You think of me like you think of pissing, something unpleasant you have to do regularly. You probably don't even know my favorite color! What's my favorite color, Antony? Tell me, tell me, husband, don't you know my favorite color?" "I, Octavia..." "You don't know! You don't even know! And yet somehow you, somehow I, as if any of this matters, ahh! Don't you see how that makes me feel? The one person I should expect to love me doesn't even care?" "I do care, I do, but -" "No, you don't, you don't!" "I do! I absolutely do, but care doesn't mean giving you everything you ask for, care doesn't mean being your slave, care doesn't mean my feelings don't matter! You're hurt, I've hurt you, so I understand that you don't care at all about my feelings right now, but they matter as much as yours, and we have to find some kind of balance, a way we can both be blessings in each other's lives without having to live up to some unachieavable [[fantasy->qfantasy]]."

"You keep saying fantasy, as if I believe in anything, as if I should. I ask for nothing but escape from the crushing quiet, yet all the ways you pretend to care about me only add to the crushing quiet. I'm just a symbol you use, so the services you return unto me are also symbolic, but I'm a person, I, I, gahh, I don't know, I don't, I can't!" "What do you want then? How can I help you in a way that isn't symbolic?" "Oh, now you ask, oh except look at the calendar, it's a billion years too late, now you're off sumptuousing with your Egyptian meretrix, I'll -" "Octavia! Don't use that word, it's beneath you." "It's what they say though, they all say it, they say it and say it and say it and only sometimes mutter it out of respect for me. The looks they give me, like I'm some orphan asking where mommy is, it's unbearable, I have to be tortured by all this, this, ahh!" "You don't have to be tortured by anything, it's, we could find our own way of being happy, it's not like -" "Oh good, go find your ways of being happy, I'll go find mine, I don't need you, I've never needed you, or no I did, but I don't now, or I don't know, I don't care, go away, just leave me alone!" I shove him with enough violence that I'm disappointed he barely even tilts. Shaking my head I [[progress->qprogress]] through the rain.

''Cleopatra'' Antony awaits alone in the rain. He does not turn to me; he grips the hand I place on his shoulder. I allow him the space not to have to share this with me. He sighs like lungs sealing themselves a stone. "The gods must love us, since death comes only where we care." Antony. "There is life here, my love." He turns to me; shivering in my skirts are our children, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene. He smiles at first weakly, then broadly, then wincingly, shaves to neutral, then spreads genuine and clarifying. "You have given me children, then? Shall we be a family?" He wipes a tear. "We who have no other need each other." He nods, kneels, we embrace in the [[tempest->qend16]], soaking each other in.

"Just tell me, okay, tell me one thing about her that makes you love her that I don't have, that's all I want, that's an obligation you can render unto me." "Octavia, that's, I'm trying to tell you, it isn't like -" "I don't care what it's like and what it's not like, I'm demanding from you, give it to me, one thing about her that you love, then tell me why I don't have it." He studies me sadly, the raindrops dappling down his face seems purpler than before. "I love her extravagance of cruelty, but you're not cruel, you have too much gentleness in your soul, even now your lashing out makes me pity such a trampled chrysanthemum." "I, I can be cruel, I'll hurt you in a million ways, you've trained me so well." "See, you're posing cruelty to me as a service you can love me with. People radiate singulated suns over their emotions, the light in each one is never the same; love lies in those penumbral variations, which is why, though we both try to love each other, the mood is never set." "Well, I, I, I hope you're happy with her light, since you've stolen the ones in my eyes." I [[storm->qprogress]] into the storm.

"I, I want a good one, more good ones, please, please." Cleopatra Selene. "Of course dear, but you do recognize we will have to get you bad memories? It's important for you." I. "I don't, but I don't want..." "Nobody does, but we are composed of so many things nobody wanted. We'll discuss it later. Let's get you a couple more good memories, shall we? We ought to find you one with Mommy, don't you think? There's got to be something good to remember about me." "Okay!" "Here we go, here's an intriguing one. You're feeling sad but in a gray way so you crawl under your bed, not to cry or hide, but just because you feel like it's where you want to be. Your mother comes looking for you, calls out your name several times, and then, you never know how, it seems almost spiritual to you, she gets on her hands and knees and looks under the bed, right into your eyes. She doesn't say anything but just smiles in a way that bursts yellow to warm up your world, safe suddenly, simple togetherness screens the doubts for a precious evening. She crawls under the bed with you, holds your hand, stares up at the underside of the mattress with you, for twenty minutes this gentle joy, no need to be more than the moment, no need to explain, no need to surface, simply exist loved as you are. From this memory you develop an insatiable craving for intimacy without expectations or contextualizations. Hmm, that doesn't sound like a useful need, it wouldn't be good for a princess to have that." "But I, that sounds so nice." "Yes, of course it sounds nice, it's a good memory, but we must find you one that can help build you into the person you need to become." "But mommy, I, I want it!" "Yes, well there are plenty of others you can want, we'll find you one that will make you royal." "I don't care about royal, I want the good memory with you!" Her pleading freezes my soul, gazing up at me like I used to plead up to my mother; stupefying rush clarity starries me with painfully tangibly in my skin empathy and insight into what my mother must have felt. Have I become my mother? Am I her, now, raising me? Choking back tears. Is this what it was like for you, Mommy? Is this who I want to be, you? What kind of [[mother->qend16]] can I be? Have to be strong. Daughter can't see me cry. Not yet. In her teenage years, maybe. But not yet. Not yet. Now there is only a childhood I have yet to ruin. "Okay, dearest," voice quivers. "You can have the memory. You can have it. I'll live it with you." "Yay, thank you, thank you, Mommy!" "Thank you for being here with me."

"What's an awful memory?" Cleopatra Selene. "A generative encounter with the things you do not wish to be." I. "Do I want one?" "Want has nothing to do with it, want is not a part of most of your life, these will help teach you that. Don't worry, we won't get you anything too horrible, just enough for the jolt. You'll have plenty of time as you get older to find meaningless excesses of worseness." "What does excesses mean?" "It means more than is necessary, at least that's its notional conceit, there are many times when excess is necessary, but you'll learn how to word between the lines later. For now, let's see... how about this one: you're wandering through a hallway you don't recognize when all the doors slam open at once and wasps pour out and swarm inside your throat stinging and vomiting larvae that feed their way out of your flesh for weeks? No, perhaps we can do more poignant than that, let's find another, hmm, oh, here's one: your attendant loses you in a crowd, you bumble into an alley full of scary people, one of them recognizes your clothes as royal and, though he terrifies you, he grabs you and leads you to the palace to receive a hefty reward; your mother is incensed and screams all kinds of frightening things you don't understand at your attendant, who has cared for your since you were a baby, and your mother, for some reason you never manage to fathom, forces you to sit by her as your attendant is executed, despite your wailing; in the morning, a new woman, who makes you shiver distrustfully, introduces herself as your new attendant, and you cry uncontrollably, begging for your beloved old attendant to return, whom you secretly love more than your mother. Hmm, I rather liked it until that last bit, surely you'll love me, at least for now? Let's find you a memory where you love me. Okay, here's one: every night for a week you've noticed the shadows have been growing longer, and you try to explain this to others, but people just laugh, say it has to do with the time of year, but the shadows keep getting longer, longer, unreasonably long, until they combine into a shadow person who sprints ice silent at you, but you slam the door just in time, but the shadow person oozes through the door, infuses into you, you are now your shadow, forced to watch some girl you don't recognize go about as you, and you follow her screaming but nobody hears, not your father who pats her head in the way that makes you feel special, and you start crying uncontrollably at this girl who is you but isn't you stealing Daddy's love from you, and why doesn't he notice, how come he can't see that his daughter isn't you, that you're down here buried, has your dad never known you that he could be so fooled by mere appearance, maybe it was never you whom he loved but merely your composed before him a shape he expects, and you're writhing against the earth to rise above it and strangle your doppelganger, but the more you struggle the deeper you sink into the earth, the less you can even see the world sealed from you, and right as everything is about to blur into no, your doppelganger looks straight at you, grins, waves, the smugness of it incenses you, how dare she, but that last thrash plummets you permanently into the darkness from which you never return. That sounds good, doesn't it, dear?" "But it says I'll never return?" "Yes, well, it's only a memory. You'll still be here, of course, wherever here is in relation to that. Shall we get it?" "If um, if you say so, Mommy." "That's my girl. We'll rift this into you, we'll be a [[family->qend16]] of such scars."

I nod at him a neutrality in which we can simmer. Semblance of possible ignites my lips new twists. Nearby he reclines, balancing on the tension with a knife's edge ease, a broad geniality that could very well should it turn out that way spread out in a yawn and sleep, so why not also stretch out and sleep, uh, beside him? "One thing I remember about your city is how dour the sunsets are. In Alexandria, or you should seem them in Luxor, sunscreams blur into milks, but here it seems the night looms too powerful, submerges the colors before they have the chance to flourish, but it's not icy, not austere, more, I don't know, soft? Because the thing is, for however harshly legions prove your terrors, there is a softness, a recessiveness, to Rome... I think of it in terms of the architrave, there's a feature that, yes, made up of right angles, yes it emphasizes how features are carved into the whole, there is definitely a violence to the architrave, but that's just not the impression of it, an architrave almost feels like a pistol silencer, there's a kind of menacing mutedness to it, and that strange combination of softness and sly violence is what fascinates, what makes me so wary..." "You're worried about me? I ask you no further than where you trust me. Like a sunset I am diffuse; you can call me to a view, but I can suffuse any other you reach." "Ah, but it is I who shall reach further than the worry, because I mellifluous the vistas a context, I am immunized sublime in histories revealed." "And what sweeps before you an awestriking?" "I await upon this [[precipice->qhere]] for its sunset to suffuse."

(align:"=><=")+(box:"=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=")[''Chapter XVII''] --- Rome is at war with Rome. Shall you follow the cause of [[Calpurnia->qcalpurnia3]] or [[Chrysothemis->qchrysothemis1]]? //(Click [[here->qtoc]] to return to the Table of Contents.)//

"Then maybe I lose, maybe that's my life, to remain a sunset unviewed. Maybe my marriage has been to teach me that some colors can never incendiary the skies I slip beneath, do not burn brightly enough to nurture life on the earths I must envy. Maybe I can never be your Queen [[Cleopatra->qprogress]], and it was foolish for me to ever believe I could be your wife, maybe I'm just a little naive child who thought my life could be more than a disposable political pawn, maybe I'm overreacting by not smiling at how worthless I am to you, maybe I should simply be an adult and bow to however the more powerful humiliate me, maybe nothing of me matters at all, and it's only because I'm stuck in this body that I dare believe otherwise, maybe I'm a doll perfectly suited to be everyone's awkward and unwanted little sister or niece or daughter or whatever word people use to explain away my relation to them, maybe there's no thing I could become not so disposable, because it is I so disposed, the one thing nobody wanted, but what does it matter what I am, why should it matter how the heart stops, when the result is always the same? I hate you, Antony, I hate you, I hate you, I love you so much, because I tried, you cannot fathom how hard I have tried, I spent night and day while you were away trying to envision how I could still love you when you returned, I carved holes in my soul that could fit new forms of love for you that would not yet be ridiculous, I broke my knees praying for the patience that could lay me next to you a memory worth either of us having it, I spent our whole marriage trying to be married to you, and if you never even tried, if you found out in the first month my shackles to assuage you, then why shouldn't I hate you with every fiber of my being, why shouldn't I wish that your Queen Cleopatra shatters her sense of self in the same prisons I yield to her with this worthless ring, take it to her, she will see what is written in it, and if she still chooses to wear it, maybe in the thousand bitter nights that await me I can learn to love her too, so that in that at bonebroken last I can give you our final kiss you will never in hell's separate heavens deserve."

