#celesteleroux

The commanding presence of animosity lingers, yet she cannot command a livid expression to accompany the sensation until she realizes the room, devoid despite minimal furniture, is overcast by gray clouds from the opened, unframed window. As the breeze picks up, slowly rotating, then suddenly morphing into the kind of gale that carries the destruction of a rampant typhoon, she dreads the notion that she must make haste towards the white door, which seems to have blended in with the overcast walls save for a subtle golden doorknob.

She bolts upwards, ignoring the screams of pain her legs elicit while making a break for the dim glow of the knob, but just as she reaches for the object a mere hairsbreadth, she falters.

A voice whispers in her ear, and though the words are incoherent, she knows they are laced with malice.

The whispers grow, louder until they can be heard: “Where are your wings, angel? Where are they?”

In the pending silence, she can feel the presence of razor-sharp nails gripping her arm, imaginary rivulets of blood dressing her limb in crimson-crusted webs. She attempts to open her mouth to fire a vicious retort, but something has stolen the speared words from her guarded mind. Something has ripped her voice box out of her throat, leaving behind hoarse, echoing rasps. her numbed limbs are not functioning properly and she cannot break free of the unspoken words materialized in the form of a sinister voice. She struggles and struggles, willing her mind to fuel the mobility in her arms, her legs, but to no avail.

Finally, she is successful. In a broken, mangled voice, she rasps out, “No! I have my wings. I have my wings!” She screeches the single sentence over and over, growing weaker until only disjointed phrases are audible and finally become a mere thought on replay: I have wings. I have wings.

As if eavesdropping on her mind, the voice whispers tauntingly, “But they’re broken, aren’t they?”

The savage gale, ripping mercilessly around the girl, brutally overturning the meager contents of the room, and violently lacerating her skin, reminds her of the little time she has left to spare. She squeezes her eyes shut, desperately searching, scavenging, mulling over the contents of her scattered mind for an undisguised answer:

She knowsknowsknows this voice. She has heard this voice before, she swears.

She blanches.

As quickly as she had given into the undertones of the insinuations, she proudly reconstructs her mind, body, and spirit. All at once, everything that had her shrouded in mists and heavy fogs of doubt disintegrates and illuminates the firm silhouette of her soul. She yanks her clean arms, free of any blossoming stains of incriminating crimson and bruised maroon, no longer bleeding profusely, away from the grasps of the malevolent figure. It desperately screams, “No!” as she twists the golden knob and flings herself past the square arch of the door and into the darkness.

Before long, she is dashing down the foyer, into a dimly illuminated labyrinth. The still air picks up again, gusts of wind reminding her it follows closely wherever she may go. She wanders further into the maze, taking sharp turns, meeting dead ends, but she has yet to retire any thought to despair or escape because she knew from the moment she woke up she could not escape easily; she will push through. With strengthened resolve, she pauses her steps, closes her eyes, but does not rummage her thoughts for any hints.

This time she lets pure instinct take over. Left here. Keep running straight. Now take the third right. Keep running straight and don’t open your eyes. Don’t look back. She is no longer running in circles and is clearing the pathway to the centerfold point. With her eyes still squeezed shut, she breaks through the barriers of illusion, through the walls of her thoughts, the whirlwind behind her no longer in tow. She runs and runs until she bursts into the midst of it all and finally opens her eyes to the sight of wonder unraveling. Above her, the endless ceiling beholds a bright spiraling circle of light, swirling and sucking in any form of darkness that has engulfed the confinements of the room.

And she knows. She knows that this is her ticket out of this embodied prison of her mind, but she also knows the portal hovering above is completely out of her reach as she stands firmly locked on the ground. She stands stumped, confused as to why she has already made it this far but cannot move forward since there is nowhere to go other than up, and she has no means to get there...

But she does, she suddenly remembers.

I’m not an angel, no. But I have my wings. [insert 2017-me-cringe here]

She closes her eyes, once more, and she thinks, for the last time, because this will be the last time she ever shuts her eyes in doubt.

Calming the torrent of jumbled thoughts and the calamity of her mind until they thin out into nothing but a flame, she then ignites the flame to burn brighter than ever and on her back, she sprouts chained wings. They are not white, but rather a deep shade of red, almost like the blood her soul bleeds. She nurtures the burning of her soul until she herself is almost bursting into the flames of a phoenix, as the feathers of her wings struggle and struggle until they expand and shatter the steel chains of her mind.

They’re not broken.

She finally spreads her wings and flaps them up once, twice, measuring the sturdy strength in her bodily extensions, before she takes flight in an endeavor of reaching the hovering light. Behind her, she leaves a trail of uprooted, obliterated miseries and scarlet feathers from her hard-fought battle, as she breaks through the barricade of the portal.

