Poetry and Prose

Do you remember two kids with star flecked eyes?

Twin souls looking up at the same night sky.

How it must feel to be that child.

It has been light years since I have felt so light.

Do you remember our sacred woodland thrumming with life?

A life full of colour and sunlight caught in eyes.

Do you remember two children, a girl and a boy?

Hold them up to the light and watch them shyly shine.

It is easy to be brave in a forest full of light,

I believe in different things in the day than I do in the night.

But they learned that a forest never looks same the night,

Dark creatures come out when she’s leached of her light.

Like sadness, who steals the stars from their eyes,

Like loneliness, who steals the love from their lives.

Subtle creatures who take, silent thieves in the night.

I think of the trees that never fought for me.

Of the sunlight I loved, but was never mine to keep.

Of the lost boy and girl, broken fragments of a dream.

I think of love that dies without a sound.

And I become a forest fire and burn it to the ground.

As distant from them as the sun in the sky.

A whole world in love with your light,

Didn't they wonder if you blazed so bright

Because you were a burning boy?

How they loved you from a distance,

Their shining boy,

Who they asked to conquer the night.

Then hated for stealing the stars from the sky.

Because up close you were no bringer of light,

But a burning boy.

If you cannot hold on any longer,

Then perhaps it is time that they learn;

If you replace the sun with a boy

And ask him to shine,

In the end he can do nothing but burn.

I have just begun to learn

That there are different kinds of flame,

Different ways to burn.

First there is fool's fire.

Flame that blazes with a light

that is not light at all,

A nightmare's answer to a dreamer's call.

Then there's a mind set aflame

A hidden kind of pain.

How can there be such fire,

Yet nothing burning?

In the end it's a beautiful heart's flame,

Forging steel and strength

From embers of hope and infernos of pain.

If she is to fall, then you will gladly fall too.

She is the flame that is loved,

Even as it burns you.

Two children of the night,

Darkened souls weaved with pinpricks of light.

Two children of the sea,

Dragged to shadowed depths that the lighthouse cannot reach.

Never saved. No one hears their pleas.

Those dying whispers carried on the ocean’s empty breeze.

Once children of the sun,

Achingly soft and kind and young.

Crowned by love and light ‘til hate and darkness won.

Then they stole their light,

Weapons trained on anything that shone.

These children, whose hearts once burned so bright,

Now nothing more than dying embers in the night.

You’ve got a heart like the moon.

Try as it might, the night cannot conquer you.

Like the phases of the moon, shadow slowly cloaks your bright heart.

But you will yourself back to life, phase by phase, always defeating the dark.

Though you hold the intensity of the sun’s golden blaze,

Your silver shining lines the night in a much quieter way.

It takes a wanderer who knows the dark of night,

To really see you and love your light.

You cannot see your own brightness, so you need to be told,

Few people know it, but silver is a rarer metal than gold.

-Anna O'C

You are a lifeguard.

I am a person drowning at sea.

Struggling to pull air into my lungs

To keep my head above the roaring waves.

But I am caught in the current,

Pulled downward by the surging sea of grief.

You stand on the shore

Bound by duty to dive in to the turmoil.

And in my coldest moments,

At the height of the raging storm,

I lose myself.

I watch you watching me. Watch you hesitate.

And I wonder if you're wondering if there is anything left of me worth saving.

So I let the sea consume me, afraid of your question,

Afraid of my answer.

If I could see you just one more time,

I'd sing you a song with my touch.

Leave a mark of my love on your skin,

A promise never to forget.

If I could see you,

I'd sing you a song of swords

A song of bitter unfairness

A song of steel and rage

A song of unspeakable, infinite loss.

If I could be with you one last time,

I'd sing you of song of my memories

Of how your brightness woke me up

And filled a monochrome life with colour

I'd sing you the song of my soul

And the song of my soul is you.

Imagine being stranded on a deserted island. Imagine the fustration of dying of thirst and being surrounded by an endless stretch of sea, the water salty and undrinkable. Surronded by a body of water and yet gasping with thrist. That is what it is to be in a world full of people and feel utterly alone.

But you, you were my lifeline, my freshwater stream. I saw you from a distance and as I got closer, in my mind I imagined I already knew your taste - pure and refreshing and good. But it was only my imagination. You were just an empty shell I filled with my love and my hopes of who I wished you were. And as I went to drink you in, my throat ached with the burn of saltwater.