DeadPoet

I think I look good offering myself to the river styx, flirting with Hades as I cross into unknowing. Dying is just crossing into unknowing.

I think the banality of a forgotten face is beautiful, a face reduced to carved text on a stone under a name that never meant anything. A name means nothing in the end.

Maybe there's a world where blood is no thicker than water, where love transcends face or recognition.

Maybe there's a world where animals can live well, where teeth are used to smile instead of tear and their bellies are full with milk and honey.

Maybe there's a world where my tears can be wiped away with the thumb of a person I've just met, my cheekbones fitting in the palms of their hands. Where I'm allowed to hug, cling and sob into the crook of their neck just because they want me to be okay.

Maybe there's a world where we're not ashamed to say I love you, where I can stare my friends in the eyes and confess for hours about the ways we've changed each other.

But not this world, not yet. I still hear the tik tok of a clock nobody else can hear. I still hear the cries of grief and the wails of scared animals. God all I hear is the animals cry.

Blood is still shameful, hidden scars and stained clothes.

My hands and eyes clench too tightly.

I choke on my own tongue too much, it feels like the back is weighed down with lead and I can't help but swallow every little thing I need to say.

All I understand is physical pain. It's words that don't require air, fists that don't need muscle, a show of respect without losing interest.

I know I lie when I tell you I dont miss you, though I fight the urge like a boxer on the cusp of dreaming mid fight I still have to fight.

Or maybe I don't, maybe the universe has decided it's grit has run low. Maybe fighting is for athletes without caffeine addictions, maybe fighting is for athletes without addiction.

Every day is that fight. When my eyes drift like a sailboat to you and my pupils dilate with the need I feel the pull of muscle... Muscle that has dreamt more than lifted, muscle that needs what I can't explain.

You're not a tool to look at. You're an end. You're a beginning that was wielded by my mother's doctor after my breech. You're the missing piece to a puzzle I've been putting together for decades, Blind.

Sometimes whispers from far away tug on my spine, pulling me downwards to new life- an honorable one.

Disappearance into new life.

Teeth ripped by tree roots, moss grown through my throat, I have found home laid among the earth.

Arm fed to bear cubs, and soil fertilized with carcass. My life provides goodness to something too ancient to remember. Too unknown to return too.

Who am I to deny that Goddess my service? To deny the beyond nothing-place my attention.

But alas I must stay, sobbing into dewy grass and panicking into the crook of mother natures neck, begging to be taken home.

The boy stands at attention, his eyes blackened into a typhoon, and his ears whirring in anything but silence.

Sometimes, when he looks down, he finds the palms of his hands searing as he grips his dreams,

white-knuckled. Other times, his fists coil around air, holding the form of something too grand to truly feel...

Sometimes, the boy even holds the air tighter than his dreams.

"Follow your gods," the people say, "Respect their power. Understand your faith."

But how can he, when his palms burn too much? When the air takes its form around him?

"How can the gods even understand faith?" he questions.

The people's punishments could never hurt as much as his dreams.

His black eyes glimmer once more. They roll back, and his hands reach out.

Reach out for who? For what? For why?

No matter...

A dream is born - this time, written in text beyond mortality.

The people don't know. The people can't read the dream.

They punish.

But this time, the boy feels the heat of the dream too much. He screams, he cries, he wails into the void...

And he is answered.

The gods don't speak to him - no. They're far too large to speak.

Instead, they reach down.

They stroke the ether around him.

They charge the air with whispers.

Whispers of direction - every direction.

But the boy remains calm, unbelieving.

The gods will not have him.

He will have the gods.

He walks

Not forward, not backward, nor side to side...

He walks in.

The boy takes long, powerful strides within.

The colors of his soul flash into an epileptic wonder.

His eyes are no longer black. When they roll forward, they're blue, green, red, gold...

And at the end of the tunnel, at the end of his soul, he finds meaning.

He finds his body - his real body.

He finds his mind, scattered into stars exchanging their energy.

He finds his god - not a life, not a name

A void.

A void that is surrounded by everything.

"Give me my meaning," the boy says to the void.

"Give me my soul."

And the void answers.

Not with words.

Not with action...

The void simply breathes.

And the boy breathes.

And as if it had always been true, the boy knows his purpose.

The boy speaks nothing real

A cadence that only the untethered can hear.

He becomes she.

She becomes it.

It becomes them.

They become all.

Her thoughts scatter into portrait.

Its nose smells the earth and stars.

Their ears hum in resonance to the symphony of perfect quiet.

The boy understands.

The boy laughs at jokes only he can tell.

The boy is god.

The boy is child.

and shadows dancing on the ceiling.

They say my mother kissed the storm,

and my father was it.

I believe them.

I remember the thunder in their shouts.

I remember their blaze

like wool and flame, itchy and searing.

But me... I dreamt in deep water.

I spoke in sighs.

There were gills behind my tongue,

and salt in my blood.

Sometimes I hear whales calling beneath my ribs,

A cry of love and hope.

Sometimes the mirrors fog over --

and the taste of salt creeps on my tongue,

and in the blurred reflection I see scales... Wings.

I think I was made for something

that doesn’t exist anymore,

But I still hum the lullaby.

I still trace the grooves in the stone