the war of flowers blooming
If there was a way to carve the sorrow out from Danaë’s soul he would no sooner peel back his ribs and print the language of it into his own bones.
And he is thinking of that golden sapling again, growing and dying and weeping in his mind. It’s always there, always stretching out one branch to brush against him whenever he is least expecting it, whenever he forgets. Always, it is reaching.
Always, he is aching.
There are too many pieces of himself scattered through the sand and the soil, too many pieces that have died and unfurled and withered as they grew through stones. And left behind were the scars where saplings once grew like wildflowers creeping through the cracks of the sidewalk. But now they are bare and bruised like winter. Watching Danaë carve the sorrow from the weeping walls — her own sorrow, he knows it is her own even when he does not want to admit it — is like forcing roots to grow between the fissures like stitches holding a wound closed.
And even with the echo of the wall’s sorrow ringing out in his bones, shaking awake the fury found there that has never learned to stop chanting enough, enough, enough — still he steps forward. Still he touches his shoulder to her’s, his cheek to her’s, his soul to her’s, turning her from it all. “We can’t always choose our lives.”
He does not tell her he cannot save them.
He knows it would be too much like telling her he could not save her.
When did it become so easy to overlook the truth of it? It is almost too hard for him to turn now from sharp to soft, broken to whole, lost to found — it is almost too hard to save himself, and still he looks at Danaë and every bit of his soul is whispering I can save you to her’s.
“But we can choose what we do with what we have. Everything will rust eventually, but that doesn’t mean steel is any the less bright when it is first forged.” The first flower that blooms in the weeping walls doesn’t care that it’s star-blood instead of water drowning its roots.
It only unfurls its petals and smiles in the only way that nature knows how: with colors, and vibrancy, and life, and the silk-soft petals that fan themselves around a unicorn’s horn. Hawthorn and water poppies and hyacinth all press themselves like kisses against her cheek when she makes the next cut. Lily pads and lotus flowers tangle like fishing nets around her legs, shoots tugging on her hocks like a whisper begging her to come away (in all the words Ipomoea does not know how to speak himself.)
They press themselves to her with promises of pollen, and life, and laughter instead of weeping, laughter enough to almost (almost) drown out the crying walls (but still it goes on beneath like disease in the lungs, like a hiccup, like death following on its white horse.) And Ipomoea has seen enough of death to know it will never not be chasing after life, lying in wait.
His bones are still chanting like it is a war he’s turning his eyes towards and not his daughter. But where being brave once seemed impossible, now when he looks into eyes that are as bloody as his own it seems like the only thing left to be.
And he is thinking of that golden sapling again, growing and dying and weeping in his mind. It’s always there, always stretching out one branch to brush against him whenever he is least expecting it, whenever he forgets. Always, it is reaching.
Always, he is aching.
There are too many pieces of himself scattered through the sand and the soil, too many pieces that have died and unfurled and withered as they grew through stones. And left behind were the scars where saplings once grew like wildflowers creeping through the cracks of the sidewalk. But now they are bare and bruised like winter. Watching Danaë carve the sorrow from the weeping walls — her own sorrow, he knows it is her own even when he does not want to admit it — is like forcing roots to grow between the fissures like stitches holding a wound closed.
And even with the echo of the wall’s sorrow ringing out in his bones, shaking awake the fury found there that has never learned to stop chanting enough, enough, enough — still he steps forward. Still he touches his shoulder to her’s, his cheek to her’s, his soul to her’s, turning her from it all. “We can’t always choose our lives.”
He does not tell her he cannot save them.
He knows it would be too much like telling her he could not save her.
When did it become so easy to overlook the truth of it? It is almost too hard for him to turn now from sharp to soft, broken to whole, lost to found — it is almost too hard to save himself, and still he looks at Danaë and every bit of his soul is whispering I can save you to her’s.
“But we can choose what we do with what we have. Everything will rust eventually, but that doesn’t mean steel is any the less bright when it is first forged.” The first flower that blooms in the weeping walls doesn’t care that it’s star-blood instead of water drowning its roots.
It only unfurls its petals and smiles in the only way that nature knows how: with colors, and vibrancy, and life, and the silk-soft petals that fan themselves around a unicorn’s horn. Hawthorn and water poppies and hyacinth all press themselves like kisses against her cheek when she makes the next cut. Lily pads and lotus flowers tangle like fishing nets around her legs, shoots tugging on her hocks like a whisper begging her to come away (in all the words Ipomoea does not know how to speak himself.)
They press themselves to her with promises of pollen, and life, and laughter instead of weeping, laughter enough to almost (almost) drown out the crying walls (but still it goes on beneath like disease in the lungs, like a hiccup, like death following on its white horse.) And Ipomoea has seen enough of death to know it will never not be chasing after life, lying in wait.
His bones are still chanting like it is a war he’s turning his eyes towards and not his daughter. But where being brave once seemed impossible, now when he looks into eyes that are as bloody as his own it seems like the only thing left to be.
