Vachon Imagined

He drifted in and drifted out, arriving whenever the unseen narrator within her called his name.

She never invited him, yet he always appeared.

No matter how fiercely she resisted, he returned with the same quiet certainty. Bare-chested. Velvet-skinned. A warrior carrying no need to announce himself. He entered without apology, without performance, standing open to her interpretation, open to her longing.

She pressed against the walls of her own desire.

Go away.

She threw the words at him as though he carried the burden she could not bear, as though he were responsible for the ache that rose whenever he appeared.

Yet he never changed.

Untouched.

Unmarked.

His chest remained bare, unclaimed by symbols, untouched by the hands of history. Strength without proclamation. Courage without witness.

Not man.

Not myth.

Something older than either.

She watched him until the wanting exhausted itself.

Then, without warning, she walked through him.

He vanished.

Not because he had left, but because there was nowhere left for him to stand.

Only then did she understand.

He was an image.

A messenger.

A projection.

Courage.

Strength.

The sacred masculine.

The part of herself she had not yet recognized.

She had mistaken him for someone to follow when he had only come to remind her of who she already was.

She no longer needed him as armor because she had become what she once sought in him.

She walked with his courage, though no one else could see it.

The earth became her earth.

The wind became her wind.

His name became her name.

And together they disappeared into a single light—

one that only seemed fleeting

to those who had forgotten how to see.