Spell

I have a secret desire to be a hipster, so I'm not going to tell you all I'm alive in italics. But I'll tell you I'm alive. The only writing of quality I've done lately has been for academic purposes, although I have a scathing epic poem that really only makes sense if you know its subject. So, without further ado, I present one of my favourite pieces. I wrote it half a lifetime ago, it seems, but it's still proof that I'm alive.

If I could conjure you, make you of my deepest desires realized?

I would give you skin as strong and beautiful as a spider’s web, covering muscles made from the most ductile steel and bones of purest diamond.

I would give you eyes made of crystallized thunderstorms and fingers as long and graceful as silverbirch trees.

I would make every hair on your body from strands of love and all your cartilage from salt-sea tears.

I would give you a personality as rich and sweet and exotic and many-layered as raspberry ginger cheesecake with mint sprigs and a cocoa crust.

I would give you a voice as smooth and deep as dark chocolate melting slowly over a low flame and a smile made from three hundred half-burned candles; it would light up your eyes in a way that shamed the very stars and broke your face into a thousand perfect fragments.

I would give you a will of indomitable, steadfast silver and a heart of soft, resilient gold.

I would distil into you the best qualities of every myth that I love; the most tragic flaw of the most tragic hero I would lightly dust over your consciousness to avoid the jinx of desiring Perfection.