''Calpurnia'' Needles puncture holes in my eyelids until I am sewn to the scene, a field flourishing, colors beyond memory, blossoms beneath consciousness: [[moonflower->qmoonflower]], [[sunflower->qsunflower]], [[lapierousia->qlapierousia]], [[poinsettia->qpoinsettia]], [[magnolia->qmagnolia]], [[heuchera->qheuchera]], [[dahlia->qdahlia]], [[lily->qlily]], [[thistle->qthistle]], and [[jasmine->qjasmine]].

Moonflowers paraselene the wisteria mysteria sentineling the hedgeroad through moebius strip twists to rolling rapid plash hillettes under an umbral vinyl spun skyestry looping round the ivy vermillion valley disserectych slope slide waverides surge crashing onto chalk cliffs shipwreck ravers dithyrambic sea incertainties ceramist whose necropolis the prayers [[unravels->qunravels]] denial inarch flames outcrying the eastern outland shibboleth of our divine eupnea euphony's philtring of suffering to dawn.

A void wanderer enchantressing an azure from overwhiteness blazar we accretion disk, enmeshed melted fuel for the furnace of purpose in incompletions candles waxing to finally we forlorn in the featureless completed wasted. Formations exerts we to cohere but incoherences flares from the cosmic violence background. Planned out sterily fruitful, mechanized competelacence, divinity structure starks us naked in natural horror. Drainers containers do we not dribble through the fulcrum but dredge up from the firmament until fuel [[exhausted->qunravels]] melt we and merge dribble through the fulcrum fragile, too fragile, for the reasons that make us up, we solute sooner or even sooner into the abortions deluge. Ripples decades and dozens entwined lives mountains. Forty or fifty or ninety years of composition completely decomposed by one unexpectedly exacerbated bitterness latency. Yesterstraycers monuments weather until ataxic aphasias dementias us more than native alienated, annulled. Rubble slants the tilting alders to skew the sunflowers.

Fast forward flutters wing slow motion consciousness levitation disanimation. Silks and gray globulate magnetized slithering through the thickets. Ligaments luthier body oscillations ache drawn out baringtones mournful sung strung a a lapierousia sigh. Interinterred in networks internecine nullicipherous of ousia parousia, echo sign simulacra signifier multipier to structure the immanence to differance, thetic to mimetic transit sibilance rush reviviscence reify disintegrator suture, avatar of assemblance recognized in cogniation. Of the ourobosal enchained an ousal oceanic coat ceramic in which rests the soul and its insuggested, terracotta in say silts' [[deserted->qunravels]].

Mistletoes wreath my buried, outgrowths disembowel to supplant me hyphaethetical, hyphenated I'm plausible, dusk settles seer, [[flanging->qunravels]] heliopause halted void resumption disconnects ion reduce descending ossianic the lull causal null glossy of clinging ghost contains whose inner captures hues original disappear myths madeleines, this out of time shell, body lost geisterschloss shellac shelterer. Crystallines nimbus nineteen refractions formations saintly otherwise. Numbwisdoms sage us to splayed poinsettia bleeders beneath the divine distance torture.

Magnification confluence sieving the volt illuminate verities [[phantasmal->qunravels]], levy transferal vir vessels tessellated interdeterminate. Beryl lavenders like xenon glaciers jolted nebulae the ebbs of breath. Invisible drills spark fireflies over miscanthus watercolor swirls, maelstrom helical sinks distinction sturdiness, gravity gel propulsives depopulate our convergence primal, hell that has always awaited and will not change with us. Selved amputated glowing stronger into an elegance of damnation, magnolia guardedness of gentleness, refusal to fend, acceptance of the glory of immaculate maroonment. Into the wind a whisper.

Slowly shifts the bower to my bedroom around the tower of my upright sweating gasping vanishing horizon to plane dark alter depth juxtainterpose. Soaked through nightgown. Overheated sheets freeze against my legs as I rustle out to bend to a bowed. Slunk out of the bed puzzling my dream's throatfuzz echo. [[Restlessnesses->qrestlessnesses]] distress the pounding in my head an emergentcy: impaled upon the door before me chokes Gaius, reaching a bloodied hand, flooded coughing my name, I shriek trip sink beneath pulled sheets, tussle them away, but he, it's, gone... Maids rush through the door, but I push them aside, throw on a dress, lean into the momentum effusing from my rapids palpitations, hair asnarl. [[Octavia->qoctavia4]] and Octavian and Gaius and the Egyptians and the strangeness of Brutus and Cicero ferment, foment intent, aberrant, ah, on each door impaled abhorring witness Gaius this Gaius and Gaius nihilancing Octavian offspring Gaius and Octavia three headed thus and so Gaius and split Octavian on plates asking if I am proud of her. Heat hilts blades to be, lurch thought sick in the swelter, the tense on the summer's whether. Threshing of the blights numbs my gums, pounds behind my eyes, hyperthins my saliva sandy. Lungs dented and studded with dusts stubbles stipples presages crawling on your floor cannot breathe, cannot. Illness suddenness a long time coming. Immanence prominence soft moons mumming. You never know when your world will crash until the moment right before, until, right in the moment, before.

Heuchera coral tingling about the ringing out into repetition dejavu structural efficacies, slopes down which we all trundle, inescapable escarpment where difficulties accrue in the guttural haul riven sighs dresses for the slashcliff majesty, to the stormworn oathsworn, pylons of our priority insertion blades arrayed into slaughtered naturals, consumed pre, jet jut vertigo gravitasons of the carrying on despite, spite of the undoers dwell dolor nurture initiate of the next march malaise, hand in hand continuous faceless furious postulates, [[syllogyre->qunravels]], sister pyres.

Skeletal stems to materia vast erisvision present I meant colorous incandasia the inscape escarpment, collateral includeds beleaguered for autonomous viability stressing fractures to seismic verses veiled beneath starrier planes' hush shadoweds, route of bouting routed, clawing free climbing casted free in the fall but to form taller the patterned predestiny of unwill, penitents visionaries piled emaciated ascenders to death unto episteeming, source insourced corpses trust projectives brimming cusps the defiling one by one [[convulsion->qunravels]] escalation challenging the cost disaster after disaster a mass depleaded, mustering not mattering until the deficience amounts master, suffocating on struggles of so many throats, not channel, chalice, imbridbe me desolate. Rusts reigns squall the suspires heavy metallic lahars, implosion lashes black blanket the vestige.

Lines of lilies sprout from vein irigaraytions. Unaware of where I am not there until that urns the where. Wants wilted by too many hours invested, shattered power less, trauma talisman dulled benign to bear night after nigh. Kaleidoscopes familiared to form one full color. Entropy [[oculus->qunravels]] floods endthereals over tremulous priestesses prone before the relic. Basilisk penitence stalks into the hospital flickering forked tongues to taste those most petrified to devour. Mural that projects the surface it hides stricken honest in plaster scars.

Glitters glens diamond dews on the thistle tourniquets on our stele pangs, unreadable runes on our vanish wounds. Mist soaked oaks prow centuries until we cease them with us. Nothing current but the currents that carry us pasts. Subdivision splicers surgically incising the fleetings of progression eschatologists, in each contingency flooded snagged in snarling rapids venturing to recognize ourselves in where we have run, to what we must cascade, apperception of illusions alluvion. Remorse thaumaturge raytracing nebulous percolates to portraiture emanating ether emendations to fix in the chaos essence, in eruptions essential, universally particulated persistence straining denial denial, renderer of the rent plasma, lifeblood of a star, violence from a distance enlightening, supernoval kiss the cosmos transcendence, what is beautiful without expands your larger [[absence->qunravels]].

Negamimetic weaver of phantom tangibles nursing the patterns to propose ordained order arising from their chirality complexes irreducible from this isolated sustained precious in the enveloping absurd sublime. Synthesis seraph of the rational to this irradiance, evental angel, perfection of a pointer in axiomatic computational annihilation, agonybyte of input counterlogicating new forms of address for whatever might there [[answer->qunravels]], matrices remazers, irreducible remainders. Techne recension cantors hung fairy lights to guide the byzantine beshemoth I believe my soul into as colossus of the loss of us eons in flight frozen moment cascade jasmine to empyrean opposite me burning elither charonite quintessence aetheria.

