KALEIDO 

Le Baiser

Gustav Klimt

As we held each other tightly, my breath fell in harmony with yours to the musings of the nightingales. The touch of dusk on your skin made you glisten, golden even. And in that moment I loved you. Cloaked as you were in my love and the last rays of a fallen sun,  you were beautiful. How did such chance become me? That we would have good fortune befall our humble existence? That we would be reunited under such favorable circumstances, that my lips could find yours, my fingers find yours in a most crucial dance? You do not remember my dear, but the days had not always been this gracious in their gifts to us, to me. After your Father had banished my ever laying eyes on you, I had come to travel through more than seven valleys to find a wisdom that would fill the gap in my chest. I studied the art of peaceful breathing with a man of the first valley who would expell the air of my lungs with brute force and tell me to relax as if the most natural thing in the world. I observed the flight of ravens and the complexities of ther song with an old widow of the second valley who claimed she saw the future in such things. I, for one, never saw anything it thought it some treacherous mystical shenanigans. In a village of the third valle, I came across a group of young circus children who impressed my mind with the sight of their dexterity of hand and flexibility of movement. As they jumped and scurried off, the youngest turned to me to shout “You must be flexible inside as well!” before disappearing with his peers in a cloud of beige-sand dust. As I rested at the river of the fourth valley, I somehow found myself submerged in the grey tones of the waters and as I lost counciousness I felt a force push me to the surface. I cannot to this day tell you what it was that tore me from the grip of Death itself, though I remember an omnious music. As I made my way through the fifth of valleys, a young woman attempted to stop my pace so that I would return from where I came. When I told her I could do no such thing, she persisted in her demands and I had to gallop for three moons before she abandoned her race behind me. As I approached the valley of the Six, the forest ripped through my garnments and tore through my skin. I could no longer continue on horse-back and left my faithful companion to the wilderness. By the seventh valley, the one they call The Dark Alley, I was muddied, desperate, destitute and without name. This is how you found me, and how you came to give me a name. And by your kiss I felt the weight of my travels lighten and a true peace befall me. My dearest love, do not leave me a second longer for I fear the terrors of the things I have witnessed without you.