Chrysoberyl, My Lover Contained

For years you lie dormant in those old Russian mountains, cold to the touch and columbine red in incandescent light. The rare nature of your physical allowances astonishes: only once, morning, only in primary rays and damp stone did we find immediacy. Oh how I waited in your specific gravity, pulled nearer and down toward that sleek physicality. Cyclic twins we are—trillings really—being shaped by the ions around us, golden and beryl. Your slow alluvial exposes you as alive, opalescent, and willing only to change with a slow tide, a tide outside my visible breath. But what color are you without me? How have you shown these reds, these greens and how dare you recreate me this way? I am the dull grey murmur to your speechless raspberry tint and sounds are meaningless here. It is only light waves on which this message can be transmitted. Only down your jagged edges will I ever feel that old urge to compress. Ural as a ghost then Ural in daylight and solid, so solid it startles, as though just your glow blocks my still-frozen hand from advancing.

– Emily Renaud