go to florence. look in the eyes of michelangelo’s david, chiseled in stone but softer than rosemary. they say he wore a crown of gold once before it was taken from his head. he is planted in stone but his eyes are too human for your liking; they beg you, put it back.
the antinous mondragone, the marble smooth and cold like winter ink. you remember it was unpacked with lipstick marks on its cheek; someone at the louvre with lips smeared cherry red had made herself hadrian and kissed it. you remember thinking, who could blame her?
sappho and erinna in the garden at mytilene, captured by simeon solomon. it’s been a while since you’ve cried at a painting. you’ve gone to museums armed with ways to analyze what you’re seeing; you know what clouds are saying, you know the language of flowers. but you looked at the painting of those two women clouded in their embrace and didn’t even realize you were crying until you looked at your notes in your lap and the pen was smudged with tears.
the universality of love. it hasn’t changed: two boys swathed in light, two girls in a garden teeming with flowers, a gaze from across a room. in the statues and paintings we are captured in our gentle, tender humanity, in the places where we think no one is looking, where we are allowed to feel vulnerable. where we are finally able to say, look, this is me, this is you, this is everything that love should be. i want to make you feel it.
Ok this is freaky. Is someone watching me?
