-visual intensity, optical conductivity-

His eyes are the world. Everything else is pre-creation, a primordial blackness. Shapes swim by, voices sound...all are distant and unimportant, ingnored and forgotten. There is no one there. There are no eyes but his, no voice but his voice. There is no air to breathe until it has cycled through his lungs. Only watching him breathe reminds me to do so.

I almost wish I could pass out, swoon like a 17th century french girl wearing too tight a bodice and getting excited. Fainted, I would hit cold hard floor, not warm waiting arms as should greet me and soften my fall. Everything about him is cold and screams that it isnt safe to let my guard down and look away.

I'm watching him like a lion. He's a zebra, dramatic contrast of pale skin and black eyes...he's the sick one, the lame one, the one I've singled out. From blurry edges of vision I see more like him, but they are unimportant. They seem smaller, less desirable...not as good a meal for this hungry lion. No, only this particular morsel will do to stave off the pulsing pain, a mental hunger, building at the back of my eyes.

His eyes cause mine to burst into flames. Looking into the sun could never burn this deeply or leave as many scars. The heat passed through so cold a connection is intense and direct. "I love you" meets "I hate you" in the air and sparks fly. Dramatic memories, intense emotions, hurt feelings and bitter thoughts beat it out in the open air between us.

Our minds clash, Our thoughts ring out as they touch each other. Nothing this alike should ever touch like this. Love touching love in hatred, hatred touching love in itself. All consumed in a burning line of fire connected between our eyes.

The fire can die. Either of us can put it out at any time. Break eye contact, cough, speak...but we don't. We remain frozen, speechless...lion stalking and zebra going down.

I feel his heartbeat..his pulse...his blood. I sense its current, its relentless cycle and its sustaining power. I feel it as if it were my own blood pumping and I hear his heartbeat pounding inside my head and all around us. Mine slows to match his. Another chess piece in place, another connection made. All built to be severed and denied when one of us realizes it can never be, and looks away.

There is so much pain at that moment. A mother getting her baby taken from her...a vision of a child running into the street...a thousand endings, a thousand deaths...nothing good can ever come from us apart.

His eyes are deep, pupilless pools of black ink. They reflect everything, letting nothing in....except me. I sink deeper and deeper into what started as a casual look. I feel the burning, the hunger, the love...I feel everything ive ever felt towards him anew with every glance.

His eyes are hungry too. Unlike the lion, the hunger is unknown, not understood...a complex mix of deep hatred and deeper pain, somehow creating the deepest love. He has power in his eyes, a dramatic torch that is lit by our connection.

Neither of us wants this. The joy of the connection, the thrill of the lock between...it is nothing compared to the pain of separation. With each end there is the threat of no more beginnings. No matter the time between the link becomes stronger, not weaker. Our power doesn't dwindle and fade out with age. It intensifies, ferments..becomes something shocking and new each time we finally give in and see again. It only takes enough time for us to deny this connection can exist before we link again. Neither of us can believe the depth and extent of the fire, so we look again, as if to confirm to ourselves that it never happened. All we do is prove to ourselves again and again that this is what happens, and this is what should be.

The cold burns more than the fire, and its wounds are more searing and painful than any flame could cause. His cold, his hate, and my fire, my love. It meets and burns us both, searing pain causing our connection to freeze with its fire. When the heat comes, the ice doesn't melt or fade, it ceases to exist. It becomes null and void in our world without chill. The thought-world we share has never felt cold. Only loss is cold. Our fire ends in ice. It cools all, freezes all, and create a world without fire without passion, a world where a lion denies its hunger and grows sickly and weak. a world where the zebra goes to drink and finds only ice...a dead world of dying desire and unfocused love.

This power shouldnt be wasted...his eyes shouldnt be wasted. As time does on, will the death ice in them thaw? Will his blood run in sync with mine? Will our hearts beat together, a metronome stronger than all others? Or will the cold consume him as it is doing to me?

