who are you to tempt a sea of untold truths and beg for knowledge?
i.
moonlight whispers against your collarbone, all but silent silk sticking to milky-white skin / you feel it, rather than see it / you do not remember how you arrived here. nevertheless, it does not matter: the drumming of waves beyond your ears and between your lips will act as your guide.
your breath catches in your throat, and you almost laugh because / you realize / like breath, what is essential for life is both abundant and precious, until it’s neither. will you risk that to plunge under waves of uncertainty for a glimpse of omniscience?
your eyes flutter under closed lids. / what is hidden hides for a reason / and perhaps this choir of waves crescendoing below deserves privacy. perhaps not. you do not know.
you open your eyes
ii.
well-worn waves dine on the stars with jagged teeth. you think you see something under the scraps of scattered reflection adorning the surface, but perhaps it’s all / abyss /
neptune calls to you with saltwater knives. licking your toes. stinging your knees / red / raw / wrapping frostbitten shadows round your waist. barnacles nip at the soles of your feet like impatient hounds.
you create ripples in the water as you wade further. you think: maybe the ocean is communicating through cryptic metaphors. the water is silent. you receive no answer tonight.
you hold your breath
iii.
there is this unspeakable fear that pulls on your wrists like rusty chains, pulls on your neck like slowly-numbing fingers, / yet / you’ve been taught not to let your knees buckle under the crippling weight of a shivering midnight. and so /
you drop your robe. slithering down your shoulders, fluttering lifeless behind you, carried away by conspiratorial waves. exposing you to a midnight jury, luminescent skin rubbed / red / raw / by icy water. dawn is far from the horizon, so you hope this inky wetness below, this cavern of nothingness, will be your guardian.
you dive
she, who shines like a rising sun (Happy birthday, Mia! <3)
and if she drops like afternoon rain,
may her heart bloom with daisies
and her smile bear springtime fruit
and may honeycomb, sweet as she,
tickle her ears like whispers carried on the winds
and if she stays on an uphill climb,
may she face her obstacles headon
so they blossom with the glow
of her luminescent eyes
may flora and fauna rise softly under her fingertips
and become ornaments caressed by the mountain she climbs
and if she soars, oh, if she soars,
may she soar on blessed wings
shaped from the constellations etched in her memory
and may she light up each morning
like a fresh sun hatching from its chrysalis
settled sleepily on the horizon
drop, stay, soar, and may she take to the skies
with flames in her soul and stars in her eyes
i might have seen salvation in the christmas lights
and when we carried cardboard christmas boxes from the attic, i thought / perhaps they were dust-ridden, but the gritty cloth rags in our calloused hands / cleaned our flesh and souls of year-long dust, too / a year sapped of colour trapped us so far in the grey / it took me to the moment i plugged in the lights / to pull me back to the
/ glow /
when one finds themself in the grey, it is too easy to frown / to let their head swim until the sickly sweet summer fades away / and here we are, december, and / i never thought plastic lights could make me cry tears of relief / red / glistening like rubies wet with winter rain / green / an echo of the thinly-spun pine needles clinging to our tree / white / scattered like a jester's tricks across our freshly awoken walls / and in our christmas lights i think / i might have seen
/ salvation /
sixteen suns #hbdsassyv
on sunday she broke sixteen
whereupon a sleeping city she rose
in the liquid hesitancy between nightfall and dawn
an indigo slit upon the horizon
gaping, lifting, severing the sky,
spilling over the twilight valleys
from which she sprung;
she caressed the interstellar space
draped between her libra stars and her lonely october moon
she painted blinding auroras from the top
and upon her land a morning dropped
the sun broke light and quick and sixteen
broke full of joy and life, a sun
that radiated power and shivered with opportunity,
a protector wielding a sword of peonies, allure, and love
shining where circe embraced last night's setting sun
slithering through dawn like secrets between lovers
on sunday she broke sixteen
and she broke sixteen sweet
summertime burns brighter in memory
when shadowed becomes the present
memories drip like glaciers
icy skin threatened by the sun
familiarities beading, rolling, collecting in pools
she waxes soft and springy like
buttery july afternoons
in hazy summers that settled thick as fog
hanging in the air, a gaudy chandelier
light stretched thin by yesterday's ghosts
and ocean spray smelled of broken bits and pieces
of relationships she lost
and those she refused to remake
of the incandescent smile which fluttered beneath his skin and
them, the tickle in their throat which may or may not have
been a laugh;
and this spinning snow becomes psychotic
and it falls and falls
when will we rise?