Swung from my pace mind erased encircling new stimulus new partner as if a dance from which nauseous dizzy I may soon collapse suppress in distasting, distasis distancing... Catullus. I sigh like a snot gush. "Catullus, I, please no, I really can't, utterly cannot right now, you must, some other time –" "No, listen, I'll only be a moment, you must hear this." "Some other time!" "There will be no other time, neither for you nor for me." Pausing to blink him into my mood but he demurs. "As in I'm leaving the city, going north to Verona to open the world's first debauchery ludus, which I'll sell to the locals as a temple to Apollo. I intend to solicit your donation, but for a price of course, the first lesson I'll teach my students is you only reap what others sow, so before I flee I must earn your gratitude." "Catullus, there must be some other time when –" "No, the creditors are at my back, and worse than that will be at my back when I tell you what you want, so desperately want to know. See, I've been trailing Porcia to the Temple of Diana these past few sprees, and –" "Porcia is regularly visiting the Temple of Diana?" "Yes, but that's not the gossip, don't focus on that. Anyway she's in a really lovely, honestly like genuinely beautiful tizzy with the burned princess, and –" "Porcia is engaging with the Egyptian usurper?" "Yes, but again, this is not the gossip, you're not allowed to pay attention to that. The point is, and in a few weeks when you're exhausted of the subject I want you to remember my deeply pious charity project for the neophytes in Verona, these two Egyptians, they hate each other right, they spy on everything the other does, so I happened to overhear, purely coincidentally obviously, eavesdropping into the sanctum could have yielded any possible conversation, entirely an accident that it was this one, that the Egyptian Queen, the real one I mean, or well I don't mean to take a stand on the Egyptian succession but you know the one I mean, the one who's banging your husband into an early grave, she's given birth to twins, yeah, like actual human children, but not with your husband, thank Juno, mistress of long suffering wives, or well, maybe not mistress, that's the wrong word here, but anyway so the kids belong to, get this, Mark Antony." "Given birth! What are you talking about, that can't possibly –" "Yeah look I know, I thought I was efficient in that department, one minute delivery guaranteed or my money back, but she's quite the catcher, that queen, pissing out kids in like, what, a month, how much is time? Seriously, how much time does pass, I've never quite understood your husband's calendar, other than that every date has your nephew's name scrawled into it in invisible ink." "What? What are you talking about?" "Oh yeah look, again, that's not the gossip I'm here for, I've already shot my load, so good luck with the whole your niece's husband's daddy of the wrong kids thing, but remember me in your will, I'll swamp you with letters to ensure you do, bye!" Abandons me in the emptiness of the space I should have filled with a scream. Aching ticking of the dawning reckoning. How can this, how can all of this... I've been so distracted that I haven't been able to notice the obvious. The problem with going sober is you never hear news. Octavia, she was in such a state last night, I barely could pull myself away to sleep, and now I'm supposed to tell her, what, that the woman who stole my husband from me had not yet sufficiently humiliated our family? That animal, the both of them! To think I ever approved of that octopus! To think I was naive enough to believe he was genuinely nice, but no man is, this is the problem with men: they're all landmines, you dig deep enough and you set off their bomb. I'm going to kill him, as in actually I might, I think I might really actually murder him. I'll throw him on his knees sniveling apologies to Octavia and have her judge whether he should be executed or merely emasculated. As for my husband, whatever, this is the third time I've given up on Gaius, I can't muster the energy to pretend to care, but Venus' vices have I harangued Mark Antony more than a dozen times about his duty to Octavia, yet he goes and births bastards while she's literally soaked in blood trapped in her closet having a mental breakdown over a period! Nobody even cares about anyone's happiness except me, I'm the only one out every day suffering desperately to protect these fragilities. The depraved goat thinks he can abuse my niece's trust like this, I will gut him, feast on his viscera. She's such a nice girl, so smart and idiosyncratic, so warm and emotive, so imaginative, thoughtful, she still loves him so much after years of his neglect, but just because she takes a little bit of effort to engage, because she's a little weird and mentally vulnerable, he simply abandons her for this random Egyptian whore who's had, what, a week to switch beds from my husband's to his? Why? What could have possibly possessed someone who seemed so kind and caring? Are men truly that [[existentially->qexistentially]] vapid? Octavia's pretty enough, she has an unconventional charm, if Antony would merely take the time to nurture her confidence she could present herself really quite beautifully, but I guess the neanderthal can't conceive of what isn't immediately busty. Honestly I feel silly trying to psychoanalyze someone who probably isn't even sentient, certainly isn't, if he think he can treat my niece like this and get away with it, she's the only family I have left, well her and Octavian, but if she can't be happy, then our story will end in tragedy, the matriarchs of all the families that fed into us should have drowned themselves and saved us all the trouble. Never a joyful daughter, why endure the labor? The angers that arise in me are insufficient to the cause, because there is not enough in me to ire. There should be sorrow, but I cannot differentiate it from the echo. The bitterness terminal is peace with the world and maudlin happiness for everyone. I cannot avenge, cannot pretend when I am the wind, invisibly [[passing->qpassing]] away. Who am I to fix anything? I suckled from shards. If Mark Antony is happy at our expense, well, at least we have bought something for our time...

Muttered from the mollifying chill a baring of teeth. Furiously immune to the disincline I disassent ascend to glimmery apex, altar sardonic, lynx luminous huntress, golden sunset's tingles of death. Stings of streets bleeding us unto course, salival rivers between canines peak cairns, gushing us into commotion in which I could kill, could kill so easily... I walk as a way of laying down in the street. Tight turns belch carts that I barely nondodge. Disgraced grace sashays my pensive to a prowl. Lithe tigress fur prinkling to in fears sincere. Adumbrated fey silhouettes attenuate foreshortened, what is before is shortened, what is... jelly ideas slurk into viscous bubbles, neural slugs eking across the main, centering sense of estrangement negating into singularity, bullseye blind. Cortex drums drove into a murder's cawcophony. Plum blossoms style a winter stark. Red wrinkles in crumpled satin seeming wounds upon the lace, waves impossible to trace, the touch teases it elsewhere. Errant touches tease what arises elsewhere. Bile slurbs caustic dried claws into the harsh stained throat screeching like chalk on brick drawing, spelling. Spellbound in the whitehot scratches as they assemble reveal the bone beneath shrieking into my tinny head where trebly the treble reverbs pale giant perpetuates thrust through the knotted clotted to remind the nerves what they know streets weep urges oust me impaled etherize glancetipculate prefigure who we outcast to mold. Urge to flange across the melee a mosaic disarray sleets into seismic aftershocks diminuendo. Perhaps in the [[pressure->qexistentially]] of these people is the only way I have loved him, perhaps I am cruel in my desire for them not to reclaim him, or perhaps just claim him, have they not always? Remembering a friend whose husband once had his subordinate deployed with him in the same compound, and she, dutybound to the rote that fills our days with expectations, fell into an affair with this subordinate, which surprised them both by becoming rapidly more turgid and intense, they discovered in each other satisfactions they never imagined, so furtively they obsessed an idyll in the shadow of her husband's glances, waiting breathlessly for him to leave the table so they could slip into an anteroom to tryst, or luxuriating in the seemingly timeless until the first slips of semidawn forced her to return to her husband's bed, always the teasing glisten of further sterilized into the ever more burdensome polity, how restless she would agitate when obliged to perform intimacy with the man she only months ago had been amicably resigned to love, the tedium would break her brazen, she would flaunt in her role uninhabitance, hazarding her masquerade glib, a danger which merely pressed her more enraptured in her lover's embrace, expending every drip of vigor oozing from her refusal to quiver under the looming, and in that perfection of desire increasingly a surface but still suppressed by the shadow of its impossibility to be real the lovers' ecstasy deluded them into eloping, where, though they genuinely cared for each other and worked to develop meaningfully together, the passion waned, they became merely a couple, he was yet another she could amicably resign herself to love, and fond reminiscences led her to return to her husband, who accepted her back without even the goodness to be quarrelsome, almost as if nothing had happened, a saintliness so infuriating she sought to humiliate him by inviting her lover among them again, and they tried to reflame their romance, but though they still desired, still could waste hours with delightful conversation, the intensity never returned, and stuck between two men she was obligated to love to spite the other, she wept, sought out an ancient spell, and collapsed them into one man, whom she resented gently into bittersweet old age. Were we not so similar, a [[relationship->qpassing]] of two made possible by the shadow of a third, the mob?

Out of the crowd cannonaded into his crowded he fleetingly forgets in our clinging. "My dear Calpurnia, I'm glad you have come to –" "Please, oh Gaius, my love, listen to me, please, don't go to Senate, it won't, you can't, there's –" "Don't go? Haven't you heard? They're deliberating the extension of my powers today. How far do you presume they shall go? Won't you come along to discover?" "No, you musn't, it, it isn't safe, there's –" "Isn't safe? What do you mean? Have you heard of something?" "No, but it's –" "You haven't heard anything?" "No, but –" "Then what could possess you to say the Senate, my Senate, isn't safe? Safe from me, perhaps?" "If you would but listen –" "I would love to, but I haven't the time, and I do –" "You can't go!" "Why? What reason could you possibly have?" "All that has been left to me is the feeling of being wrong." "A feeling, is it? Yes, well, I'm sure you have ever so many feelings, dear, but –" "Don't patronize me, Julius, listen to me, I can't explain it, but neither can we the world. Don't you, won't you trust in my feelings, can't they be the earth as we distort it? Won't you, don't you believe in the heaven we entangle intangible?" Oceanettes sink blue my almond eyes quivering reflection sky inside us he sighs instant's intoxicant, filled with how I fit inside his arms, marriage secrecies divorcing us from the crowd inscrutable intimacies, mutely expressive in our sliding skins ballet, the touch decades engrave on our flush, into each other an experience of experiences that expectate combined into seasons that explain our inexplicables through the truth of now, here. Living memories fingertips tracing on our canvas embrace dream mutuals our minds cannot fathom. Countless nights buried in the chest I breathe. Years of our youth and youthless buried in our gardensity thrills throb the anguish and ecstasy that binds our bodies in blood to flowers of amtrothsia. Pressed into the pressure we cohere to an unnecessity to speak I soak in our sweat stripped of the bitter and the sweet in the fit here need. Yearning not for a future but for a placed where possibilities await, that this isn't over, yet can be more life we can waste trying. I don't expect anything, but I can't bear regretting everything, not yet, not while I can still, if he will but believe I can, still... "I'm sorry, dearest, but Rome [[awaits->qwatch]] me," he allows me to fall into the crowd indisextinguished.

Assemblates of people impossible to gauge recombine into rejective morphs syllables of bled language, aggressions ingressing into thickening gnarls landlesslylocked, indefining infusives fusion expulsing seared into mass, crowds scorched bleached of faces, rewrung wired to threshed one feverous virally spiraling from there helios of the havoc whose touch used to emanate secrecy to shroud us from worlds we did not need. Are my steps towards him different in kind from the thousands jostlers flow and ebbing around his oval dispersion, am I any more than one more need he has assumed as a sign, would my approach appear to him more than another thread weaving into his patterning, am I deeper inside him than his inside this scene? Burdened to codistal by the consigning signature, self as assurance to sign, that we seem furthest when closest. Everyone in this crowd believes themselves separate from it, contingently contained within it, why should my belief be less delusional? I can't reach him, can't get through the milling buzzing, why should I assume myself more central? Neither present nor resentful. Letting go like white knuckles on a rail that falls away. Deserve your severances or be destroyed by them. But I still resent, I am still present... Surge through the crowd I froth before him phantom wavering reminder. He clasps my shoulder, swings me beside him, gestures to the crowds that had swallowed so much of my appearance. "Isn't it marvelous, my love? The whole of Rome has come to support the measure. Who could possibly look out from the Senate and deny me now?" "Gaius, please, listen to me, there's -" "Ah, even in our triumph, your fretful tone? Surely we can adjourn it for this most precious of days?" "Is this day your most precious?" "Ah, Calpurnia, don't quibble. What is it with women that makes them such emotional contrarians?" "Because you cannot feel what should be there, I must feed it to you. Gaius, please, there's, I have an awful premonition..." "You can't possibly demand that I turn back? After all for decades we have fought, they want to crown us victors, and you wish at this moment to gauge the chance? Come, banish your silly thoughts, let's celebrate our becoming!" "No, I, I won't let you, I can't just let this happen, there's more to us than this, this senseless violence!" "The only one here acting senseless is you. Tribunus Laticlavius, could you please take my wife home? She is suffering from nerves." "Yes sir!" He salutes. I allow his procession past, but I petrify the tribune who dares to touch me. One with the crowd I [[watch->qwatch]].

