Hades (imaginary)

for Isabella.

ALL LIVE TO DIE...

You told me once

that happiness was just another lie

my parents called a bedtime story.

looking at the sea,

Your hand against my

frail-boned shoulder,

You counted ships that passed our way

and breathed out pure melancholy,

the cigarette’s corrupting smoke,

that heaven’s hit of nicotine

Your bloodstream black as Styx already,

A malignant, jealous Hades,

reborn in the sting of the seafoam and salt,

in the autumn afternoon.

A Hades reborn in my child’s imagination,

You told me i was old enough

to learn the truth of Life.

Reader, please understand that i was eight.

You told me with a rasping breath

that happy endings

were for characters in fairy-tales

and that the world was cruel to you,

so changeling minds like mine

would never be allowed to bloom.

You told me stories filled with brimstone

so i’d grow up, the perfect lady; too bad for

You.

You knew i was barely eight years old.

and for once, fifteen now, full of rage,

it’s just my luck to be a fairy,

isn’t it, my dearest Hades imaginary?

i break a box of chocolates against the wreck

You called a house,

and find another twenty rosaries

- how much faith

and damn forgiveness did

You really want and need?

how many hymns and prayer books,

how many books of genesis bought until

You knew and realized

why your children fight and kill and bleed for

You?

i stole a piece of jewelry,

You know, from

Your bedside drawer:

the necklace from

Your wedding-

and i locked in a drawer out of guilt.

small gold chain, half of a heart

where’s the other half,

dear Hades imaginary?

in the growing pile of trash outside

among the clippings, psychic rags,

rotten divination books,

and magic healing crystal bags

we’ll burn tonight?

I look up

at another stack of bibles

and flip to pages I know well

- it’s always the same few -

why do we start tragedies?

Because each time

we start the song like it’ll end differently

We flip to pages hoping you didn’t really mean it that one time,

and find the same old dusty screaming ruins waiting where we thought for once we could just

breathe.

Half of a heart, broken in two-

Oh Hades Imaginary,

Forgiveness is a finite fucking thing.

...AND RISE TO FALL.

Later, when we start the bonfire in the garden,

rotten mildew, fake Edwardian chairs

sizzling at the frayed fabric,

Your makeshift memento pyre,

i untangle the chain from around my neck,

gently,

Gold that shyly glistens

to the flickerbeat flames:

the tentative rhythms

of the wooden changeling childrens’

shouts and games

that accompany the harmonies

of the crackling yellow pages

dying

for once and for all.

And i throw it in as well,

without any ceremony,

ni vu ni connu.

Your children continue to cheer

and throw wood onto the burning logs.

Dear Hades Imaginary,

Your heart

dissolves

and melts

and blazes

like it never did when you were living here.

half a heart,

like you, like me -

half a heart to care for ourselves,

only,

take what’s ours by given right;

Half a heart,

and half a mind to run

as far away as lungs permit,

out of here,

out of this crumbling

dusty memory,

out of reach of this

catastrophic

clusterfuck:

your claustrophobic legacy.

ARE YOU SURE THAT THEY’RE JUST GROWING PAINS?

remember:

you are just

sticks & stones.

and here I am,

refraction of perfection,

bones made of ash,

and heart made of glass.

Oh, mother, forgive me

if I know what you mean

when you say

we shouldn’t repeat the past.

Don’t walk too lightly, brother; you’ll wake the ghosts.

I was barely eight that day,

but I’m stronger than I ever was,

and you can’t hurt us ever again.

PERESTROIKA, ANGELS IN AMERICA.

Dear Hades Imaginary:

I built sandcastles

with my shaking fingers,

fashioned sandy walls

too high to see the clouds with

my own two snow-filled lungs,

walls that crumbled come sunset,

that the sea devoured with foamy jaws,

but that I built nonetheless.

Dear Hades Imaginary:

We have to try.

We have to try,

no matter how we know the story ends

when we stop reading.

We have to try,

and laugh,

and build stupid things,

machines

that have no purpose,

sandcastles

doomed to fail,

and say with

booming shaking lonely little voices

I Built This.

and

Dear Hades Imaginary,

YOU CAN NEVER TAKE IT AWAY!

And

I command my buzzing brain

with a tired child’s brittle, breaking,

unbalanced voice:

I must love this thing

I call myself

or at least... I’ll fucking die trying!

And the world starts turning.

Time starts now.

My life starts now.

A happy ending

now begins.

And

I breathe.

Dear Hades Imaginary,

I will love this thing

I call myself

If it costs me my

golden,

broken,

melted

heart.