Hastadriel

/ərTH ˈānjəl/

noun

I threw myself into the void, but the void placed me gently back on shore and said darling you will be remembered, not for who you are, but you failed to be. So, I told the void fuck off and dived right back in, these seawater lungs gulping down lifeblood, this is a stinging baptismal rebirth.

I wake up to fluorescent lights in the hospital, and  desperately rip out needles they injected in me, devil tendrils pulsing in life I do not want. Ten hands hold me down, and I scream this is my last rite, the doctor says that is a classic case of delusions of grandeur to the scared interns and there is a prick on my neck and everything goes dark.

The galaxy is eating me, and this non-oxygenated blood circles in my lungs, making my heart and everything so devastatingly blue blue blue, I am so daringly mortal, in my self-destructive tendencies, that these veins can’t take any more pinprick points before they burst. The galaxy whispers this is how a junkie looks, this is how an angel self-destructs. 

I claw my way out of my own lungs, in a different world, my hospital gown hangs off me as my back bends and breaks, I rise to the ceiling and levitate, the doctor says that is a classic case of demonic possession to the scared interns, my head spins 360, my spine cracks and bees erupt from my mouth I am not a classic case, I am the original Lilith, my serpent tongue speaks. The nurse checks off unknown species on my chart and continues on. 

Gabriel draws me up from the water, and I can swear, he reminds me of someone I know are you Hermes? He smiles in another life some knew me by that name.  In that moment I remember, and I know he is not taking me somewhere I want to be so I rip myself from his grasp, leaving twin bruises on my arms, in another world I was Icarus and the sun was my beloved, but in this one I made my vows with the ocean abyss. Where are you going? He calls after my plummeting body, home home home. 

Is your home not heaven? the sky asks as I descend through it. In another world maybe, but it never truly was. 

I hit the earth hard, dazed and mouth full of soil, I think this is home. With its glided mortality, and chocolate chunk brownie ice-cream. With its blood-soaked kisses, and barbed wire love,with its sunshine lungs and radiation smiles, in its imperfections, this is home in the way the ocean stings against my cut wrists, this is home in the way I have bled for it, this is home in the way it gave me shelter when my wings were gone. This is home in the way it embraced me when all I  had was a cage on my back. Welcome back it says, welcome back. 

Who have you become, the void whispers, she stops and corrects herself what have you become? All I know is that these veins are no longer glowing, that this halo is broken and gone, that these wings cannot fly no longer, all I know is that this earth is my cradle, my mother, my grave. All I know is that I am stronger than ever before. I tell the void fuck off.