“You are damaged and broken and unhinged.
But so are shooting stars and comets.”
But so are shooting stars and comets.”
And I wonder if that me knows what it's like to be formed by softness instead of violence. I wonder if that me knows the way a soul can feel so light it wants to soar above the flesh and kiss the cheeks of the sun dragons. I wonder if that me looks at a man like Michael, with his cosmic dark eyes, and feels her heart clench like a chrysalis fat with colorful wings and dew-wet lips. I wonder if she loves him in the way that I love Eik, soul to soul instead of skin to skin.
It would be easy to be that other me I think, the one that remembers stories and slat-sides of sorrow on a sea of hope.
It would be easy to love him.
But I am heavy now, too heavy, for men with dark eyes and legs made for running, and running, and running from the monsters in the world. Like a siren I know I would drown him (I almost have).
Yet I cannot help the way that my lips curve up to see him and my eyes spark like young stars in the shadows of the night. And I cannot help the way that my soul flutters a little as if it's dreaming of wings that it will never grow. Quartz races across the street between him and I. The city still remembers enough of me not to be startled as the way the earth trembles and changes below their hooves. My hooves sing across the stone as I walk to him. “Have you forgotten me already? It breaks my heart to hear my name as a question upon your lips.” His skin feels just as soft, just as warm, just like home as I lay my lips against his shoulder.
I think again how easy it would be to sink below this world to the next and become the other me.
“Have you written any other poems?” Part of me wants to ask him if he's written for anyone (but I am a selfish woman with war in her veins). Instead I only lay my cheek against his and let his sorrow dredge my own up from the furious fires I've burned most of it away with.
@