wax soft and springy, my dear
when shadowed becomes the present
memories drip like glaciers
the small things i found amidst chaos
and after she drank down the last bitter dregs of humanity
she could stagger towards home, rip off her shoes and
think about life for a while
she associated summer with saturation
speckled sunlight turned leaves into chartreuse celestial deities
glowing faintly under a periwinkle sky
and in those moments where time itself lingered in
the dusty compartment between chaos and serenity
she could see the colour of water, which, like
everything else, had saturated in the blanketed heat of july
and maybe it was her imagination, but
early morning stirred in her the most isolated sense of life
a spot in which she could reflect and ruminate
a place where she became the only wandering soul
left on the planet, a moment captured in slow motion, a
dream strung together from melancholic memories
for only a few moments
before the sun rose
she was someone who sat in the backs of cafes, her
bookbag cluttered with crushed volumes, marked
in pencil and ringed with old coffee stains
someone who regarded the coffeehouse singer's plaintive voice
with something like admiration, who thought the lyrics an argument
and respectfully made her own claims, who kept
poetic nonsense scribbled in pen on her arms and ensured
the singer could see her caffeine-stimulated eyes
supporting them with every blink and breath
and maybe when chaos overthrew that strange, suspended serenity, collected
itself into a pill and dropped into her glass of humanity
she could distract the chaos by thinking of the small things
because the big things could smash her life apart
and the small things would bring it back
and the stars shine
once upon the sky
the stars were a compromise
between the night who filled
a loose sunset dome
and the moon
who glistened upon lonely oceans
and ignited the faces of wandering solivagants;
the night had told the moon
help me, oh moon
you are so bright
and your tides attack our children down below
with the vilest sprays
and i worry someday they will drown
and the moon replied
without me, your darkness
would cause hysteria and confusion
leaving our children down below to scrape by
alone and haunted
until dawn
and so the moon scattered its tears among the night,
drew back just enough
to calm the tides and make peace with the dark
and from its tears grew glittering stars
and their children down below
pointed at the moon's tears
and upon them made wishes
they hoped could come true
and strung them together
and called them constellations;
the night grew to love its twinkling gems
spinning unmistakeably, aeviternally;
the moon was content to let
her tears wet the sky in
the most confusing of seas
and together they watched
two of their children down below
gazing up at them, hand in hand
and one whispered
do you see the sky tonight?
the night embraces the moon
and the moon lights the water;
like a family
whereupon the second child frowned and asked
but where could the stars fit in
up in that big black dome?
what purpose do they serve?
but the first child merely smiled
and she lifted her eyes to the night and the moon and the stars
and the girl swore she saw them smiling back
and she said
and the stars shine
there is a child beneath your skin
the child hiding under your skin
has poison frothing
beneath her fingernails
for your lungs crush her tight
and your throat wishes
to swallow her whole
but the more you fight
the more she drowns
the more she pulls you with her
mind shuddering with tremors of an aftershock
reduced to roman ruins
begging for you to release her
but you take her hope
and demolish that, too
a fear that wears many faces
we forget the face of fear yet
we're unsurprised when it strikes
darkness precedes the dawn
so when twilight strings faded constellations
across a dome of ink
how are we to know
the sun will wake again?
fear wears many faces
a wall of masks
which for this special occasion?
a dance of sparks
that burn and burn
across our humble fingertips
a breath in the incandescent laugh
of winter, and a jagged cut along
the cheek of an old prophecy
that we must fulfill again
and again
and again
and still we cower from slipping suns
hiding under planks of rotten wood
sunken with years of boots and memories
where we wait for the thin light of morning
to pool on our faces
and banish our fear to the recesses of our minds,
our cages of cowardice
that disguise themselves as spring flowers
psychotherapy’s a bitch when you like to bottle up
because you hid yourself away
from curious eyes,
breath shallow,
throat tightening,
and nothing could mollify
the fire licking your intestines
you appreciate it, you do
here in the waiting room
fluorescent lights that are
oh so good at blinding
lemon disinfectant
p e r m e a t e s
the air and you
can't breathe
and somehow
you like it
you kept things from them
you thought they wouldn't want to hear
dancing widdershins around your own feelings
because feelings are for the real ones
and fantasy is an escape
but here when your only task is to feel
your heart torn open with the
most precise scalpel
and digging around in there
they try to find why you feel so
l o s t
and present you with solutions
and you smile because they are trying to help you
they do not expostulate with you like the others
and you thank them for that
bottling emotions like water
swallowing them and they have
the most bitter aftertaste
enough to make you spit them up again
soon as you get here
because you wait for this place
and it's a bitch
it's such a bitch
and maybe that's why you're healing