Unrequired
The ground beneath them held, but it moved.
Not enough to throw them off balance. Just enough to make him aware of it. A dark, glass-like surface shifting slowly beneath their feet, as though something beneath it breathed without ever rising.
Alice stepped onto it first.
Barefoot.
It received her.
The Hatter lingered at the edge, watching the way it accepted her without question. His foot pressed forward, cautious, testing.
His reflection bent beneath him.
Returned.
Bent again.
He stepped fully onto it anyway.
Alice knelt.
Her hand came to rest against the surface.
It answered.
Not breaking.
Opening.
Slow rings moved outward from her palm, carrying something within them. Faces passed through the water as they spread. Not fixed. Not held. Generations moving without language.
The rings reached him.
His reflection fractured.
Then returned.
He exhaled, the sound quieter than the space around them.
“Woman bleeds for the world,” he said, his voice low, still carrying what he had seen before this moment. “And there is no ending to it.”
The surface trembled beneath him.
For a moment, he saw it again.
Threads.
Crossing. Binding. Moving beneath everything.
“She descends again and again,” he said, slower now, as if he was still standing at the edge of what he had witnessed. “Into something we cannot follow. A network beneath it all.”
Alice did not look at him.
Her hand remained where it was, feeling what moved below.
“She is power,” he said.
There was no argument in it now.
Only recognition.
“She gives in ways I do not understand.”
The rings continued long after her hand stilled.
He swallowed.
“So where does that leave us?
Men?”
It wasn’t a challenge.
It was something raw and far more exposed.
“If she is already whole…” his voice tightened slightly, “why are we as men even needed at all?”
Alice lifted her hand.
The surface did not close.
“You return to needed,” she said.
He frowned faintly.
“As though existence must prove itself,” she continued.
He looked down at the movement beneath them.
“Then what are we as men,” he asked, quieter now, “if we not necessary?”
“Unrequired.” Alice replied.
The word struck him deeper than he expected.
He removed his hat slowly, his fingers finding one of the stitched labels inside it.
This one had always been there.
He had never questioned it.
Until now.
“That feels like nothing,” he said.
Alice stood.
“It feels like nothing,” she said, stepping closer, “because you were taught your worth begins where you are required.”
His grip tightened slightly.
The label bent beneath his fingers.
“Then tell me where it begins,” he said, lifting his eyes to hers now.
“Without this.”
She stepped into his space.
The ground deepened slightly between them.
“It begins,” she said, softer now, “where you stop trying to equal what she is.”
His breath caught faintly.
“How do I not compare,” he asked, “when nothing in me mirrors her strength as I see it now?”
“You are still searching for symmetry,” she said.
“There is none.”
The teacups chimed again in his memory.
Layered.
Unresolved.
Moments returning not as they were, but as they had been felt.
He saw them differently now.
How easily he had broken delicate things without knowing he was the one breaking them.
Smiles filling cups.
Oceans hidden behind eyes that shimmered like approval.
And he had continued.
Speaking.
Moving.
Filling the space.
When he should have stayed still.
He turned slightly, pulling himself back into the present.
“Then what do we offer her,” he asked, “when we truly see her?”
His fingers traced the brim of his hat, the texture subtly shifting beneath his touch.
“You offer what you become,” she said, “when you are not built around her.”
“That sounds like avoidance.”
His voice held resistance now, but not toward her.
Toward the loss of something he had always used to define himself.
“It is the opposite,” she said. “It is the end of reaching for identity through her existence.”
He exhaled slowly.
“Then why would you choose a man at all, Alice.”
There was no defense left in it.
Only something quieter.
More vulnerable.
“Another woman could be steady,” she said thoughtfully. “Present. Devoted.”
He nodded faintly and spoke,
“Another woman could understand you in ways I never will.”
The words sat heavy between them.
He looked down briefly.
Considering what he could not enter.
“So why us,” he asked gently.
“What makes us anything but optional.”
“You are optional,” she said.
He flinched.
“And so is she.”
He looked up sharply.
“That is not the same.” the Hatter replied.
“It is,” she said.
“When you are both whole.”
She stepped closer.
“You are not filling a position,” she said.
“You are entering a space that does not exist until it is chosen.”
“That still does not answer why a man would ever be chosen.”
She lifted her hand.
His breath slowed without his permission.
Her fingers touched beneath his chin, guiding his gaze to hers.
“Because for me… my dear Hatter,” she said softly, warmth threading through her voice now, “difference creates something sameness cannot.”
His eyes searched hers.
“That feels unclear.”
“Then feel it,” she said.
Her fingers moved to the stitching in his hat.
Before he could stop her, she pulled the label free.
It tore loose.
