torches and butterflies

feathers are falling like snow— no, ash— he thinks of his brother. he’s probably waiting, yawning, pacing. gliding back and forth, oozing like something insidious, like something trapped in slow-motion. he’s like that. they both can be. once upon a time he grew tired of it (irony of ironies, that;) so his icy shadow has settled here, instead. he kisses opposites instead of mirrors, for once. the breath that fills his mouth is hot and fast and fiery and impassioned, instead of caked with lethargy, instead of a whisper. the eyes that meet his here are glinting and glittering; (he winks, tonguing over his lower lip; he radiates flame and desire and) you can’t find that among shades, in the shade, at all a will to live (so to speak) crushing over the urge to die (himself, of course) they’re canceling each other out; they’re negating; it’s completing a cycle, instead of just… continuing onward in a line. it’s why they bother. why death conceded to devour love  and why passion agreed to caress something rotting, kissing to become a balancing act, and not another cold—another—just a mirror— with snow and ash mingling— it was the need for red, instead of gray, for once. a necessary thing.  eros is biting hard enough to bleed, laughing, grinning, a whirlwind. death wants to kill him, a little. supposes love feels the same when it comes to him; supposes sleep probably does, too.

she curls her soft bow lips at the blood on his armor; she says the drippings look like roses. his darling drums her pearly nails upon the cool metal of his helmet. each time he trades his spear, his sword, for her waist, her hips, he can see her eyes glisten, her eyes twinkle, it’s the same look found after battles are finished and wars are won. and he can scarcely understand her. he wonders. he wonders if she feels the same about him; if his concepts are as foreign to her as her motivations are to him. he wonders why when she bites his mouth and smiles over the ichor she… she puzzles him. he loves her, despite everything, and love is a baffling creature. oh, he won’t question her, lest she walk away, stepping over the casualties of war with delicate and deliberate feet.

I read the first poem on your blog and now I'm following. Truly, I am blessed this day to find such words of beauty.

—he’s smiling he’s smiling he’s smiling the quirk of his brow, the sharp of his teeth. there are sparks in the red of his hair, and you look into eyes that are like burning coal: glittering and dancing with the mischief of young, but ultimately, black with the chaos of old and he’s smiling he’s smiling he’s smiling the world will burn to match him, as he has always known touching his fingers to his lips, he pulls away a thin string of gold, ignoring the blood. he spits poison on the sidewalk he’s smiling he’s smiling the scars where venom touched, those are his, his to have, to wear as war trophies, and trophies they are; there are flames beneath his feet and he smiles and he smiles and he smiles—

if I put on red lipstick and later wipe it off—there, in each dry, cracked alley of my chapped, dead lips, are scarlet stains and I can’t just can’t tell what’s blood, and what isn’t

there is life after death, sort of. the flowers she watches while the ground is ice and bare, are not flowers at all, but really wisps of people that have fallen down to her— to them. wisps of people that have drifted miles, crossed rivers, paid tolls,  and they come and they come, endless, eternal, always; eager and waiting to be planted in their Fated gardens. traumatizing, really, to be uprooted so. “but this is your new home, and I will tend to you as I tended to my blossoms in the spring,” she whispers; she smiles, her lips stained pomegranate (dripping blood) red

And they stood to the side with their cold hands clamped in death and decay around each other. by now the others knew to ignore them; they were unsettled. they could never hope to understand. they did not open their eyes. they knew their way both in the dark, and on their own mirror image as well. death murmured, “let your breath, each gentle breath, fill my cold dead lungs.” his voice was cut from stone and skeletons. it is peaceful and familiar and only slightly harsher than his brother’s, who speaks only in whispers and dreams. color filled his pale ash skin. his twin smiled, a lazy smile coated in morning dew and evening stars.

he drifts around like a wisp of smoke. faintly ghosting here and there. he echoes the shades he calls his neighbors. his hands are pale. translucent. as if they never have seen the light. (they haven’t.) his fingers are like dust or dreams or bones. he breezes past, his feet don’t touch the ground. over the river and through the specters. the water flows so quietly, swirling and heavy as it is, filled up with forgotten thoughts. he has chosen his home carefully so that every stone, every breeze each crimson flower, hums softly together as a silent, very silent, lullaby and the air is thick with milky sleep. dust settles in yellow light and he turns his pale p a l e hands to catch butterflies sent with love by his skeleton brother.

sweet eros; lover, our cupid; smiling star, and charming and beautiful and pure. your careful aim with your bow is a soldier’s aim. good intentions, perhaps. but a pierced heart still bleeds. smile all you like when they fall at your feet, even if it’s all in their heads. they still are on the ground. love ruins lives, and you are making your father proud. dreadful twins; fear and terror; fright and phobia; they’re screaming because of you. but horror, you know, reaches deep. what if she leaves? or what if he dies? I’m a f r a i d to love again. twins; soak yourselves in blood, sure, but you have seen what your mother can do, haven’t you, boys.

