@solkyn asked : ❝ grab ahold of my hand . ❞ :pleading face:
here there is a door that you will knock on, that will only open as soon as you’ve turned away, and isn’t that something ? here, even in this life, even here, in the face of winter : do we starve? do we leave the light behind ? even at the beginning, where things begin to come whistling into the bright curl of cooling days, will you admit to sharpness ? to fear? to stand and attest to their memory, of how much of this you still cannot say aloud, how much you still attempt, weighted and strung? all your life, the same story ––– here, where you are holding out your hands, here, tired and cold, your hands closing empty ––– to hope and hope for light, and to remain, in the still and quiet dark, over and again. to want to change : isn’t that something ?
back in a time when you are young, you climb out of your window into the darkest part of night to watch light leak out from the citadel, a witness to you, to your whole life, a tall thing on the horizon. its steady - warm glow is so far from your home that you can douse its light out with just the flat shape of your hand, and watch the way it brightens and outlines the edges of your palm, your fingers, how that light becomes a piece of you that you can almost still feel when you leave the window ajar, when you climb back into bed and turn over, hear the crickets, hear your father breathing slow, as you fall back asleep.
the tragedy : it won’t last. and i know, i know, you want it to last, but it will be gone when you wake in the morning. it won’t come with you, into the days ahead, but you will remember it, that it was like nothing else, that feeling, as if the whole world had come to a standstill, like the whole world was coming to, was wide awake, was listening, for just a moment, in the early dawn.
there is only one day a year when the entire kingdom goes dark. it is a day so quiet, so still, as if even the land itself holds its breath in sympathy. it is a day where your father takes your hand just before dusk, and brings you down to the riverbank outside the kingdom’s center, watching as it’s people gather tightly together, holding close every ray of all of their light, and then –––– giving it away, just like that, hands releasing their homemade stars into the night, or something just close enough to it. it is a strange thing, to feel so young, in a light like that. like a dawn you could just touch the edges of, if you reached out your hand far enough. like if you tried, you could find the weakest point of the sky and pass through it, to the softest home of summer.
but summer ends, summer closes itself away, and fear is a harsh thing that descends in its place, slowly sweeping into empty fields, ringing in your ears, settling into this world so delicately ––– like a first snowfall, like the first chill that reaches into you, shelters you a new home, already abandoned ––– how it folds itself so neatly into your bones. you are so afraid, and so cold, how this fear hugs so close to your heart you feel as if you might become it / to become all but burning in this aftermath of light, alone in this place where warmth is supposed to grow, used to grow, but the sun has gone.
but you want to believe. you want to hold onto something, to belong to something, to not leave any more miracles behind, and so : you reach out. you reach and you take her hand and find it warm, find it open and waiting for your own, and suddenly you are reminded : nothing is lost forever.
how clear memory holds those old warm days, how it stretches them out across seasons, and you remember –– the day you heard the news, how it had trickled slowly out to the edges of the kingdom, how the lost princess had been found. how it was a story so gentle and good that it / kept out loneliness, for a little while. you remember the development of summer - fall days, how the kingdom shifted and rearranged itself to come up to meet her, and in turn, how she did not just bring a flickering candle to the streets of people so long used to the mourning - dim dark. no, instead she lit up the entire kingdom, bringing with her a new dawn, and even out here, so far from those cobblestone streets, even here –– you could see how her compassion soaked the sky a new color every night, how there was not a single inch of emptiness left to the dark.
you look at her, now, with her strength, and her kindness, and you think that maybe love is bigger than grief. you look at her, here, even in all of your winter - dark, and there is a moment where think you can see that same light leaking around the edges of her, even brighter than you remember, from so long ago.
❛ okay. ❜ soft-spoken, before a pause, a recollection of shivering days,
and then, ❛ i -– i trust you. ❜ there is so much more here you want to say, to speak aloud into this quiet air, but maybe –– maybe this is a place to begin. a starting point, for so much more than this, for everything you do not yet know how to say, and of course, of course, it isn’t easy, it never is, and it always hurts, i know. believe me, these words say, i am so afraid to admit that maybe love is just another thing i do not deserve. i am trying to love the right way, like you do, to let the light in. i am trying to get it just right.