She let it fall.
“A woman beside a woman can move in shared depth,” she said.
“But to me… a man beside a woman is something else.”
He didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
“The place where two realities meet,” she said, “without dissolving into each other. Where she is not reflected but witnessed. Where you are not replicated but revealed.”
Silence settled.
He swallowed.
“Why is that worth the possibility of choosing me over another goddess?”
“Because it creates tension,” she said. “The kind that births something new. The kind that stretches perception instead of confirming it.”
He held her gaze.
“So we exist to be different.”
“Yes.”
“And because of that… I am only required to exist as I am.”
“Yes.”
“And if she finds everything she needs in another woman…She will.”
“So it still feels quite lovely to choose another woman given the choice,” he admitted, “so I still struggle to find why I would be chosen over her.”
She turned fully toward him.
“Because not everything is about need,” she said.
“Some things are about expansion.”
He held her gaze.
“I would like to understand that better.”
“You will,” she said.
“But not by trying to define it before you feel it.”
He shook his head slightly.
“It still feels like we bring less.”
“You bring what is not already there.”
He looked at her.
“And that is enough.”
Her eyes softened.
“When it is real, it is not measured in the ways you think it should be.”
The ground shifted again beneath them.
He exhaled slowly.
“So my power…” he said, as if forming it as he spoke, “is not to mirror her. Not to match her. Not to justify myself against her.”
He looked at her.
“But to stand.”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
“To stand as something fully formed,” he continued, “that does not need her to be smaller… and does not require me to disappear.”
Her gaze held his.
“Yes.”
“And if I fail you?”
“Then you will try to control,” she said, “or withdraw. And call both strength.”
Silence followed.
“You are not here because you are needed,” she said.
“You are here because something becomes possible when you are fully yourself… and I am fully myself… and neither of us turns away.”
He looked at her.
Not searching now.
Something quieter.
More certain.
They began to move.
Not away.
Forward.
The space shifted with them, as though it had been waiting.
His hand hovered near her as they walked.
Not touching.
But close.
“Then what is it to lead,” he said, slower now, as if the question had changed before he spoke it.
If you do not need me… and yet you still desire me to lead you…”
He looked around, everything different now.
“How do I lead something I cannot equal?
How do I stand beside you and not feel lesser?
How do I carry anything for you when you are capable… open the way, hold the door… without taking something away from your independence?”
They slowed.
Alice did not answer immediately.
The space gave her time.
Then she spoke.
“You are still measuring masculine strength against the strength of the divine feminine,” she said.
“Leading is not standing above what you walk beside.
It is not being more powerful than her.
It is choosing direction when there is no resistance forcing it.
It is taking responsibility for movement.”
A structure ahead shifted.
Opening a path that had not been there.
“You do not lead her,” she continued.
“You lead yourself.
And if she walks with you… it is because she sees where you are going and chooses it for herself.”
Her voice softened.
“I have enjoyed walking beside you.”
He stilled slightly.
“I have felt safe,” she said. “Protected.
You have shown me what is truly masculine… without even knowing it.”
His breath caught faintly.
“You knew the way before you ever started walking it, and now… we walk together.”
He looked at her.
“And the door,” he said quietly. “What of that.”
A small smile touched her lips.
“You open it.
Not because I cannot.
But because you can do it for me.
It is a sweet offering.
And I enjoy it.”
His chest tightened slightly.
“And what you carry for me,” she continued, softer now, “you carry not to prove your strength.
But because it is yours to carry too.
Because we are in this together.”
“You spoke of what I carry in my body… in that hidden network.”
Her eyes held his.
“The least you can do… is carry what you can when it becomes heavy for me.
And you do.
I love that you do.”
He looked ahead.
Then back at her.
“And standing beside you,” he said, “now that I have seen what you carry…Without feeling lesser?”
She turned her head slightly.
“You stop standing beside me as comparison,” she said.
“It is not a competition.
I see you.”
“And I know things get heavy for you too.
That is allowed.
Even if it feels like less to you.
I am here to carry you too.”
Her voice softened further.
“You stand beside me as yourself.
And strength is not what you are in relation to me.
It is what you do not abandon… when we are both seen fully.”
They walked.
Side by side.
Not ahead.
Not behind.
The space moved with them.
Alive.
Listening.
And nothing in it required either of them to become less for the other to exist in their fullness.
And as they walked away hand in hand, the label sat disgraced and discarded upon the earth growing further and further behind them until the old role was completely abandoned and forgotten, another part of an old story fading into the black.
This piece is breathtaking haunting and luminous all at once, breathtaking, luminous imagery !
🕉️🪬🙏🏽🫂🙏🏽🪬🕉️