Pandora’s Latch

She was made beautiful,
superficially flawless,
impenetrable perhaps.
Heaven sent, yet I knew
all lofty things crash
from the weight of conscience.

The gods gave her a jar
pristine, ornate even though
of human influences.
She kept it close, intimately hers
-Had vowed not to open it
if she hoped to reside someday
with those who proved their high
and mightiness.

She placed it upon her lap,
held close beneath her gathered skirt.
Its bronze hinges securing the warmth
a pulse, perhaps a glow
when, like now
her heat caused it to condensate.
It nestled in her dusk like a secret
that had waited infinitely for release.

A fearsome flaw, curiosity,
it’s a dry wine that intoxicates us.
We met due to our lack of sobriety in this.
I sat beside her,
close enough that our breaths
wove together in the seething air,
close enough that the jar felt
like a third pulse between us.

The latch, too, pulsed
stirring along the skin that encompassed it.
Like a vial of bottled lightning
if such a thing existed.
-Like an afterthought from Aphrodite;
her last touch a signature
upon this creation.

Pandora’s thighs quivered, the jar surged
as if a secret was trapped within
and it sought some truth to free it.
As I, with my insatiable curiosity
vowed to have an answer.

Her fingers hovered,
a tremor running through them
like a prophecy trying to speak.
I watched her hesitation
with the reverence of a mortal
kneeling before a sacred flame.
Not touching her,
only sharing the shiver
that rose from the seething latch.

The jar throbbed once
with an unmistakable urgency,
as the hairs on our arms lifted
as though our skin itself
touched electricity.

“Do you feel that” she whispered,
her voice a threaded question.
I nodded, my eyes fixed on the trembling hinges.
“It’s like the gods lost a heartbeat
waiting for us to find it.”
Her thumb brushed the latch,
a glistening spark leapt
like newfound insistence.
The kind that carries over our spines
and makes us mortals understand
why divine things are heavenly.

The dusk thickened.
The evening trees outside leaned
towards the door, sighing to the wind,
a calling to open it.
Let us watch, they barked.
Because, yes, all living things
have their own language.

But we couldn’t hear them
as our fingers hovered over the latch
that was growing golder by the teases.
It was a jewel, then, rivaling the jar
reddening, forsaking shyness to blush,
as if it wasn’t sure of this
‘tho it sought a breath of entanglement.

In that moment,
with our foreheads nearly touching,
and the jar trembling beneath our hands,
we felt it; the goosebumps of truth,
that some boundaries are crossed by desire.
By the hunger of two mortals aching
for the same heights of wanton entitlement.

The latch shifted towards my single touch,
soft as a gasp.
Pandora sighed and said to me
with a plea widening her eyes;
“Let’s open it.”
~
The wailing of the wind spoke of chaos.
The trees crossed their limbs
and even in the dark, were green with envy.
Pandora cursed me, this,
with a tongue unlanguaged.

But after all the commotion settled,
I was content.
I twirled some hope around my finger
like liquid strings, and promised her
that we will always have this to savor.
Because gods be damned, we have our answers.

~~~