''Chrysothemis'' "You're certain the pharaoh isn't accompanying him?" Cicero. "Yes, she will arrive with Mark Antony in about an hour. Caesar will soon enter the Senate with his leeches." "How do you know this?" Brutus. "There are some with whom I share secrets." He cannot help himself, the Stoic, a little emote, cute, if only he made a habit of it. Jittery senators emphasize Brutus' and Cicero's cool. Hastens up the steps a panting page. "Senator Cicero, the triumvir arrives in the forum." "Which triumvir, boy, which one? Speak up!" "Triumvir Julius Caesar, sir." "And the others? Have you seen them? Have you seen the Egyptian?" "No sir, only Triumvir Julius Caesar, sir." "Senators, soldiers of this great will, patriots of purpose, founder reaffirmers of our republican [[ideals->qideals]], slings down upon us the hero's hour, so rise to shield this city, [[pluck->qpluck]] up your courage to sing cast into your principles this the time of [[action->qaction]] foretold in –" Cicero.

"Isn't all time of action?" I interrupt. "What?" Cicero. "Well, I mean, time is the active directive of the ajna interpolation in contingent states of spirit into form, the progression between such states, verbs are the words that engage the essence into its constituent discretions, the capacity by which what is ises, the moment entirety transcendence of the chaos caught in flow, so really, isn't time qua time such activity? One's speechifying should rather be pressed to elucidate the time of passivity." "Don't quibble, justiful Jupiter, there isn't time!" Brutus. "Isn't there? Has it actioned away? That's the trouble with verbs, the chase, until you corral them into a noun, that is, the that that is, like chase, or maybe rather verbs are nouns in the time they are said, isn't such the argument of Zeno, your idol, where uh, the arrow never moves?" "Different Zeno," Brutus seethes. "Truly? You mean they made a habit of that name? What a tragedy." "Please, Senatrix Brutus, this –" "But really, I doubt my own argument now, can't a human be said to progress through time? In any moment in which you noun the human, it carries in itself, in its correspondence to the speech act, its innate progression which it presents unto the speech act the contingent truth of its universal invocation, so maybe the difference lies in affirming the inversion of the paradox, that is, yes, a verb in each moment is a noun, but also a noun is the each moment of the verb." "We –" "But take a phonetic word like explosion, right like don't you, in pronouncing its nounness, enact its verb? From your throat the ex slips under the tongue, which we so often regret, until you gush out to the plo that blasts apart the lips to the aspirated sion." "This is really –" "And same with implosion, right, inhale the im, catch it with the lips that reverb shock apart to the plo, then swallow in the unaspirated sion." "Stop it, shut up, shut up!" "Now you could say these are mere lateral transliterations, I quite agree actually, but we should take transliteration literally, movement through the literating act, condensation of the signifier as it represents itself on the level of the symbolic network, an act of writing unto a phenomenal surface the symbol which thereby retains intentionality insofar as this prescriptive telos corresponds to a resulting disordination that emanates the propulsive noema in a nascent mode perpetually unto the pure immanence injunctive to the as matter mattering a materialization metonymy of the mirror, the in acted enacted posed to its being for others as a negation of its duality, collapse into subjective objectification that which is what I express and externally press forth insofar as that matter of the action to reification continuous plasmatic bears in itself the mark of its ontic mode unto itself as itself within the frame which bears the intellection, so that –" "Shush! There's [[movement->qkill2]] in the crowd, we –" "An act of scription, the surface script I on which in itself always already contains the reciprocal disenaction, the descriptive intangibility into constructed essence, form as formulated, elides the act as evental conjugation in its reference to the latency eidos that can only hereafter appear as spectral, sundered in this moment when we irreducibly attain the consequence qua consequence in repetition unto signification the resulting identity of the matrix in its individuation produced from the actualizing experiential perception of the phenomenal projection, such that perhaps a noun is thus the transcendental arc of the verb, whereas the verb is any phenomenal manifestation of the noun, so the verb is the phenomenological surface that contexturalizes the deployment of nous into a sense of the noun, which really means that the verb is the noun of the noun, and perhaps then the noun is the verb of the –"

"There he is, Julius Caesar! Get him! Don't let him get away!" Cicero. The senators rush Julius Caesar and stab him. He seems especially peeved at my husband, with which I [[empathize->qempathize]]. The crowd furor foams but Brutus bats back the frenzy brandishing his bloodied knife. "Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my –" I crutch over to hug him giggling. "Surely this isn't your grand speech? No one has ever called out so stentoriously to their lovers except to argue out some syphilis. You must start over, find words to match the tone." "Chrysothemis, please –" "No, don't address me, address them, let the city hear of your mighty affairs." "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!" "Marcus, dearest, you just murdered a man, show some initiative: don't ask for their ears, take them!" Dolphining my wrist rips the mob's ears to a stream to a whorl to a tornado that whips their writhing wilder until the severed ears torrent blasts into us, knocking us down in mass slaps, and in the tumult Brutus punches me free of my crutches, and I batter down the steps. The crash heave mob stampedes about and around and onto and through my head, an ankle spasms out of my mouth, toes agony organ squelches of brain, senses seesawing stops' timbres I stress ensue. Trampled beneath the pavestones I percolate. Inside so many just as they are stones I incubate until the streets birth me to bear their wails asurface inside my eyelids clearer the real images. This we cannot bear our bareds press to evince. Sole yours my throat chokes until all that ekes out sounds surrounds you. Claw crawling through the rampaged streets muttering beneath my breath your called. My nails crack and bend as I scrape inch and inch and mile and inch to the temple our torn to parts [[worship->qworship]].

Not that you should not empathize or care but that most people are utterly irredeemably selfish, childish, lazy, cruel, antisocial, petty, narrow, disgusting, abusive, inane, ignorant, judgmental, reactionary, xenophobic, narcissistic, and predatory, and the sheer amount of effort and wisdom it takes to undo any of these aspects, to make the barest minimum effort of being a positive influence on others, means that you can only care in individual cases where there seems beneath the mess a gem, as for the masses you must defend yourself from their cruelties and insatiabilities with a mixture of pity and repulsion that seals you safely inside a shell that can endure the pressure into something almost like dignity. The people who will hurt you the most are those who are the most ostentatiously positive or caring or supportive or thoughtful or moral or innocuous, because they gloss a facade they want you to believe in, but they will, like everyone, ooze out their culpabilities and dehumanizing needinesses, then refuse to ever feel guilt, they will run back into their facade, they will only ever come out insofar as necessary to regloss it from besmirchment. Truth saddening is that many people are genuinely positive or caring or supportive or thoughtful or moral or innocuous and can bless your life, but you can never know for sure whether they're genuine until you get close enough to get hurt, especially since most who are not genuine or only partially genuine are genuinely convinced they are genuine, like there's only a smallish percentage of cynical sociopaths who are deliberately trying to entrap you, most people are just unable to reckon with who they are beneath their beautified self concept, because those qualities they genuinely have are entangled with the rest of their corrupted personhoods so riddled with landmines, so maybe it's for the best never to trust anyone with any emotion you are not fine with being ripped out of you and shattered. For the two or three you rely on, in whom you're willing to be broken together, you can soak in any quality they [[evince->qevince]], but never trust any other appearance of goodness. You don't have to be actively scornful of them, you don't have to set fire to any nice thing they do for you, but you must always keep an eye on the exits. Because Marcus was genuinely someone I thought I could love. He was philosophical in a way that wasn't hostile, he was rigorously disciplined, he was well read, he was skeptical of traditional moralities, his scorn for the gods was intoxicating, and he still is those things, maybe, but only insofar as they are elements of his depersonalizing dispassionate contempt for everyone and everything that was not exactly crafted to his sterile disdain. And I can empathize, sure, he probably appreciated my perceptiveness, that I was well read, especially in Greek, and though he had little humor himself he always relished my satirical edge, but no doubt he has come to loathe my diffidence, my merciless dissonance, my unhealthy emotional dependence on alcohol, my disinterest in the civic or the ambitious, my hatred for the puerile, which, unfortunately, encompassed much he considered sacred. Anything we ever loved of each other was buried in so much more that we had to learn to hate. Nothing we have given one another was worth the trouble of the [[person->qperson]]. I am not worthwhile, he is not worthwhile, but the stupidity of their game, the sheer amount of people that will die for it, at least when I crawl free of him I can be free of that. In my newly abluted form may I be a blessing to Arsinoe, may her love be enough to make all the coming destruction a tragedy I can regret.

I'm pulled and rocked and caressed, have I died, is this burial, but borne out to facts' smear I gasp confused. "Porcia, sweet Hygeia's mercies, what's happened?" Octavia. "Destiny, how it strips us proven," spitting a bit of blood. "What, oh, you're in dire condition, I have to, don't worry, we'll nurse you, we'll get you through this, it's going to be okay, I promise." "No, you can't, too late, there is nothing you can –" "Not too late! I'll take you to my domus, I have several physicians posted to me, we'll –" "No! Octavia, please I, take me to the Temple of Diana, it's crucial I go there, I can get help there." "The, the Temple? But what would you, why, but..." "I can't argue with you, Octavia, please, please take me there." "But um, uh, okay, if, if you, hold on, lean onto me, but we'll find you a physician..." Into her cheeks jostling in the limps I traipse her dry beds, needling wish to question and console, but my whole body focuses on mimicking her mimicking my gait ungainly. Houses wheeze people clumps like whines from fumaria. Noise welters flinch us through alleys. Salamander torches skitter on the darkening deflecture. Eyeballs on figures nudge shoving past us seem sixteen times the size. From little rifts iridesce peridot scarabs. Does she, she must know now, we have to hurry. I tilt as far forward as I can short of tripping us to speed her desperate aside me. Rain both begins to and does not fall from black clouds in a cerulean purely sky. The temple looms, and a buried in me inexplicable breaks, cheeks flush, because I know this is, the, I just know. Dissociation flashes me forward to Octavia setting me down. "Can we get a priestess, a medic? Is there a physician here? Please, help please, she's injured!" Octavia. I grab her hand and pull her close, she hovers terrified enraptured, and I place my palm in her hair. I have always been so envious of her hair. "Octavia, my nereid, please, I need to be alone." "What? No, no, I won't abandon you, we're going to get through this, I'll make sure –" "Please, I'm begging you, let me [[go->qgo]]. I can't, I don't want to argue with you." "But you're, you're injured, I can't leave you –" "I'll be fine. I'll meet you later, I promise. I just need to be alone." Her stare bores into herself more than me, then, like a stormworn bough, her head tilts to felled towards the sanctum grievous. When she turns back to me her rivulets purl. "I don't want to go," her lips quiver. "Octavia, please –" "No! I won't! I won't, not this time, not you, not you too..." "Please, Octavia, why won't you let me go?" "You don't [[know->qknow]]?"

