is there in truth no beauty
try, try, again and again
Chapter 01: a lovingly knit blanket
Chapter 02: fresh chicken soup
Chapter 03: klimt's art with all the shiny
Chapter 04: the vastness and beauty of space and the tiny people in the midst of it
Chapter 05: their love is so large it is practically all-encompassing
Plush as the rings of Saturn, are Jim's fabrics knit clack by row. He prefers knitting to crocheting for the directionality, the two-dimensional-ness; for the fact, even, that two needles are always working tandemite.
Spock could knit. Not like a computer, but like a Spock. He could. He can. When Jim is away, sometimes, for too long, he does. None could say that there is not a peculiar, particular, pas-pareil love stitched within. One could practically smell it.
But Jim wraps Spock in blankets as he wraps him in his arms, a permitted touch woven tighter day by day, the warmth of an entire body picked apart and stitched back together.
Soups are manyfold, as all children and their mothers know.
Not only is there chicken and noodles, but also tomato (glossy liquid with crispy grilled toast, a marriage that none who cherish, anything at all, dare divorce), also minestrone, also potato, also miso; a suspension of one in another, but principally hot and bold and honest.
There is love in ginger ale, but it is not the same love as chicken soup, teaching you in turn the alphabet, sending you messages that cannot be unendeciphered nor unendeared.
And the same is for plomeek, but plomeek is bland, so plomeek has no secrets.
Only those it tells to the chicken: heartened stock.
In speckles and fractures, tiling twines of fish and their eyes, a tapestry is woven, one that speaks in a rainbow yet is entirely made up all over gold.
The universe is blue, unquestionably. The sun is red crackle, in actuality.
Purple royalty. Blood, red and green.
But one shape lends hand of another, spurls generously where corner jags areole, shines shines and shines and shines.
Necks bend also. Flesh gives and pulls. A forest, geometric, spangles leaves of joyous memorial, static motion dynamo.
"This art shouldn't make me think of you, but it does," Jim says.
Spock smiles, wistful. Loveworn.
Everything shouldn't make me think of you, but it does.
"You really think I'm that allergic to planting my own two feet on a surface with a distinct geological substructure underneath it?"
"Ashayam, I do."
Spock's fingers are curled behind Jim's ears, feeling the contours of the canals. Jim's eyes are closed, but one pops open.
"I know you're right. You always are. But if I asked you why...?"
"If you were to inquire, I would tell you that, in my observation, you have a compulsion with respect to being counted."
Jim sits up. "Counted?"
"The universe is vast. We, by comparison, are quite small."
"Tiny."
"You, as I, have no wish to be counted, save as counterparts to each other."
Spock's love and gentle grace have never failed to touch Jim from tip to core. His loyalty, his steadfastness extended to all and every soul, radiate and glimmer, but for the fact that they are so drolly, regally muted. Jim follows in the same fashion; he is the same to and with Spock as he is to and with anyone, everyone, else, except that he is not, he is not, he is not.
Melded, two minds pass through each other, occupy the same space. One being is amplified to encompass the space of two, and vice-versa.
Always, there is learning. Always, there is growing.
Always, there is impossibly more, more, more.