Blackbirds and Cherries

BLACKBIRDS AND CHERRIES Beautiful images, inspired thoughts

[blackbirdsandcherries]

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them." 

--Henri Matisse

[blackbirdsandcherries]

Those who flow as life flows know They need no other force: They feel no wear, they feel no tear, They need no mending, no repair.

--Lao Tzu

[blackbirdsandcherries]

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

--Confucius

[blackbirdsandcherries]

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” 

― Haruki Murakami

(Dizziness, Iman Maleki)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

[blackbirdsandcherries]

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

--Lord Byron

(Bo Roberts, photographed by Josh Gaddy)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

And this is in the night:—Most glorious night!    Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be    A sharer in thy fierce and far delight—    A portion of the tempest and of thee!    How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,    And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!    And now again 'tis black,—and now, the glee    Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

--Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Lord Byron

(Fiercely the Red Sun Descending, Burned his Way across the Heavens, Thomas Moran)

[sisimka]

It’s the light, I know that. But the image, a frozen moment caught by a flash of light, is seared across the back of my lids, the stark lines of our pose more distinct than the purple spots that await my clearing vision.

His eyes are gone, replaced by impenetrable shadow, and the soulless black frightens me. Not because he is like that, a vessel—empty or perhaps possessed. It’s not the hand at my neck, either, the careless grip that exposes tendons and that one vein, the blue of it a linear bruise beneath my skin.

It’s the hunger of the pose, thrust into a moment that should reflect satiety. It’s the search of his eyeless gaze and the custody of my neck, the hint he might take a bite out of me, consume me, possess me.

I am frightened because the reflection of him is a reflection of me. I am already possessed. I am owned. I am willing. I am his, and if he needs to taste me, he can. The flavor of my soul is already on his lips, the fire of it within his eyes.

I will feed his hunger, always, just as he feeds mine.

(Image Credit)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

"Were all stars to disappear or die,  I should learn to look at an empty sky  And feel its total dark sublime,  Though this might take me a little time.” 

― W.H. Auden

(Image Credit)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate."

--Dante's Inferno

(Photo credit)

[sisimka]

After today, he will no longer be just my best friend.

He will be a husband, maybe a father. He will no longer be only mine. He will be a part of a family, an entity that will form the moment he pledges himself. He’ll be one half of a whole, inseparable, but always separate.

He will belong to a subset, or move from one circle to another. He will take a step that announces his difference, his sameness. He’ll wear a ring on his finger, one that draws some eyes while deterring others.

Will they wonder, when they look into his handsome face, past the stubble creeping across his jaw—so faint, so soft, he should never shave at all. Will they measure his eyes, the gravity behind irises brown flecked with gold. His lips, his smile, that dimple that flashes only on one side.

Will they see his face and wonder if he’s happy, committed. If he misses being single. Being just a guy. Just a best friend. A lover.

They won’t wonder that, they’ll simply want him—because he’s beautiful.

He reaches over to fiddle with my tie; strong fingers tweak each end, straightening the middle.

“Gotta look sharp on my big day,” he says.

Something inside me dives toward my shoes, the shiny black shoes purchased just for this occasion.

His hands drop to my sides and I feel mine rise toward his shoulders where they hang in the air, uncertain and afraid. His nose tucks into the shadow of mine and his breath tickles my lips.

“Last kiss,” he says and I think my heart might stop beating. Follow everything else down and out, exit myself and find somewhere else to live.

My fingers find the back of his neck and it is warm and his hair is soft—as it always is. I can smell him, the soap—my soap. He used it this morning. It smells different on him, it always has.

The kiss isn’t long enough. It’s too gentle and weighted with too much import. He is nervous, I can tell, and I want to grip his shoulders, hold him close and tell him to never let me go. To run away with me—now. To forget ceremony and…change.

I don’t want to lose my best friend. It hurts. I am afraid. After today, everything between us will change. But it shouldn’t. It really shouldn’t. I’m the one he’s marrying.

(Picture credit: Looking, Ep. 7)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

He’s shorter than me. His shoulders are narrower, collar bones shadowed purple and green in the murky light. I can see where his neck begins and the slender curve only serves to highlight the delicate line of his jaw. Some might say his features are pinched. I prefer defined. He is not sculpted, in the traditional sense. He is fine-boned. Porcelain.

My arms could circle him easily. One squeeze and I can feel his ribs give. I could break him. Sometimes I think I have.  

His ear sits by my lips and I breathe across it. A shiver races across his skin. In the mirror, I observe the tightening of his flesh, the way his small, flat nipple beads. Beneath, the line of his pectoral curves up to a fold beneath his arm. It is a delusion, that fold. A hint there is some of him to spare. There is not.

His arms are slender, but rest easily at his sides, hooked beneath shoulders that are always square. Usually square. Right now, they tilt forward. He is folding in on himself, though he does not want to. I touch his hip and breathe across his ear again.

He doesn’t meet my gaze in the mirror, and I do not need to look down to see what has captured his attention. It’s the scar. It slices beneath his collarbone, livid and purple, and then leaps from the top of his shoulder onto mine. We share it, this scar, though his is longer, more slender, and mine ironically short. But the two ends dovetail in a way we always tried to, but never quite managed, until we became similarly marked.

He’s smaller than me, but he bears the brunt of my scar.

I whisper against his ear. “I love you.”

He doesn’t reply; he doesn’t have to. Shorter, smaller, porcelain, and still he stood before me, shielded me, offered his life for mine. Because he loves me, too, and always has.

(Backstage Louis Vuitton SS13, Photography: Brett Lloyd)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

--Calvin Coolidge 

(Wind and Light by Marc Adams)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

"Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open."

--John Barrymore 

(Open Door on a Garden, Konstantin Somov, 1934)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence." --Henry David Thoreau 

(Winding Path by Robert Kimball)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

Do not go gentle into that good night,  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;  Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

--Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas

(Study of Clouds with a Sunset near Rome, Simon Alexandre Clément Denis)

[blackbirdsandcherries]

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery