Peaches of Immortality【蟠桃會】

TW: SWEARING

It was amongst the songs of Jupiter,

that one day the former vestal virgin laid aside her bow.

She thought of an urn that had been placed in a grave;

a graveside that had turned to grass;

a parched grass that had turned to dust; a traveling dust that loosen its hold on the roots it had laid and turned into desert;

and a barren desert that had become rejuvenated earthen

where the people built huts and cities;

and had turned those sands into glass from their caravans’ fires

for which they built bridges that connected cities in trade.

She had outlived the universe;

through the end of time

to watch gravity collapse under its own weight;

when Atlas bowed low to pull from his chest, a leaden arrow;

Persephone or Psyche,

Adonis or Mars,

Ganymede or a myriad of other lovers;

whom amongst the whole world could ever know who it was that it was over,

but it had been some minor squabble of love or war;

what side or side piece it had been

a matter of honor amongst such pompous beings

that it only surfeited their gluttony, wrath, and lust to bring whole cities to dust and gravel,

but in such passions and plans,

they were blinded and lacked foresight and left no room for mistakes;

such beings had brought the whole world down;

In the end,

as accidentally as those deities of myth,

or by shear hatred of world and man,

he let his burden slip;

and by the slightest chance,

she missed the avalanche

by the commonest of stalls at the end of a narrow, backstreet market;

a mound of fruit stacked high as the trees that they would have become;

under the shadow of the shop’s awning,

perhaps it was the flame of her own desire that set such a light on them,

but to her eyes, they verily glowed:

greater in size and in worth were these sweet, white peaches than the Cullinan Diamond, but what a sale the merchant had on them;

It was a day that sweltered so mercilessly that the skin of every man wept

such briny tears that sobbed out a most lamentable and pitiable cry of stink that it curdled and choked the milk in one’s own mouth as they tried to cool their throat from their masala;

that the very windless day’s air withered and trembled with it;

For the sake of his nose, could she not just pick one already!

Lady, he’s closing up shop.

He’s sweating his balls off here and if he’s going to sweat his ass off;

He’d much rather do it at home sitting in front of the fan.

(He couldn’t sit in front of the icebox,

his wife would kill him if the duck roasted before she threw it into the oven.)

Hey, it was the sweetest of deals

because who can argue with free?

Sans guile, she bite into the fresh peach;

It had taken 9,000 years to ripen in the garden of Xi Wangmu,

one moment on the lips, and an unexpected eternity on her pleasantly ample hips.

So it had been the beginning of times, it had been the end of times;

and here she was.

No longer a slave to time nor to man;

of those former, lost cities,

those had held her a foreign captive and half-citizen,

were now lost under the weight of a giant’s felled hubris,

these new generations had built new cities on the large back of the titan,

his shoulder blades made great mountains,

his hair, grand forests of redwoods,

his mouth the sea that—

a new Scylla and Charybdis swam in — called a navy;

a world which bitterly fought and argued without the interference of any armistice nor peace, nor prayed for intervention;

his teeth, steep cliffs along arctic shores, hard to pass in between the gaps because God knows when was the last time he had flossed before he fell;

But let’s put the setting aside for a moment,

our darling lady,

had become quite the stir in this new Damascus;

rather than a hot topic or a hot body,

her hot headed, beautiful brain, had attracted admirers, a rather large amount of them, almost a daunting amount;

one little mathematical discovery;

one little proof taking something from theoretical to real,

but that they had yet to be observe;

that very many fit men wanted to hold a chunky chick to ‘em,

and be engaged to them as soon as they knew she was single,

and everyday in the subway,

the handsomest men came running from every direction, and found her no matter where she went;

if she was dating someone,

the attention simmered,

when they heard she was single,

they boiled over;

It was in such contrast to her youth,

the soft flesh of her body no longer seemed in excess to these men’s eyes;

Sitting alongside one man,

she had made some half-funny joke

and he had laughed that sort of laugh where something may or may not be funny,

but when he stopped,

a brief look passed over his face,

it was the look of a man who loved a woman,

and whenever he saw her with a boyfriend,

however unserious it was with this one or that one,

his heart broke to the tune of,

‘I love her and she’s going to marry someone else.

She’s going to marry someone else.’

It was that look that came into his eyes,

as if everyday he lived in a private crisis that he’d run into every day,

and when he went home,

he would contemplate how to avoid her eyes, but not stare at the ground,

and then run right back into her every day.

He tried to hide it whenever a boyfriend of mine came over,

his laughter, his familiarity,

but I already knew he was in love with me.

I can’t remember if it was after a boyfriend

or during a boyfriend or

what. I don’t even remember my first kiss with my husband,

but I used to write him silly little things like this when we first met because I really do like the sound of his laugh

and I told him in a way as roundabout as this;

anyway, I ended the story this way:

‘Author’s Note:

Stop looking at me so heartbroken all the time;

I have a crush on you, too.’

And I still love you, too! ☺️😚🥰