"I cannot be what you seek, there is not enough where you imagine me." I. "No, it's, it's always, always the same, how can it, why..." Lightly shakes she to curlicue strands slitting her frown infinitely delicately cast unto the fire alighting I peer into her fever pitch marsh where wade coated nightstress crying out to the oppressively stillness her nervous energy always about into to settle seems. So many onces tingle shock sudden their truer immersion. Her tenderness glass. So close and so soft and so forever far away. Friendship fresh of laughter secrets stories the dreads we wounds need storytell inside sensibilities deepening our ability to sensations safe harbored in our through the pain a shine a dandelion underfoot crumples. I shake my head, not at her, at the world, at the one we have inhabited so poorly that this is us, where we've been going. "There's more to us than the drone, I promise you, but, but I cannot create any more more, I am wasted, you must leave me to where I choose to die." "I can, Porcia, listen to me, where you go I'll follow, we can -" "No! No, it can't be like that, I won't -" "No, no one will let me be any way but how they fantasize into my emptiness! I am a blank canvas for people's regrets is why everyone regrets to see me. I get nothing, am nothing, and you, just like the rest of them, at the moment when you need most, you still cannot find anything to ask of me but my absence." "That's not true, but, there's so many other -" "Everything's true but me! You wade to drown in your toxicity as if none of mine can burn, ablute..." "You, Octavia, you, I, I'm sorry..." "Yes, I'm sorry too." "Look, there's, I have tried to love you as I could, but you have to let -" "No, you, nobody's loved me, nobody could, I accept that, and I accept how I've lost you too. Everyone, everyone, everyone, I shiver what's left!" "Octavia, no, stay, stay here, we, we still need to -" "Go cuddle with your way out while I sink back into the [[labyrinth->qthis]]." I cry her name; she hesitates by the door, then points to the orange aurora. "The stars of our tomorrow burn."

"Oh, Octavia, I'm, I'm sorry, I, I didn't realize..." "No, it's, how could you, no, nobody realizes, nobody understands anything, I'm the only one who ever cares! You didn't think I maybe am smart enough to understand what your disappearances meant? But I held onto, this vain hope, this, that somehow, after all our years together, that no one could supersede, that it would have meant something, I would have been irreplaceable, even, even, but I have never meant something, nor can I, never, everyone falls away from me, all nights shiver I abandoned while my hearts wander to what they never return." "Look, no, don't say, please, I'm, I'm sorry, Octavia, but, but this is different, it's –" "You didn't think I could be different?" "It's, it's not the same." "No, I'm not, I never am, not to you, to Antony, to anyone, to, my family, what's, what's left of it, and how could you do that to me? I trusted you. I love you! I, oh gods..." "Octavia..." "I put everything into you, because I believed in, yet, and you, you murder my, you murdered him, he's –" "Please, Octavia, don't try to guilt me with, with, you never loved that man, don't pretend –" "You don't know anything about who or how I love! Don't, you don't get to tell me how I feel, you clearly know nothing about my feelings. You don't even care about me, do you, you never did, not personally, not me as a person. I should have known no one would stoop to befriend me without some motive, yours the worm in your brain inflaming nurture impulses, and I was the most profoundly ruined you could find, wasn't I, until finally in rolled someone even more pathetic and repulsive than me, incredible, it's so great, she's burned beyond recognition, that will really satisfy your cravings won't it, why bother going around cradling shy girls now? How could I possibly compete? Maybe I'll rip my skin off, quivering mass of muscle, that might earn your ridicule affection!" "No, no that's not true, stop, Octavia, you don't, that's not true, that's not fair, you're, you're being hurtful!" "Everyone is, everyone hurts everyone all the time everywhere, every human being is an antagonist and the only protagonist is sleep, there's no such thing as love, that's why everyone has to scamper off to dens to pretend it where no one else can explain the mistakes, and –" "No, that's not, Octavia, that's not true, that's not true and you know it!" "Do I? What do I know? I don't know anything about love, never felt it, never heard the word true anywhere but in the hums of my cancers!" She shouts free of a stream of sob snot, belatedly forearm wiping. "Listen, Octavia, you don't think that I, I –" "I don't think anymore, why would I want to? Actually, I'm glad it's me who's lost, to this Egyptian, to the other Egyptian, because I am already gone. No point blessing me with gifts, there's no one left to accept them. I hope you make her happy, so in hell she can explain to me how that felt." "Octavia," I cry. She wipes my tear to mix with hers to taste, weep smilesques, stands, strides into the open blaze. "Octavia! Octavia, please, no, no, you can't, come back here, please, we have to talk, wait, I can't, wait, just for a second, must settle this, we can't leave each other like [[this->qthis]]! Please, Octavia, Octavia! I'm, I'm begging you, please, don't..."

Reaching for empty sprawls me on the tiles. Hospital glare smalt filters through incense to sterilize. Merely a motion, the emotion a gulf beneath it. Face scrunched into swallowing my lakes scalding pressure. Rent blear harrow hulch split in lit meridians agonized divides. Roil thrash spume open gasping bubbles through the choke, claws graspclawing, rasp hollows sleech of fear [[submergences->qsubmergences]], desaturated ocean storms black bubbling. Drowning in seethes, tears and mucus and spit, how the, ow, but I, no, just want, how can she leave, all I want is to, hold her, explain, but how dare she suggest I'm, who gave her the right to insult me so, but, but I don't, I'm so sorry, I don't even want to argue, I don't want anything but to learn how am I supposed to breathe. She, and what, somehow I'm supposed to feel guilty for this, these, razor recriminations: one third to her suggestion I'm some automaton whose genuines cannot count up unless to her tally, two thirds to myself, three thirds at this gnawing implacability sheening the slippery moss of our decline, four thirds at our relenting to maudlin when we still have, had, can? Or. Dream of the stained glass leaking vivid history to the blaze. There is nothing left, one misconnect renders us latent fragilities, we encounter the end aghast, surprised, confused why we have in this road ended. Little deaths mass grave our interpolations to [[soliprison->qsoliprison]] us in our self completed. We are shut up into our inevitable person by person. I deserve the things she said to me, not in the particulars, but in the universal. Don't I? Don't I? Don't we all? To rankle cares maligned would unwind the noose we deserve of neither she nor I were who we each needed in the end, and the blood pooling in my throat portends this is the end. A priestess attends me to one of the Egyptian handmaidens who tenders me beside Arsinoe whom my hand holds. We stare to the dome dark. Never enough for anyone save those who drain to our pace, and her pulse into mine a temporary temple, equilibrial dribble into the dusk. Perhaps they call her a goddess because she the glooms' chills chills. Eclipse transistor shocks illucid lucents in our ellipsis. Plasma pink blue reds inside my eyeblurs into the waking shadow ultraviolet pulsars. Internalization gouges a pit between smoke lenses my reality swing bridges, inkling that if I fell would I find myself emerge through the mirror to this. She is this believe [[lament->qlament]] desire love.

"Your ideals, are they? Proving the Republic true by murdering its most popular representative?" I interrupt. "He's hardly a representative of the Republic, he's a perversion of it, a demogogue -" Cicero. "Yes, a leader of people, which I suppose you all fancy yourselves, senators? If he persuades the people with trivial public works rather than puerile speeches they never get to hear, well, who's to say that's not the intention of such a system? Are the people not represented?" "He goes against everything we hold dear!" "Yes, I heard he is opposed to you. If he came to your house and tucked you in with a lullaby about glory and empire, would he then be your undying ally, or is it just the very fact that he is not you yet still important? You men want people beneath you but never care to be beneath anyone else." "This is hardly the time for your rankling!" Brutus. "Actually this is the most important time, imagine if you suddenly felt remorse about killing Caesar after his blood was on your hands, the tragedy of a complexity none of you could handle." "You're against us? You've betrayed the plot?" Cicero. "No, no, by all means, [[kill->qkill2]] yourselves, I mean Caesar, kill Caesar, it's all Rome to me. Look, there he is!"

"Yes, best to pluck up the tune, surely you could never think of your heroism beyond how it might prove instrumental for you." I interrupt. "What?" Cicero. "Perhaps you pluck your courage of its feathers so it might not fly from you." "Senatrix Brutus, please, if you -" "There's, what, twelve of you, twenty, eighty nine? How does that take courage? You're also acting in your own best interest, which takes even less courage." "Fighting for the soul of the Republic is the apex of courageous glory!" "Is it? When a gladiator is weaponless and backed up against a wall by a lion, is he courageous when he kicks at it? Does it take more courage to be a republican than an imperialist? Isn't working tirelessly to crown someone who will destroy you and everything you love without even feeling remorse a greater sort of courage? There's a belief greater than desire!" "Are you, then you betray our plot? You have sided with him?" "How dare you!" Brutus. "No, no, betraying it would have taken courage, and I'm with you lot. I of course am all for murdering the man, I just find it contemptuous that anyone here thinks they are not murdering themselves." I. "What are you talking about?" Cicero. "Killing him as he ascends the steps of the Senate, as you have thousands of times done, what is really at stake here?" "The very nature of our society!" Brutus. "Is it though? Is Rome any more or less Rome under a dictator than so debated in these chambers? If this is not what Rome is, then how have we found ourselves here?" "Because gluttons and cowards have foregone their duties to allow a thief into our sanctum!" Brutus. "No, the season has merely molted with us, our chrysalis glistens to a new age. As once we warred with the Achaeans, the Latins, as once were we a kingdom, a republic, so now are we a chaos to be claimed by an empire. Rome is built from all these things, will be built from this also, and we are guilty of the monolith." "So you are against our plot!" Cicero. "No, no, by all means [[kill->qkill2]] the man, there he is, go for it, slather your doors with his blood, see whether the geist shall pass us by."

"Isn't it strange, both of us needing the other to speak, none can, more than none can, as if the need is the quell, or, or maybe that's not strange at all, maybe that's, or maybe the strangeness is in me, lent unto whatever I experience, and you, my Chrysothemis, what have, have you..." "I can't..." "No, I, I don't blame you, I cannot either, larger stages lesser summon my lines, spotlighted unwrites me facade, the more my being there torches the more jetties my mooring my flicker shadelands, ghast of projected razor edges. I could not find where I was when most certain the rest were where a there uninenterred, yet demands the vista of us our sublime so not to be swallowed, scenery not seer struckstar could I from not my throat unswallow? Crepuscular shroudeds blunt the cupola cornice delimiter, asymptote of the light that emanates not from our eyes, our souls' upper register abutting the border of the unsourced source, semipositional dispersen, slayer angel of our chimera antiphons, winged caster of our earthly gordians, form desecrators recombinators to defy entelechies with inviolate liturgies umbilical to chora. Expected to speak seeking the incapacities of our linguistic ties, bonds unpayable to the bearer, uttern, ghost encased in a bronze cylinder immune to the stylus, forbidden unhymn, which might emits me hologramophone? Never the chances I could carve, were cleft of my cavernous, slave cadenza. When I speak, how should I certain the vibrationce illumines a sanctum uniquely my sepulcher, prove how to those who listen the absence permanently presence in my engraved? Pressing out to a precipice would she encase me crags, polylith spirals clutching weakly fallen rays: gorged of my bereft, how should I sing not silence? When my voice cannot our unconstrained deterrain your [[inhabitance->qinhabitance]], how can I trust my words..." "In your expressing I find the home elusive to your expressions." "I want you to lead me there." "The road lies in here," press her hand upon my heart.