The cold is not literal, however, the feeling is exactly that of freezing. The pain of ice on fire is a spiritual death. Does a fire feel this pain every time when it meets its sudden end? To spare inanimate wood this pain, I would let all fires smolder down or spread as they wish. I could no sooner kill myself than could I inflict that kind of soul-destroying torture on anyone or anything. There is no pain like the death of flame. There never could be anything like it.

Beauty is in the birth of flame...the feeling of it kindling, lighting and warming, then raging into a blaze beyond all blazes. Each fire is bigger than the last, and harder to kill. Maybe someday the fire won't be able to be put out and we'll remain locked together in our world. When we are together, no ice can harm us, no cold freeze us, no frigid winter wind penetrate our gaze. The chill remains unseen, unheeded...lost in the blinding snowstorm surrounding our bonfire. But there is a "danger of ice" sign on the bridge between our eyes...and the frost comes swift and deadly. It's the end of all. This separation, this ice age, kills both predator and prey alike. It knows no allies...there is no friendship it won't break, no relationships it won't freeze in place. The only thing more far-reaching in its effects is the fire itself. It burns away everything that isn't us. It scorches the ceiling of the world and buries our deepest hopes and dreams in cooling ashes. Fire destroys, ice destroys..but the end of either is worse than the begining of both.

At least pain is pain...I cant deal with the nothing in between the ice ages and forever burning flames. I am nothing without the rest of me, without what I see when I look into his eyes.

The world could explode for all we care while connected. Actually, as far as we know, it has exploded. Besides our own senses there is nothing. Nothing exists. Even nothing is nothing.

The desire to breach the gap is all-encompasing. Yet I am afraid that if I step on the wobbly, rotted bridge between us, it will destroy our only link and send us both plunging down into a field of never-thawing ice below. I couldn't ever risk that. I still can't help but wonder what would touching him be like while connected. The feeling of our hate and love, and our fire brought into flesh would burn self-supported. Except fire destroys everything around it to keep it alive. What would our fire feed on? What would be left of our lives when we finally pulled apart?

I would rather never feel that ecstasy than lose the ethereal beauty of our link and love. Ice burns, fire cools...it's a backwards world and only inside us is there a different one, a better one...a one for just the two of us.

No other concern can ever get through after a break in our link. There is always an all-consuming depression, a feeling that nothing is worth having and nothing is worth doing because all that's important is him. The zebra becomes the lions world. No other meat will satisfy, no other drink quench this thirst, this feeling and desire. Every animal at every watering hole in the lions world seems paltry, diseased, infested and disgusting. The prime cut always eludes me. I can sit and eat a steak and feel empty inside. It isn't a tanglible hunger, not anything cannibalistic, just the need to inhale his soul, to feed on his very essence, his mind and body merged in this link. To drink him in would be heaven, but if I take too much I might never be able to let go.

As it is, the choice is usually mine to break the link. The 1-2-3-riiiip of a band aid is comparative. I steel myself, and then separate. I can't stand not knowing when the pain is coming, so I bring it on myself. A separation of this sort is like premature labor in the real world...I've lost the link inside before its time. Then again, the link wasn't made to be broken. Separation wasn't meant to be an option. Maybe in an older time, an ancient time, maybe then we could be confident enough in our link to be together. Not in this time, because in this age, this era of machines and intelligence, because of this, the ice must flow. Even my own mind gives me a cynical view until I think it's safe and link again. Then I am as unprepared as I was the first time. All because of those dark eyes. This is a proud animal...a zebra that looks to be hunted, but not caught. Instead the lion may find itself in a trap of its own making, locked in a love that has nowhere to go.

There is danger in linking...danger in believing in us and in love. The fire, the ice...the burns are nothing compared to the scars gained by looking too deeply for too long. His gaze is too much...too deep. I stare and I fall...and I drown in his eyes.