Marsias

Here’s a little preview of a scene from the book Marsias. No context is provided to avoid spoilers.

“To describe a kiss, first and foremost, you have to be in love. And if you’re in love, then you need Erato—she’s the muse of love poetry.”

“Then call her, my friend, because I’m burning with love for Chloe, and if you want me to describe what a unique kiss is like, we need her.”

“If you’re truly in love, then Erato is already within you, living inside you. Amaze me with your description then—what is this kiss like?” I walked back to the table and sat across from Daphnis, crossing my arms over my chest and waiting. He got up and pushed his chair back against the wall, standing in the middle of the room between the door and the wooden table. The only light in the room was him, a faint white glow expanding as my anger receded.

“You can’t know what true thirst is until you meet the lips you want to kiss for the rest of your life. And sometimes, you pray you’ll never have to know this thirst if the body that belongs to those lips isn’t searching for yours. But even then, the distance you have to cross to reach them—even if it’s just two centimeters—feels like an eternal pause, a thousand-year journey across a vast expanse of empty land. And at the end of it, the banks of a cool river call you to bathe. What a distance I had to cover for that kiss, how many years in this world and how many lifetimes before and after until I could meet them again. I would gladly roam the deserts of the earth, counting every indifferent grain of sand, if only I knew that at the end, I’d have that kiss. Each time I knelt for the next count, it would be a celebration. Songs would accompany me across every desert.”
“And then, after you’ve crossed every distance, after you’ve measured the void between the neighborhoods of galaxies with your palms to finally reach that point, after all that, you have the touch. It’s in that collision that stars are born, I swear to you, that’s why life was created. Lips are the anvil of life, upon which everything is forged! Strike and birth, strike and emotion, strike and nature, and the sparks fly away quickly to light the fireplace of poets so they can see and write about that kiss. And with every page they write, they feed the fire at the furnace of love, melting bodies, melting hearts, melting all of nature until it becomes the hot nectar of love, flowing into the molds of our lives.”
“Jugs filled with sweet drinks and plates set with all kinds of fruit don’t compare to the taste of a unique kiss. The tongues catch each other tightly and dance in the fires of the forging, embracing, dizzying, and resting for a moment before starting again. The hunger for that kiss isn’t measured in seasons, doesn’t wait for years—it demands to be quenched now, demands to be filled. But the vessel of love is full of holes, and no matter how much you pour in, it leaks. Nothing satisfies you except the next kiss after you’ve tasted the first. Don’t look for grapes and sweet apples, don’t seek cold water or wine from the cellar. Even if they made the entire creation into juice for you, the whole world a feast, your hunger would only be satisfied by the essence of that kiss.”
“But if you think the kiss stops there, if that’s all you’ve learned to see, you’re fooled! Because a kiss without an embrace, without fingers woven into each other’s hair, without pulling the other’s waist into your own, exactly as we were before Zeus, before he struck us with his lightning and separated us—then it’s incomplete. The kiss is a key, forever searching for its rightful lock to open all doors, to make humans one again, to unite and make the gods tremble at our power. A vast forest of tall trees where the wind passes between them, caressing their leaves, cooling their fruit. And just as the wind travels between the trunks, flirting with them, so did my fingers stretch out into her hair.”
“That kiss was unique, I’m telling you. I want you to understand me, I want you to believe me! When I kissed her, time didn’t stop—it ceased. It didn’t pause next to us to watch or look at us, it didn’t seek a break—it ceased! It stood there, dead, motionless, and aged, regretful that it hadn’t stopped when it should have, when it could have, to experience its own kiss from its own half. When I kissed her, my eyes were closed, and hers were too, because whatever there was to see in life, we had already seen it. Our last image was of ourselves—what could be more beautiful to see before time ceases? Before everything stops? And that’s when I saw that light again, the one I described to you before. I saw it climb my eyelashes, trying to escape from the world and into me. It wanted to hide so that I wouldn’t see it, because what I witnessed wasn’t meant for humans. I was holding her face, and I was sinking into our eyes, and between us, this light, like two fine threads seeking each other, met in the middle and intertwined like a woven fabric.”
“The emotions emerged like three-headed human-hounds at the gates, jumping out from within us into the two threads, feeding and growing them, multiplying them. And soon, they became a thick rope, knotted and sewn, filled with light, colors, aromas, songs, and scents.”
“You need to understand, my friend, Chloe and I were destined for this. Everything made sense now—all I had lived through—but none of it mattered, because I had reached where I was meant to be, and so had she. It was a kiss—a kiss of lovers—like all the lovers of the world, those before and those after us. We, too, in our turn, gave that kiss, in that place, at that time, exactly as it was meant to be, exactly as it was written.”
So, we, too, passed through the gates of the Underworld, walking across the green meadows of the Elysian Fields, and shouted loudly: ‘HEY YOU, the lucky ones who are honored to be here for eternity, our paradise is in our kiss!! And even if they threw us into the fires of Hell, we would still be cooler than you because we are together!!!’ We kissed in front of them, and the walls that separated them from the other circles crumbled. Their world collapsed, and Hades, angry, chased us down to punish us, wearing a decorated helmet that blinded everyone when he lowered it over his eyes. He sent the Oneiroi out of their caves to hunt us down on the nights we slept in each other’s arms.”
“But I wasn’t afraid, my friend—neither of Hell, nor the Underworld, nor Hades’ fury could blind me, because I had Chloe. I was protected by our one, unique kiss! Laughing, we escaped with the radiant chariot of our embrace. Vines bound the lions of passion, pulling us far away. But know this—even if we had stood still in front of the god, even if he dragged us to the bottom of the Underworld, we would’ve had no fear, because to fall in love is to die every moment, every minute. You count your deaths by the beats of your heart, because every beat away from your other half equals a thousand deaths. Hades had nothing to frighten us with—we did him a favor by leaving and not insulting his great power. Why should we compare to him?”
“I kissed her, and everything was a beginning. It was a unique kiss, a point in history, a sound in the silence of our age. Everything inside me was new. The creation shifted. I kissed her, my friend, and she kissed me back. Do you understand?”

Daphnis paused and looked around him; the room was engulfed in white light, everything around him was new. Golden bows and flutes hung from the walls. The table was intricately carved, depicting a duel between two gods in front of a large sycamore tree and a stream. One had a crown of light, quite young, holding a lyre, while the other was muscular but older, with long beards and holding a flute. The table was filled with rich plates of sizzling meat that melted in your mouth when bitten and silver cups brimming with wine, awaiting to be savored. A deep red carpet covered the marble floor of the room, with scenes from the past when it was still glorious. Goat-like figures and festive gatherings in nature, with animals and humans dancing together. And in one corner of the space, a horrific, frightened creature, resembling a human without skin, stared at him in awe and terror—that creature was me. Daphnis took a few steps closer, bending over me and extended his right hand with care and love. He had love in abundance; it dripped from his fingers like honey, and the whole room smelled of night-blooming jasmine.

“I want you to understand, my friend, who loves me so much and always protects me in difficult times—I want you to feel what’s inside me. I fell in love with Chloe. I couldn’t avoid it—it was impossible.”

I grasped the edge of his hand, and he lifted me. My body was renewed for his eyes. He helped me back to the table, sitting across from me in turn. The intense light dimmed so as not to disturb me, and I found the courage to answer him.

“I understand now what a kiss is, Daphnis. Thank you. I didn’t know the nature of its existence.”