Caduceus we collide iris to iris to meld their colors rainbow piercer of this dome of Artemis, this limitness artifice, moonbeams blood floods our bower accompassion caldera islet shrine of our siberryl. Tongue to tongue tunnels our unsaid. I rest her head into mine marker horizon of our secret [[creation->qcreation1]]. So close our whispers subterrene. I allow her into where the [[stories->qstories]] unseam so that I might find her inside them.

People evince who they are not in the acts they think show themselves but in how they fail to show. We are reduced to honesty when we lose the games we invest our selves in. An honest accounting not in the fantasies in which we live maximally but in where we huddle naked and ashamed when the projective defenses crumble, because the fantasies are us, certainly, but only insofar as they are projections generated from a nonincluded core. Juxtapositions of place and person, context and its aversion: someone may wish to slouch and slang an edge, they may curse their way through every phrase, but they find themselves at all the same places as your prim and proper, because the functions that mire us socially are so much stronger than ourselves, we will be found wherever we roam. People have auras that affect how the world processes them; different people in the same place will have drastically separate outcomes. I can never wander far enough away not to be Chrysothemis; the machine into which I am processed may change, but I will be seen, sorted, subsumed. The contexts of my existence may considerably alter, but I cannot. Always they seek to change their circumstances as if in them they may find a new name circumscribed. Chase love, have kids, acquire wealth unmeasurable, achieve power untenable, live out your dreams, hone your art, ply your trade, get paid in the shortcomings of others, dedicate yourself to a cause, ceaselessly assemble a self concept, all yearning anywhere that can be a there, some foreseeable upon the horizon, but there is no there there, there there will only be you, as you are, but wearied from the journey. You cannot pursue yourself; you are right where you are. The agony of this predicament cannot be mutilated and strewn across the landscape to assemble a quest. You are stuck, you cannot get out, no matter how far you venture. The stage cannot change for you. I must create an [[island->qthis]] worthy of my maroonment, I must form a place unenclosed in mysteries whispering over seas, I must compose a strand for my stranded. The work of becoming someone worth waking up as is a battle with yourself fatal.

There is no real person is the problem. We are fantasies, we exist superficially, we are contexts; nothing beneath exists except a roil which will continually violently birth new fantasies, new superficialities to assume, new recontextualizations. I am only as real as the dreams that keep me distant from the drudging indignities of compelled and isolated. This body here is false, all my relationships are false, only the dream is real, and the only love possible is one that annihilates you into a fleeting alterity that can overwrite your world. The purpose of a purpose is to mortify the flesh to carve a vessel for whatever else we can muster from vitality draining. In Arsinoe I have a purpose, in Arsinoe I can believe a Chrysothemis unattached to the desolation of Porcia, in Arsinoe I am myself as my self could never be. Of course we are a fantasy, that's the design! Arsinoe, the destroyed princess, can dwell in me a queen of infinities; Chrysothemis, the crushed beneath Rome, can be entombed in Arsinoe's mythologies. We will be real to nobody else, because we no longer have to be real, we can float into [[dreamscapes->qthis]] we cogenerate. If I have wanted so much from this inhabitation damnation desperation, was it not precisely to meet her, someone who could slaughter me before the idol to dispersion salvation mesmirization? Am I not completed in her? What else could I wish to come after? Any appendices would not affect me, merely this me, this body, this compelled to appear real. I give up the gambit, play no more the fortunes. I can die into this escape and disappear forever in its occlusion immaculate. We have found our stories to tell from this meaningless morass of details. Caesar is dead, war has come, our world will collapse into some worse, but I am not a part of any of it, they are parts of me unreadable in these ruins.

"I cannot bring out of you your need to be brought out, and perhaps this is my weakness, why I ellipsis your syllogism, why I cherish the magnifications you accomplish in my impossible, that in knowing you, I might be immersed in grander than myself." Arsinoe. "How could there be any other grandeur than your illuminative passionation?" "I am who I have had to be, and in only you, is there someone I wish was me, and together we can strive that person. Not merely as a completion do I meet you; I greet you companion." "Where shall we sojourn, my southern star?" "I, I can't say, or rather I could say, if I could feel within you the answer, but you're submerged in its inexpressible, cannot wring you to words..." "Perhaps in that submergence we shall speak." "Speak our shells, yes, more true than the tenderness hidden within. Pearls we wish to defend spotless from the turbulence emanate the brutal to live to echo sonorous. In my defended you, hence am I a violence of you. Treasure of my bulwark, diamond of my masques towards demise, radiate your softness tones within me, that there might be more than war." "You are already so much more, you have only been beaten into thinking yourself a siege, but you have goddess softness and sensibility, queenly fury of facility. Mutable in your furnace incommutability, smelt me survivor, we may both [[shelter->qinhabitance]] here."

"Sometimes I wish I could have known you under a different sky, answering to different names, but as dreamy as can I imagine, you would not be under it, would not answer to it, because you are only who comes to me in temples equal shadow, no difference pertains between those others we enseam and those others who never need our alterity, no difference between our deaths and those lives, so even if it hurts, even if we connect through tissues stars of wounds unhealable, I am glad to know you just as you are, just as I am not." Arsinoe. "In this confluence you are, I anoint you so, no matter what matter suggests, transcendental bride critique of preconceptual discontinuity to synthetic humanity [[written->qinhabitance]] on my tongue a koan, truth never to glisten of my saliva alone." "Then, through all that has befallen, I still persist meaningfully, so instilling." "Through all of it, yes, not despite it or of it, the desire, the aspiring, the spiral of jinn etch tics to purpose splice, grafted onto a draft finalizing." "But how can I know if it's true?" "Does it matter? If the essence suffuses this real, why deny to more realities?" "What if none of this is symbolic, if, if everything, somehow, she negates it all again, will I still deserve it, will I be erased in her actual? I cannot believe in any episteme she does not devour, not now, not so devoured. How shall I -" "What more must we signify than the significance of so othered?" "Other me, please, alter me actual impenetrable!"

Emergence I to flow through us a both: "For several months I dreamt of [[Cassandra->qcassandra]]. In these dreams [[Helen->qhelen]] and [[Helenus->qhelenus]] alternated. In one scene Priam and Paris in a grove discuss with Helen whether the earth is curved, whether all distances lead back to our unifying bend, the orientation by which we progress indirects the central ordination, all arcs roam the sphere we shard shimmer, and she says we flee only to find, at any point the choice compels us to a consequence tied to the line we lead, navigating ingress recessions to the ineluct, destiny slalom cyclical to return the inertia to inner condition to burst through the origin comet through orbits, but they argue that the earth shifts a plane on a rotational axis, definitive development according to how they thrust the innate proterrance, and framed by filigree ivy she wonders whether there can be both definition and development, if the closed assumption of the name negates the protean interdependence emergence, if we are not all by birth murdered unless can we the globe spin to dizzy our directrix the horizons amalgamate, curve where blurs every beyond so being only by you being here. In the next scene Helenus laughs off his armor and asks Cassandra whether her window proves not more illuminating than the parapets, but she sombers that she no longer looks from windows but feels them, and Helenus nods, yes, so the arrows have made me empathize, and the twins laugh dispel the dread for the fleeting, so fleeting connection, what comfort family proves as you reduce from where they expect to find you." "What comfort indeed, Cassandra laughs, there can be nothing worth a Helen to us but the despair all our families deserve in the shadow of agony tyranny Agamemnon, slaughterer of daughters, shackles archdevil. Blessed [[Clytemnestra->qclytemnestra]] tendering a dagger while his triumph sycophanfares, decade aged vengeance dripping gently sherry cask notes from his vains." Arsinoe. "Sucking at the ashes for [[Iphigenia->qiphigenia]] to portend her war."

"Blindfolded but with ovals cut for her eyes to cage her oracularity Cassandra sleepless in her cell observes the moon's pale teases on wine dark waves the impassable way to a ruined home and wonders whether Helen saw this same sea from Sparta, dreamed, as she now dreams, of dancing upon oar foam until the feverish marine yields the chance, Leander lead to the idealist Hero where half promises half hums the beacon in the roar crash cymbal clashes precarity surge, half revels half sings the beacon, voice of Hero dazzles in the maelstrom, so Leander undresses into its roil, is swept into Hero, not as he meets her, but as he fears her, her phantom call, incessant into the night her call to come unto her encompassing, assume yourself in my domain hero of Hero, slitting his thoughts to ribbons to arrange flash colors of her patterning in his reeling seizing, the beacon barely visible in the tremolo nocturne, raspberry crazed murmurs chants to Aphrodite tiptoeing into his echoing confinement cannot echoing for a moment fade unconscious without her echoing hot his name steaming into his ears as echoes, tossing in his bed hysterical as she sings cyclonic to shrieks until his whole being vibrates to her voice, into eventide of echo Hero casts he himself into the sea, drowns in her [[love->qkiss3]], gone into what will not return his body, and Cassandra ever so slightly nasally moans, knows she shall not escape the echo."

