2/4: Steve Burrows, Designation Unknown

2/4:  Steve Burrows, Designation Unknown

Union

I lay on Edward’s bed and stared up at the galaxy that slowly spun directly above me and I forgot everything for a moment.

Ah, the relief.

I wanted to just sink into this sensation of finally being somewhere safe, somewhere calm and beautiful and dissolve myself to the experience of the galaxy but my eyes were grainy, hot and dry and I kept wanting to close them.

But I did not want to close my eyes for then I would no longer see this miracle he had created in response to what I told him and how I felt about that; so I fought and struggled and this came between me and the moment, ever worse until at last, I gave up and I closed my eyes.

It was extraordinary.

Not only could I still clearly see the galaxy above, I saw it far more clearly, saw it in its real reality, not confined by ceilings, bedposts, ordinariness – now, it was no longer an alien intrusion into an establish world, but it was right at home, and oh, it was so beautiful! He was so beautiful! So distant and so cool, so endless, so restful, so complete and so – incredibly attractive to me, so homeward calling, if I could go there, be there, reach into the center then I too could be still. The cool and calm and the vastness of that space would take that pressure out of me, would let me give it up and become free of it, become free of that alien presence I had taken, made my own and which now ruled me with its unimaginable demands, sensations.

I saw the galaxy and I prayed to it, I prayed that I would be allowed to go and be there, come home, be saved, be relieved and then I could feel it opening up to me, it wanted me the same to bring this fire and to warm its very core.

Permission was all that I had needed and so I flooded towards that silent space, I burst my dams and roared upward, forward and out, became an ocean wave of light and for a moment I could feel a hesitation, or a fear and yet it lasted only for the fraction of a heartbeat, then there was a welcome and entire wide embrace as what I was and what it was collided – it was no shock, there was no reverberation or percussion, and when we touched and then began to flow into each other, it was as though what I was and what he was were exactly made to be the perfect match, the perfect answer to each other’s questions, the solution to the limitations of each other’s states of being.

I gave fire and in return, I harvested the brilliant ice of stars and darkness in a tapestry that made them one and all the same, and as we rippled, as we spread, and as we fed upon each other, giving and receiving in return, I could perceive a threshold coming closer, coming closer – and beyond that threshold lay salvation, there lay treasure of a kind I never knew to ask for or to hope, expect; there lay reward and rescue all the same, and then I knew that this was transformation.

White Space

All around me, everything is white.

This white is made up of a myriad of lights so infinitely small that they are dense and everywhere at once, and it glows from its own existence, within and without.

I am here, and I am thinking.

I am me, Steve Burrows is my name, and I am sensing, feeling, seeing and experiencing here in this white space that is only one way, and that is holy.

I know he is here and I call to him, the best I can – he hears me instantly and now, I am not sure if there is any distance left between us, or if I am mistaken and we are just one, not two.

“Edwards? Where are we?” Before the thought is finished I already know that he has no idea and is as new to this, as newly born to this as I am, and he knows I know and therefore gives me no response.

“What happened? Who are we?” That is the same again and for some reason, this amuses me; it amuses him too and once again I get this feeling that this space we share might just be more than … “We completed the union.” 

Did I think that, or did he? Does it matter? We completed the union. Indeed, we did. We went across a threshold and it changed us into something altogether new.

“What now?” 

Who thought that? 

I don’t know. I try and turn around somehow to face him, but it feels like only one turning, only a single movement in this space. The movement leaves behind itself a starry trail of brighter light and it fascinates me.

It fascinates me … I have a recollection of the colours I first saw in what they call the underworld, and then another joins it – it is a recollection of the colours once again, but I have never seen this? Whose are they, what is this? It is I, and I remember seeing me from Edward’s vantage, and in some loss of understanding I attempt to move from one of these and to the other, to know just what is what and whose is which, but they are the same.

Are we the same?

“Edwards, what has happened here?”

But this time, there is only the resonance of my own thoughts, a vague echo, nothing more and I begin to be afraid.

Have I murdered him too?

Have I murdered – me? 

The white is all around.

It is alive, singing and dancing with aliveness.

I am not alone and even though I cannot now perceive another like myself, I am comforted.

We are comforted.

We are in the light.

The light.