Torn

I used to dream we would drown each other's hearts in the ocean, our mouths choking on salt water lies, our fingers slipping as we disappeared beneath dark water.

Instead we tore our hearts from our beating chests to decorate the walls like paper lanterns, transparent, reflecting the Christmas lights through them like prisms. Open, like a sacrifice on a sacred altar; aching, if only to remind us we were alive. We wanted to live forever in a world of shiny beads and scented candles, caramel coffee and books of poetry, a world where fireworks fell from the skies and we spoke our dreams into existence by moonlight. Do you remember forever?

Your face no longer appears in my dreams. Sometimes I forget the sound of your voice, the way your skin looks in ambient light. They tell me growing apart is nothing more than growing up, but didn't we say we'd stay young forever? Instead, Time has etched her name in our skins, and the decay has reflected on our hearts - still beating, but no longer together. Maybe I was poisoned by love, and perhaps the medicine you take to keep the demons away has taken your soul as well. Changeling girl, do you even remember my name?

Last night I dreamed I buried your heart in the sand, the sun shutting her golden eye like an omen. But as your heart disappeared, I traced a map on my own, so I would always know where to find you. I feel I won't see you in my dreams for a long time. Sometimes I don't know whether to say I'm sorry - or goodbye.




(Copyright - Cho Kucifer - 10/29/2011)

Your name is like a song I heard when I was a child. A dance of shadows beneath the glare of bright lights, maybe the sound of rain on a stained glass window. Do you remember the platform where our voices gave birth in the night air? Or the hollow beneath it where we read music and I gave you a blue sticker of a flying unicorn? Sometimes I wonder if the halls where we walked still contain the fragments of our ghosts.

I never wrote you confessional poems on pastel stationary or longed for your touch beneath the winter stars. I never painted my face for your admiration or cursed the day you were born. I was a silent pale shadow and you -- a voice I longed to hold somewhere deep inside.

If the vagabond in my heart hadn't beckoned me to the other side of the world,
...perhaps then I would have been around to save you.

Copyright - Cho S. Kucifer 3.28.11

wings & shadows

You used to say you would fly away - unfolding fragile wings, soaring beyond the purple heavens and broken glass oceans of our world. I used to say I would be forever grounded, the roots of my heart twining into the earth, pulling me deeper into shadow. But it is I who chose to leave and you who wished to remain. The wings I have are new and still shake in the wind, and I wonder if you have yet found a way to breathe underground, underwater.

~*~

You and I. We were melody - song and dance, touch of gold on sapphire, bend and twist of fingers, bruised almond and porcelain. I cannot remember the way our hands and voices met and parted, becoming a living being, another essence. But I'll never forget the end.

You told me we would see each other again. So certain, like one who has never known a parting. I looked into your eyes and knew even if you didn't that this would be goodbye.

~*~

Last night, I saw you again and you were beautiful - an aura of sea glass with the sun reflecting through, the colored lights of ferris wheels that spin in your eyes.

Just like you always had been.
As if nothing at all had changed.

~*~

"We still look the same," you said to me once. I smiled with you, wondering how you could not see the difference time has made.
Perhaps you will always be blind to what has changed around you. Perhaps that is the fate of those who choose to live underground.

As those who choose to fly are always meant to see.

(Copyright - Cho K. 3.4.11)

Ah to be innocent once more. A feeling like wind rushing through wild hair, stars falling to melt over pale bones. We were perfect - running barefoot in the sand, the taste of ocean salt crystals on lips, sunlight falling on skin like golden faery dust. We cupped our souls in calla lily hands and they were unbroken, unique and without flaw - like the colored stones that fall and make patterns against kaleidoscope glass.

To grow up is to feel the world implode. Everything we touch seems to twist into smoke -- shattering glass, the sounds of a heart breaking. We are empty vessels only now realizing we are incomplete, jagged tooth and hard nail, fevered skin. Ravenous fingers scratching at the holes on our backs that once held our wings. Shallow breathing like the sounds of ice cracking. Splintering. A shadow twists, rising and falling.

Visceral - a heartbeat in the darkness.

Copyright-Cho Kucifer 2.13.11