hyacinthus is okay because: when he smiled the world lit up and his eyes were always golden, like happiness. and his hands were warm and he laughed like a song, and in the field they could pick the sunniest flowers and kiss and kiss until he lost his head. (he held that disc in his hands for a long time, after. the wind touseled his hair and laughed at him, and he wanted to scream.) cyparissus is okay because: his hair always glittered in the goldlight and his mouth curved just like his bow, it was so endearing, and yet he towered and shone and shone like the god he was. he breathed words shaped from light itself. he always knew what to say, with music notes dancing from his lips, with prose, spilling from his smile; always what to say, all up until he didn’t. and he wasted away. (he sees stags in the woods sometimes that could have blossoms wrapped ‘round the antlers, but they never do. he wishes they did.) icarus is okay because: it was every touch and word and promise that always kept him dreaming, and he saw sunlight in his teeth. he was all golds and yellows and he felt like a fire when they touched. he had been drowning anyway, with him, but then, it had been something else that filled his lungs, and splashed his skin, instead of ocean and wax. (and for a while afterwards, he stared up at birds and thought about how they never worry about falling, either. the divine healer felt sick.) and apollo is okay because: he isn’t. he collects lovers like tombstones and hopes that the next will, at least, die in peace. guilt is unbecoming of a god.

they are held by Night. her long star-stained fingers are tangled into knotted feathers dark as the sky… light as the moon… and they are twins. the two sides of the same coin. he is one type of darkness. but his brother is…unspoken. Nyx holds them when they are born but they just grow to stand in the darkness —again, again, and always. “it feels better in the dark,” he whispers. and his dreaming twin, with bruising circles beneath heavy black eyes, nods in agreement. Thanatos smiles and runs his hands through cobwebs of dreams. this one died in his sleep: sometimes, the twins hold hands.

Kore spent her childhood collecting flowers; nothing has changed. Persephone still clutches bouquets— anemone, heliotrope, poppy, daffodil, crocus, hyacinth.

dread reaper lurks behind the throne of hades but at the same time he is ever-present elsewhere in the air. in our hearts. waiting. with gentle, hated hands, he coaxes each dying breath from its shell and expects no thanks for it’s not that sort of job, and, he supposes, it’s only right for them to try and hide from that shadow looming always and forever above their heads. yet even the deathless and they have no cause to fear him— and they should be his equals— they all turn their backs and curl all their lips up in derision, horror, disdain, and he is unwelcome. eventually he scowls and shrugs and shakes his coal-black reaper wings. he descends. olympus is a clique, at best, and there are some Things better suited to the dark, after all.

the invisible goddess gathers up her train of dusty followers; their mouths agape, eyes cloudy. their hands are cold, like ice, like death. the invisible goddess with her two-toned hands claws her path wide open breaks through clumps of blackened dirt she takes a rattling breath of stale cemetery air and behind her, they copy. the invisible goddess walks through the graves. it’s midnight. do you wonder why dogs bark at empty air in the stillness of a normal night? we used to know, but we've forgotten. the invisible goddess with her dread trail of corpses; restless spirit stacked upon wandering shade, for miles and miles behind her. the invisible goddess, with a decaying finger pressed against her two toned lips— she is milky white, and she is rotting dark, and she is walking between life and death at the same time. she is dragging death behind her in an endless line the invisible goddess is walking past your house. your dog begins to howl.

they laughed about it like it was a joke, like they had done each time before, and it made him hate them. the hatred boiled deep within him like the white hot embers of a dying sun. when he could no longer bear it, he stormed away and could still hear them snicker in the background, their laughter sweet like music, and he h a t e d them for it. do gods dream? the boy had asked with a smile it was a smile that put olympus to shame. he could have hated him for it but he loved him instead and he didn’t answer the question. sunlight enveloped every curve of his mortal flesh and they were warm together. (he did dream. he dreamt of olympian smiles and blood spatter and of a corpse rotting in a meadow, surrounded by gore and guilt, with the fucking spring breeze playing over its dead hair, mocking) after, his sister crept into his morning, soft like an intrepid deer. she stood before him like an eclipse. He ignored her. it didn’t matter if gods dreamed because this felt like a dream, anyway and he loved him. his body bowing beneath the Sun, (the Light, the Poet) it was much like the way that he would crumple to the floor after that silver disc cut through his mortal neck. mortals die, his sister said, solid and steady and shrugging. he was spending too much time in the dark, and the gods were… worried. (fuck them.) mortals just vanish. they hide their shades underground and dissolve dissolve into other things; into trees and branches and petals (into blood and dirt and maggots, really) do gods dream? gods have nightmares. he had dipped his golden beautiful ethereal shining fingers into dark red black black blood. he made a flower and cried.