"Helen races to Mount Ida and weeps into the trees, oh Oenone, I inheritor of your happiness and grief tender also my loss unto your angst possessions, for Paris remains in catacombs his world, no victory worthy the name overarches your vaunted hollowed, no majesty do I claim to ribbon dance your rage, unison strenuous, collapsed are we one [[craving->qkiss3]], but I am not the inheritor of your almighty power, cannot heal him as you will, and though you may loathe me, hate my signified nonwithin you, lacerate your designs until they bleed from how my object objects you, please, I beg you your hate to counterbalance what I have ripped from you, may you yet love him, just once more endure in his kiss, unwound him, unwind time, preserve us the joy you should have treasured but which I have ransacked ruthless, in my ruins juiceless eddies your reprelapsarian sanguine to decast us competitive, mark not our hours to profane prior timeless but process the purity precarious of the foregiven, allow your healing to heal you, and the paradise you restore I shall share with you in him we shall be as three, but Oenone winter weeping willow scoffs, time justifies our endurance soulinear records of the music we make, those who wish horizons replace us beg we forsake our foundations, but I am the misplaced one in one, the one who forsook my lineage, Phrygian Woods' river nurturers' nymph, daughter of the force progress Scamander, lord of skychance to enmeshed invisibly also, snowmelt freedoms to ocean sublimity, to adhere myself to sweetly entuning a slave, in the tiller of fields found I my prince, because we implied glories where we traced through the woods our wander kingdom waymarking upon poplar boughs testaments of the contours of our presentation imputation essence enmeshment here in our as for as long as the river raced us through its banks Oenone and Paris betrothed oxbow flows to placidity perfection externalization into portraiture, saw ourselves as others must appreciate us mythic, we would, as hence has he envenomed you, surpass timeless, become intimatemporal, of our own soons source, nearness naiads, but you see now not my nearness, nor my timeless, but my beyond pressed our once thus this thence your hence transgresses irrevocably reverb haunters lurk to lunging from shadows you as non so suppress inflict upon my chest cleave, slashed to your whether whether shall it show serenity or sadness, unclasp I your peacemaking forcing, because you, forgiver, are given what I am for, you taunt me to mend your prize, abandon me some Menelaus mirthless, you discover love grace in your armada magnificence over my sunken that swallows the breeze of my heritage in a thousand sails, wakes scimitars over where I was as I was then, perhaps you never knew, but I was, above upon a seacliff I stared upon my clock counting me back to immortal, at my touch's tangible effect deifying, antireifying, rendering me once more no more but a nymph, spirit of the course watching the waters run us our course, and the little I once laid with him human, vulnerable, real, possible, and I was, so briefly, I was, I, I, can you dream it, awestaken, reel into the reckoned and not so as now no more a myth but modernity nowness processed from precursion conditions, not a puzzle posed from some cosmos mind but a mess made or not made to matter, in him unsolvable but redeemable splintered in cared for through the count against all that does not count us, pieces I can never recover until I am accounted my abstraction as you consider my, not me, my, contained within, not callable in skin, but though I am incurably a cloud, yet enough blood pulsed in my ivorwhy to impulse recant vengeance so that the waters would not flow backwards, so that I would still be fallen, unloved, here, so all my anguish might mean, even shall the theme mortify." Arsinoe. "And, and Oenone says, Cassandra came to me, yes, your Cassandra, Helenus, she came to me savagery, rambling an augury, prophesying Troy razed, demanding I sink your ship, drown Paris with you, Helen, to save all who would suffer your bliss, but as the foremost of these, first and maximum, I welcomed my children from your shadow womb, allowed you to sail forth, consequence fiends, Scamander's succession's scarred, to yield unto me more signification. If I must be abstraction, then may I become infinite." "Oenone on Paris' pyre balks the flames, is this where was mortal, has he passed into dusts that do not signify, has he not returned unto me, succumbed my signature? Burning she turns to Helen, smiles, sips from Paris' melted cranium cerebrospinal wine, and never greater a distance does this desirer freeze, she realizes he is hers, has no life beyond her representation, to Helen he belonged but as failure to fulfill bonds to Oenone symbolizer, and she weeps not for Paris but for, cloaked funereal, her loss of the loss of him."

"Helen in the ballroom reads the damper, Helenus in the armory dejects the city's degradation to defended fortifications." Arsinoe. "Helen with Paris in massacre [[kisses->qkiss3]], Helenus with Cassandra in malaise ease; Helen with Paris on a verandah watching the shifts change their bliss auspice brutalized to barracks while they wonder if in every touch trembles five lives' equal, Helenus with Cassandra despairing the yesterdays each new death forgets." "She flees from they have matched spectacular to confront Cassandra, clawing and kicking down her barred door, shouts, why would you tell the nymph Oenone to drown us, frustrated she flickers wildly between Helen and Helenus, and Cassandra sighs to the window to where she lifts a lace leafy arm wrist first, without following the view Helen and Helenus realize she gestures to the carnage, and they laugh, so what would you have preferred, slavery?"

"In your dream Electra and Orestes are the same person. Exiled from the palace because she cannot stop seeing her sister's ashes scatter from roofs, because she calls every candle in the castle by name, because she sometimes in the deep night stands in doorways different each time and stares but does not enter until she backwards steps into the deep night, because of the way she holds knives when she cooks, because she cooks, troubles the slaves by insisting on working beside them in frail semicompetence verging always on falling to her knees and rocking there until Chrysothemis retrieves her, because she speaks to Clytemnestra by addressing Aegisthus, because she demands confused suitors retrieve the beating heart of the sea for her hand, because once in every twenty times twenty times you find her she is Orestes, always the exact height of the room, face tattooed with Cronus his child consuming, mounted with spikes, lidless, lipless, nails that droop entwine thorn to his toes, who speaks from inside your brain. Shackled to a peasant of the hinterland but he cannot touch her without his flesh singeing to the muscle, he cannot enter his house without a crawling tinnitus creeping her in his spine far before he sees her, or, or he dreads, palpitates, sees Orestes. They do not share a bed." Arsinoe. "Into elusion elision strides into strangle entanglement coupling breath to breath stillness undeath infusion fierce Clytemnestra Cassandra's cell's gray mist effusion in which empire of intension amber allusion conducive emulsion otherworldly alluvial fans frames in the entrance Clytemnestra who waits for who does not turn to notice so Clytemnestra's slave shakes Cassandra to attention but Cassandra cannot be moved, quartz tetrahedral figurine. Refusing to allow greater dignity in bearing to a Trojan, Clytemnestra refuses to move herself, for three days and six nights still they stand, until Clytemnestra sneers, so is this it then, foremost of the creatures whose slaughter was worth my daughter? Thousands of you baking in the arrowlands between city and sieger for an angel wryly wise but too empathetic to lacerate? Again proves Agamemnon's coward blood best excised from our people. I hear they spared you as a princess, which irony revulse impulsed me to scratch these walls until they bordered the world I can manage, but they say also you are an oracle, but, but seeing you, I do not believe them, you are simply as so many others, a girl who could not matter until she made of herself her replacement. Have a hundred hollow prophesies you muttered to those who would never have otherwise sought you? Have you in the fumes seized envisioning futures you would love to shall be so? Perhaps your prophecies' sheer ferocity convinced them you quivered future anguish. Once was I wishful like you, but a woman wants for nothing, because she gets nothing." "Clytemnestra into the yawning daybreak sighs. When gone is she spasms Cassandra curse vibrant wailing beware, beware, never will we share another moon. Guards grin impassive at another sobbing prisoner." "Upon a balcony Chrysothemis and Clytemnestra share coffee speaking the mundanities that proliferate when shared have been a thousand daybreaks and the spoken outweighs the sayable in finite music, the limits at which we touch." "From the hall howls, so they startle turn to see Orestes. He drops at their feet the head of Aegisthus: behold, vengeance upon our father." "Clytemnestra falls to the head to kiss its forehead, tearfully up to Orestes the you don't have to tell me why, I will ask that of the ancients. Orestes embraces crumpled Clytemnestra, so the spikes pierce her, and Orestes nuclear cries." "And from the gore I lift up shivering Electra, and I [[kiss->qkiss3]] her forehead as she snivels kill me, kill me, I'm so sorry, and I smile that I cannot kill her, though I cannot forgive her, because our mess has melted to myth." "And she, and she, and you..."

"Yes, yes! Possessed by her daughter's death a second pregnancy birthed in her husband's wounds, once more Iphigenia from her father's bondage. Precious Chrysothemis priestesses the sacrificial purification to condemn Calchas' acid envisions." Arsinoe. "Ah, am I in your dream?" "You are in every dream." "Of course, this is where we are, isn't it, watching as Calchas' daughter Criseyde slaughters Calchas for tearing her from –" "Criseyde? You mean Chryseis?" "No, Criseyde, lover of Chryseis." "This is from the Iliad?" "It's in my dream, maybe I invented it." "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so ignorant, I didn't mean to –" I kiss her quiet, console her in a slow swipe down her nose. "You're so wise inside my dream, you write where it falters, ripple it richer shades. Calchas, expelled into crueler futures he forecleaves, admitted to himself at Troy in a siege, conspires with the Mycenaeans destructive vindication by proving his futures true, futures vile, lusting thirsting burning Iphigenia, to which pseudoskeptical Agamemnon reciprocates stipulates the death of Criseyde, but she, gifted to her own oracularity, flees to her native city where she presents herself to her father's successor, Chryses, who trains her art alongside his daughter, Chryseis, and through listless but brimming hyperbright days they endure his lessons, lean into each other exhausted from chanting sacred texts, leans leaning towards habitual, familiar, familial, friendly, flirtatious, passionate, in nights discover Chryseis and Criseyde deeper magics they sanctify sensuous immense under plums and pears splendors they shall sculpt as one prophesy." "Steal into a niche as down the corridor strolls Hecuba, giggling into each other's lips." "Steal from the royal store, then practice predict to Helenus dressed as Hecuba the depletion of their pomegranates, a curse of why not Poseidon, obsessively detailing the other's revels about the proper ceremonial rectification." "Convince Chryses to let them share a desk under which they hold hands while he lectures, maybe, maybe occasionally the hands slide..." "Chart each other's stars until their fated to [[love->qkiss3]] seems assured by births." "Through seven candles simmer they with Cassandra and Helenus about the future, because they refuse to believe in any omen they cannot accord to their own cleromancy." "Because Cassandra and Helenus predict the return of Criseyde, whom Calchas convinces Agamemnon must be restored to sacrifice." "Her father..." "Her annihilator progenitor, austere enumerator of her encompassed, Calchas seizes in joy dream of his sorrow, tearjerking on Agamemnon's tent floor completion of their mutual desecration, so to their madness fulfill Greek agents into the city stealth to steal Criseyde on a moonless starless while hidden inside an apothecary brewing imaginative potions they envision the taste and its power. Guided by Calchas' wind carried whispers these Greeks sneak right to the two, and in a cauldron effervesce blitz cloaked wrestle gagging Criseyde from Chryseis wailing, extricate ere soldiers arrive, fog rolls static." "Chryseis wild anxious bloodsoaked in digression seeks augury from Helenus, but too busy is she fulfilling Helen, so Chryseis seeks Cassandra but erupts panic raws ataxia catatonic like a caffeine overdose, simply she shivers in the soft screened light." "Thrown before her murder father on an altar above the Greek encampment Criseyde calls out to a name that no longer hears her. Hoots and jeers and chuckled sneers flounce from jostling lairy in the foam of so many spilled beers frenzies of warriors hyenas before the glint of the secespita raised, but Chryseis hexes Calchas from afar, effigizing her body his through entwining her blood with that of his daughter, she severs hers and his sacrificial arm, and Calchas staggers back, so Criseyde snatches the secespita and plunges it into his throat, gurgling Chryseis reaches out for Criseyde..." "They transpose the distance, embrace on the floor fallen, and Criseyde sucks upon the throat wound until she swallows Chryseis' voice, speaks in unison duets." "Chryseyde emerges from the darkness to Chryses who weeps over her a blessing, my daughters, my daughter, you have become where I cannot follow, but may my love fuel you to fathoms below my deepest held, which was always you." "Their magic reconstitutes the held into mode. At their feet Helen begs she heals Paris as once she healed theirselves." "But she declines, the severed into one cannot unify the severed to so many miseries."

