AVE VERUM CORPUS
AVE VERUM CORPUS
By John Tuft
One of the tricks human perishables like to play is telling ourselves that we have bodies, not that we ARE bodies. We imagine some unseen force sitting somewhere in the clouds watching for an egg and sperm to unite and then with the wave of a celestial wand, the body we live in is imbued with ourselves. That somehow the knitting together of all the cells, and blood, and electrical impulses and nerve endings just exist in a vacuum, until our true self arrives on the scene to indwell this realm of corporeal mass; with its BMI, cholesterol count, circulatory rhythm and circadian rhythm, etc. That mental health and physical health and spiritual health are disconnected, divided up among health specialists and coaches, the better to maintain our illusion that we are not our bodies. But what about personality? love? And romance? To what do they bear witness? Good question. I don’t know, so I wrote a story…
Jack and Jenna come from different walks of life. This is the story of their first kiss. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it’s simply two bodies making contact or something more altogether. Jack was an itinerate minstrel, traveling from village to village, telling stories through songs to whomever would listen. One time he entered a village where Princess Jenna lived in a castle on the hill above the town. The villagers loved the Princess and extoled her virtues, placed pictures of her all around the village and urged Minstrel Jack to go sing to her. His curiosity aroused by the stories of the princess and her beauty, Jack agreed to go to the castle. But when he approached the castle, he was told that he could only sing his stories to the princess through a closed door. He could converse with her, as well, but only through the thick oak of the door.
Every day Jack made his way up the hill and into the castle. There he would sit outside the princess’s chamber and sing a story to her. Through the thick door made of sturdy oak. When she spoke to him, he could hear her voice, muted by the door. And he would respond, hoping that she heard him clearly. But over the coming days and weeks, the minstrel and the princess got to know each other in this way. He learned that she loved birds, gardening, and that she, too, wrote songs with stories in them. He learned that she had hopes and dreams of living an ordinary life, but that she had been cursed with a spell at birth. The spell was that if she was ever kissed by her one true love, she would turn into a bird and be kept in a cage. So, she stayed behind a thick door in a beautiful castle to try to prevent finding her one true love and being tempted by that fateful kiss.
As you can well imagine, Jack heard her tell of this curse with disbelief and sympathy. He vowed to search until he found a way to rid her of this curse. Because Jack realized that he was falling in love with the princess. She occupied his thoughts day and night. He dreamed of the moment he would see her. But he knew if he saw her, he would want to kiss her. Alas, that would be tempting fate. At the same time, Princess Jenna realized that she was falling in love with the minstrel storyteller. Jack filled her thoughts and dreams. She was filled with a yearning to show herself to him, but that would mean she would want to run to him and give him a kiss. And that kiss was fateful, indeed.
The times of telling stories through the door became times of them pouring out their hearts to each other and expressing their longings for each other. Alas and forsooth, what were they to do? Hail, the true body wants what it wants! To be known, to be enjoyed, to be felt, to be kissed. No matter whose body it is. Jesus the Lord of All or Jack the storyteller and Jenna the beautiful princess. But such bodies seem to come with built in curses, do they not? The lump inside the top of our skulls is part of the body. While, at the same time, it tries to convince us of spirit and mystery beyond sight and touch. Jack and Jenna were no different and as their love grew, so did their urgency of how to have that first kiss and not trigger the curse.
Jack talked of no longer coming to tell her stories as a way of not feeling this urgency. Princess Jenna forbade all such talk. “Dare I trade one cage for another?” she lamented to him. “At least now I have my form as a woman. I am a princess. What would I be as a caged bird?” Jack did not know how to answer. “As a caged bird, you would have my love. I could kiss you without fear of harm.” Back and forth they went trying to untangle the riddle of love with bodies. Jack swore to not rest until he found a way to undo the curse. But all curses are double-edged and no solution presented itself.
Finally, Jack decided to leave the village to try to forget his longing for the kiss of the princess. He went one last time to the castle and told Princess Jenna of his decision. She was silent. Jack leaned against the door, his heart breaking. At long last, he whispered, “Goodbye,” and walked away. Behind him the door was thrown open, and the beautiful Princess Jenna rushed out and ran into his arms. They looked with great longing into each other’s eyes. To kiss or not to kiss? Safe or sorry? Imagination or experience the body? Their gazes ached with desire. Finally…
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
