Annika!

as if to be consumed by darkness, as if to be plunged into pitch, as if to be drowned in the shadow that threatens to swallow me whole. we had been sent off to die in the depths of the unfeeling wold, no one will care to mourn for me, the funeral bell forever untolled. saints help us all. the ships around me, laying ruined throughout the fold, the centuries of quietus and loss that our very passage here does uphold. in this barren catacomb, this unfeeling tomb, in this suffocating eclipse of unsullied kohl, there is no day-, star-, or moonlight to keep me warm and whole. sudden. it all happened so suddenly. a light brighter than dawn, purer than gold, flares from deep within my very soul. the birth of the sun summoner, heralding a new age, setting the old world aglow.

a phone call late in the evening a Verdi aria, playing from a radio miles away, sings shrill from the static of tinny speakers a connection in two ways a quick word is spoken, interjected before the music reaches its climax du brauchst nichts am Telefon bleiben she says to me, not knowing how the voicemail works yet I cannot bring myself to hang up or even step away gute nacht I say and listen on unknown as the table lamp continues to flicker in the growing night

elusive in the valley, like birdsong above the trees, a weightless and painful feeling carries you through the branches and through the leaves. the land in all its ancience breathes: a sinking from deep within the earth enfolding you towards the tomb of a world foregone, but not yet forgotten. pray to the gods of yore, sing the song of steel and of sword, the time-honoured dead, and join the humming pain of the olde world, with all of its beauty and all of its grief.

I will dance and look beautiful in the shallow grave where I lie. I will cry when the light of the sun hits my sunken face, gasping as the rays reflect from my body and leave me shadowed among the dirt.

perhaps it is I who is Ancient, with my curled spine and my resolve of crumbling dust I hear the organ as the Procession takes it’s hold and I feel the walls close farther upon my skull as I live twice the world over. behold me in my ancience and tell me that I look absolutely Cadaverous

in a memory, I wear her pearl on the tightening heart         in my throat. it’s pulchritude heavy on my skin to ease my grief as I remain        sedentary in the furthest corner of the earth as her father rots from within his bones.

the swan dances across the clouds in the light of the moon at the edge of the night. it’s wings unfold, broadening in the space where I feel most hollow.

« Je n‘ai rien dit, je te promets. Personne n’entendait rien, personne ne voyait rien. Ils pourraient me torturer et je ne dirais aucun mot, ni faire aucun son. À la nuit et à toi, je demande pardon. Je t’ai fait craindre et je ne me pardonnerai jamais. Mais rien n’a changé. Ce à quoi nous tenons, ce que nous cachons au-dessous de la lune, c’est la nôtre. Le monde n’aurai jamais un rôle dans ma dévotion à toi. Néanmoins à part, nous ne sommes nullement seuls en notre amour. La lune, tu lui manques quand tu te trouves loin de notre centre, de mon cœur. Les étoiles, elles manquent à leur ange, la constellation centrale à nos vies. Et puis, en suivant toutes tes admiratrices, chaque âme céleste, tu me manques plus que les autres chaque jour que nous séparons. Et souvent je me demande si je manque à toi de la même manière, au même instant. »

when the war is over and all the soldiers die, when the buildings all lay ruined in the strength of great Versailles, there comes a time for all the people who,  in the dark, arise to mark the path of the Dead Empire and the promises it disguised

I am become      a martyr in my own inscriptions of my past.        died for loving faulty, killed for straying from the truth my head held high     in saintdom as I sacrificed my youth.         poem after poem, line after line, my heartbreak was to be     my martyrdom and my silence my demise.

weathering the sway of the train I cross my heart and pray for rain

my face   is flushed  like the sun,     hot and unforgiving.   I wash off  my makeup   and watch    myself run down the drain.  the whistling   of the train blankets the air   of the city,  and I hear it      screaming in my sleep.

tomatoes grown in fields littered long ago in ash, taste sweet and rich in contrast to the hardships the land had endured eons before. perhaps one day my struggles will also flower into something beautiful.

my cat is midnight swirled with cream to make her coffee. she is a universe ever so slowly blended in the cup of my two hands.

singing to the rain on the witching hour watching, waiting to fall asleep

the pages of my mind are dog eared and weathered like the leaves of a falling tree. they are read over again with the start of each season, by the storm that rages through my dreams. the volumes of every tale of regret and remorse, ache deep within their ink inscribed on my very essence, my very being. here they remain. ever present, ever written, ever guaranteed.