I lean in to kiss her but a blastwave. Hovering in the glittering [[furnace->qfurnace2]]. From the shattered altar emerges Cleopatra. Arsinoe struggle crawls towards my shouting from [[heaven->qheaven]], but a slave carries her into the antiradiant aura. From this distance, both gilded headdressed, they seem two dark pecan locket fragments. Motionless poised spin they about a [[barycenter->qbarycenter]]. Egyptian handmaidens choir stone somber barren like the dead to their own [[threnody->qthrenody]]. My shouts merge into the melody glacier. They [[rage->qrage]] in my cannot ken, but a scarab flurries up into my ear to translate.

"If you want to be real I cannot give it to you, none of what lies within me liberates your condition to negamimetic [[oblivion->qoblivion]] from which to spark creation [[cascades->qcascades]], every contingency we cling to together gathers us to a storm which will destroy us in equal vengeance to the venom idols we wish to crush to soak in their inscription a prescriptive outcoming. We are to be annihilated, you and I, and I, you..." Arsinoe. "I expect nothing of this confluence but that we drown in it." "Ah, oh [[Chrysothemis->qchrysothemis2]], you're so, you can't believe how much it heals my fractures natal to have someone who, who, can we call it [[understanding->qunderstanding]], are we allowed such luxuries of naivety, can we just genuinely melt into the theming, and isn't that what we want, to however briefly dance sans [[audience->qaudience]]?"

"How dare you perform this violence upon our Egypt recombining from your apocalypse!" Cleopatra. "You're the one who has led it to apocalypse! Egypt has been dead since you killed her." Arsinoe. "Enough of your Berenice excuses, she's nobody to you, she's a convenient explanation for your misbehaviors." "She is who I've wanted to be, who you've denied me in two lives! She was a goddess of all my heart can hold dear. You blaspheme her only because you didn't know her like I did, like we were when you –" "No, that's, gods that's so ridiculous for you to say, you're wrong, you're just wrong, you didn't know her like I did! I was with her every day for years, I slept in her room for years! I was with her in the temples while you wasted in your hole pawing through whatever books took you the furthest from us. I was with her in her majesty, in her agony, in her blazes, in her serenity, in her last whispers: where were you? Do you know what she said to me, Berenice? She said, she said she didn't know who you were, she said that but months before her mind broke." "No, she didn't, she wouldn't!" "She did, absolutely she did, I promise you upon my divinity she did! You think you know her, but your so called Berenice is another poetry you invent to forget that you are no one but your mistaken pride. You are nobody, nor is this phantom you need to be yourself." "That's not true, that's not –" "Every bit of an Egyptian princess you are is because I dragged you to the role while you kicked and screamed your Greek, but I persevered because my mother, not yours, you don't deserve her, taught me how to brutalize loves Egyptian. Who was it, faithless, who dragged you onto voyages down the Nile to show you your kingdom? Who tried to teach you the Egyptian wisdoms and traditions while you buried yourself in Grecian aggrandizement, and yet you have the audacity to cast yourself some savior of Egypt, an Egypt you couldn't recognize outside an inscription! You haven't met the gods like I have, you haven't met our ancestors like I have, you haven't studied our stories and ceremonies like I have, you haven't even –" "Maybe, maybe I'm not the savior of Egypt, but I am loyal to her, while you burned down everything that –" "Don't you dare speak to me of burning down, you beast! I will kill you to retribute such profanity. Leviathan of devils, you and you alone, and you will always be alone, remain responsible for the treacherous destruction of the jewel of Alexandria, our trove of histories, the –" "Because I will die and let everything die with me before I let conquerors control our souls! Our bodies you gift them, but our souls, they will never –" "Conquerors! Did you even read the books you sacrificed your humanity for? What city did you live in? Neither Thebes nor Memphis you ruled but Alexandria, city of Alexander, archon of Macedon, conqueror of Egypt. You hypocrite, you idiot, our family didn't even speak the language until our mother instituted it, my mother your Berenice murdered to forsake our ways! Before the Greeks ruled us the Persians, before them the Kushites, before them Egyptian enslavers of Egyptians foreign, this land is a history, we shape and are shaped by it, we are Egyptians because as Greeks, Persians, Kushites, Upper and Lower Nile dwellers, we entered into the land and drank of its sands until those, and those alone, grained us souls. If the time has come to couple with Romans to form pharaohs of a newer age, then, Queen of Creation's River Endless, from them will I bring forth gods." "That's not, that's a perversion of our proud, can, can you imagine, Egypt, mistress of millennia, begging its scraps from Latin raiders, brutes who can barely recite the plays they enslave! Don't you see Rome is the degradation, the final disruption of our combination? They shall curate our monuments a museum of their cruelties, they will annihilate everything about us that cannot be sorted and taxed and marched out to a legion, any part of our –" "Rome is what it has to be and so am I! So am I. There's nothing else left, you were all that was, but I will survive you, because the tatters of humanity a history must survive us." "You are whoever you have to be, because you don't let anyone else be, you refuse to listen to anyone but your own infinite excellence, you wouldn't recognize your failure in a mirror. It's not just that I'm nothing, but in you I'm not Egyptian enough, not wise enough, not poetic enough, illiterate and ignorant, I don't even get to know my own sister, because she's different from your phantom, the one conveniently in need of your laying her to rest, everything you do diminishes those who don't supplicate your vision of them. No wonder you couple with Romans, you share their instinct to include or kill. You can never taste the catabolic delicacies that escape your yoke, the dreams that animate us fractures. Do you know why Ptolemy hated you enough to betray you? Because he was a slave, your slave, and so was I, and if we invoked Israelites scars, we did so only because their tomb you disturbed by slaughtering our firstborn! Your sisters hate you, your brother hated you, but somehow it's all their fault, irrational nobodies incapable of your grandeur, soloist upon worlds!" "Everyone is incapable of my grandeur, because this grandeur destroys all but the goddess, sublime and sterile gleam. Egypt killed our sister, killed me, and I tried to save you from it, but your selfish childishness could not fathom any good but gilded paths." "Saved me from it! Saved me from it! You can't be serious! How could you save me from my home?" "Because Egypt is a home to you, not a duty, not a terrifying ontic creeping into your seizures weeping, a demand ready to harrow at any moment. Do you know which tribute is proper from traders of Punt and which tests an insult? Have you pondered the unanswerables to Set's nine enigmas? Should a star shoot across our sky, do you know which ceremonies to conduct to appease Osiris? Could you divine your dreams for omens? When Romans bear their armies down upon you, what shall make you an Egypt, not a Carthage? I spent a whole year without once seeing the sun. Berenice broke under the pressure, tried to annihilate our traditions to forge from her frenzy new forms, but alone strode I from Rome to bear beauty's yoke, but you ruined everything, have ruined everything again, all you do is ruin, because you cannot create, you still have too much will inside you to endure what parasites from us persistence, and my only gift to you, for which you, you, you ruin everything for me! I tried to save your life from your mistakes, but you repay me in deaths!" "Because I am Egypt of the ruins, I am –" "You are nothing! You are a love drain, a heart sprain, a desecrator of fragile –" "I am, I, I know I'm nothing, okay, if you must, if this is what you want me to say, I'm nothing, I'm worthless, okay, are you happy, I agree with how much you hate me, and maybe it's my fault, maybe I don't deserve to be loved, maybe I should be slaughtered like the rest of our family, but I will be my nothing, I will make my faults an empire, and you cannot stop me, you cannot prevent my nothing, cannot belittle it." "You are nothing, you're so much more than nothing, but you won't be, you will be my broken heart and nothing more, I promise you this, there will be nothing more of –" "It's too late, I already am more, I have found a heart you cannot contain." "No, you have only added one more misery to your name. I would pity her, but who knows how malignant she must be to console herself in you." "You don't get to say that about her, about my, my –" "No, no, shut up, you don't get to say that word, because you have brutalized every bloom of it beside you. I will not mourn your ash desire, but I will grant you an honor you have not earned, ancestral [[death->qdeath2]]."

"And is this the world you have envisioned? Vicious scythecles looping us all worse and worse? Have you nothing but spite? Are you nothing but treasureds alight? You were once so full of ideas, even if they meant nothing, you had such profusions inside you, but now you are the fire, your eyes contain nothing but destructions, you are malignantly metastasized, nonendurance nihil, nongenerative negation, pure hate, and, as all purities, absolutely empty." Cleopatra. "You empty me, you have, I am scorched of solsunnah in your hate!" "I don't hate you, I don't know how to stop loving you, that's why each time you hurt deeper. Egypt must renounce you, amputate the frostbite, but I look at you, I look at you, Arsinoe, and I, I see us when we were so impossibly young, you and me and Berenice and Mother playing dolls together, and I think, how did that become all this, how do I make myself its consequence, how do I meet you in this hell queen defiant, how do I yell at you, when all I want is to hold you through the rage, I want to hug you through the hate until I can braid your hair with unscarred hands, I want to smell you again, so that I can sense something, feel anything but this starkening into purpose. I must become Queen Cleopatra VII, the demon you desecrate, and I will, I will succeed, I will be me victoriously, but I will never, never sleep again, and I want you to know that, I want you to wander starless afterlife with the quivering certainty that the only one who loved you more than you deserved has suffered every agony of the disparity." "I don't need your condescending entrapments, I don't need your love that feverishly imagines how I might in the next life suffer, I have real love, I have someone who loves who I am fleetingly this life real, who -" "How dare you! After everything you have put me through for dealing as I must with Romans, you have your own little Roman pet, do you? You're the only one who is allowed to feel without guilt, is that it? You're such a butcher!" "We are Greek. You are right about one thing, your majesty, I have been erased of Egypt, I am burned clean of it. All that remains of me dissipates into myth." "I can't even argue how much that infuriates me, I can't even think straight, I'm so, you're so, eahh! Ahh! How can you be like this?" "How can you -" "No, shut up, shut up, I'm done with your lies! Time and again I humiliate myself before you to share some sincerity, but you spurn me ridiculous, you hurt me in ways that I cannot dignify, and that's why I have failed to be myself only before you, concerning you, because I am who I must be except in your contempt. How you have learned to unsew me without any empathy I shall ask Anubis as I choke him begging to be scoured of earthtide. You think you're some aesthetic devil, because you have stolen that shard of my soul, but I am here to reclaim it, I will ripple into the infernos of Rome the same destroyer you forged in our library. You will be but ash beneath my catastrophe. The horrors I shall wreak upon the innocent shall be your threnody, my [[annihilation->qdeath2]] kiss."

"Has your heartless required you steal this much blood? Why not just let it kill you like you wanted? How could you take this from me? How could you take everything from –" Cleopatra. "Everything? Everything! You took everything from me, my everything, you –" Arsinoe. "You burned down your own everything, you child, you sniveling wasp, there was nothing for me to take from –" "You took her from me!" "You don't know what you're talking about!" "I do, I know exactly what, what, how could you kill Berenice, y