Transcendentalism by Jade Tarris

Sybil waits for answers with one hand raised high and the other pressed firmly against her neck. Her pulse gasps in time with internal symphonies, but it is not life she strives toward. Her soul rests where her head connects to her spine. The lines of her vertebrae crisscross like an untranslatable vapor or dusk, H-formation of grey matter filling the conclusions of her brain. Sybil moves like a sleepwalker with words unsaid, she tilts to one side where her eyes plead with eternal happiness, she tumbles and slides into her own skin. I hold immediate identity with everything, I know the world as it was and will be, and I know you. I watch you slant with desperate claws, wanting to be with no one as well as you wish to be with me. This is not a yearning, robust love, she thinks, I’m sure of it. I am somewhere, waiting. Where is my voice? But she doesn’t linger on missing pieces, looks beneath her chin, seeking the spaces of her soul and pacing the line between abstract and physical. She does not return to those transparent, universal forces that seek to say: I hold immediate identity with every land, but you are not Jerusalem, not Rome, not Cecily, and you have come here to be mediation. Eternity depends on the myth of heaven, but you are small and reality is consumptive, lacking peace or humor. I will give you closure if you ask. Sybil questions nothing; she questions all. She will not sing until she has looked directly on her own neck, seen where her spirit joins her body, touched the points of her inclusive universe as it were, found a poetic identification for her own language and limitation. She is an observer of the endless unfolding, sees temporality with a total loss of control. Sybil embraces her own expansion, sees her roots like the life-tree, cannot understand the form set upon her, so she goes round and round in a callous shell, instantaneous connectivity to the world electric, and it bounces harmlessly down her spine. I hold immediate identity with everyone, seeking you where you have yet to be found, trying to mold you to the potential you do not know you yearn for, and even though I hold the world in the cavern of my endless mouth, you are the most contact I can stand. Sybil waits. She will find solace in this. She will expand, incorporate negativity into herself, tremble under flames and ether, strip herself of physicality. For now she moves wildly, carries herself by her own hands, and maybe that willingness to witness the perverse leaves her exposed. Predators surround her; she does not give them notice. They sit several yards away and stare, consume the land about them, attempt to quiver her to new identity. Withdrawing from them, Sybil blames herself for being given up by lies—she speaks wildly, but will not sing. Not yet. I hold immediate identity with your body, you are too much for me. You have sharp teeth, you contradict me. Listen to me. She will not. She does not ache. She seeks no recompense. Her soul will bloom, fresh and responsive, in the spaces retreated and withdrawn. I hold immediate identity with you. I limit you. The dull, unintermitted pain is ours, and we are stunned beyond our gaping dreams. I hold you in my mind. I love you in ways unadultered. I forget how to recover.