Outside, she dips and soars in warmth, taking the scenery in stride as she flutters on the air with the delicacy of a butterfly, but the speed of a hummingbird. The horizon stretched across her reach is blended a multitude of shades in roses, maroons, orange marmalades, glittering golds that reflect upon the wide open shimmering lake that happens to be where a line is almost forcefully drawn between the invisible atmosphere and the tangibility of the earth.

Above her, the sky painted is a deep hue of blue, deeper than a royal blue but still as velvety as promised, splattered and flickered by the twinkling lights of the celestial spirits of the night, sprinkling glitters on wings like fairy dust. She pauses, watching as twilight gives way to the comfort of the now-glimmering moon, melting away the warm colors of the day in exchange for the cool colors of the night. 

And it is in this moment she looks below her to find the green trees of the forest rooted firm to the ground, the rivers flowing silkily into the the tranquil undulating waves of the lake, the glorious mountains protruding from the ground, almost like a shield for this haven, all bathed in the ethereal moonlight the Luna sheds upon as a safeguard to the land.

This is no fool’s paradise, she knows. 

And so she hums softly, in a liquid gold voice, her lifted spirits flying her above as a guardian of the land. She continues on her flight, the bloody hues of her wings soaring higher and higher into the atmosphere until she becomes one with the stars. And there, she will remain until-

She jolts awake, this time in the confines of her room, to the cacophony of loud voices and the hostility of a blood-red rose wrapped delicately with barbed wire. In her sleepy haze, she realizes she has yet to break the barriers of the world, but before she can do so, she has just broken the barriers of herself, of her voice. She is cold, as her blanket is thrown off her, but the warmth of the phoenix that burns inside her lulls her back to sleep, her bed littered with remnants of her feathers.

A/N: I think I wrote this as a dream sequence for my English class in high school, so all those symbols meant something to me, even if I don’t remember what they mean to me now. Lol hello nearly-16-year-old me.

This was written over three years ago, so my writing has definitely changed since then. When re-typing (when posting these, I like to type them up instead of copying and pasting because I get to revisit them) this piece, I edited some parts to make them seem less awkward and more coherent for readers, but I generally left the piece as was.

Why?

So I can observe the growth in not only my writing, but myself as a person. I recall this piece as being my catharsis at the time, so it kind of reminds me of how I struggled through that time, but made it through.

She tells me the first time, “I’ll take good care of you.” Dressed me up In frilly little dresses Pinched shoes to be Picture perfect A pretty little princess The apple of everybody’s eyes Finished off with the polish And garnish of Snow White’s Red Delicious

And every now and then She comes back To lovingly tend to me Telling me that my joints Ought to be fixed Whittled again Because they aren’t moving To how she wishes And oh, How she wishes My dollmaker had paid Careful attention when Crafting me. Then, as she affectionately Brushes my hair, She tells me of others In her collection Of whom she has too saved.

You see, She is a doll keeper. Keeper of all dolls, Kept attached by The strings, the threads She owns the one next to me too The one that sits beside me On this shelf That came much before. This is her Number 1 trophy Wears the nicest of dresses Has a glowing wooden complexion Has the smoothest joints And has an appeal Like none other. She calls her “Barbie.”

A door slams And silence deafens the ears.

I stand from where I crouched low And suddenly, instinct grabs me From the backend grips of my mind. Taunting again and again, Leading me down on a seemingly Unfamiliar sequence. And I trudge my tracks ‘til I realize That I’ve been here before.

Click! I flip the switch And the lights turn on above me. I wait as the flickering comes to cease, For the light to solidify, Almost in a bold statement. And there I stand, In the middle of the room, with Blank white walls that Seem to have me boxed in, Concaving, Dissolving Leaving no fleeting trace of An entrance for me to flee Or an exit for me to avoid. And I back away, For if I chance upon a blatant one, I strike out Into an open door Whose frame melts into a muddled, Dimmed, then darkened void, That has already impossibly tainted this room.

The walls surrounding remain Eerily blank, yet the nonexistent Damage has begun as the blaring Fluorescent lights shoved upon this Empty entity, much like my confinement In this bare room, are Scorching and embedding its judgment into my scalp Whilst casting below me my shadow. A shadow that will Inevitably spread and seep into the Cracks of the corners Until all that was once blank Is filthily Contaminated.

Because I have bleached the walls With every wrong choice, Bleached it white with every trusted footprint Taken outside a wrong exit. And every burning bleaching, Searing scars soul-deep, Is accompanied by These white walls that appear Once again the darkness, As I repeatedly stumblestumble My navigation to the light switch. I cannot hide- Not in this room, no. But I can’t find myself either.

Don’t worry. Live out your life. I’ll be fine because I’ll be riding on your coattails of happiness.

In which loving is an indefinite thing and we can only do so much before we succumb to it than to time.

So this is us, too far apart with words unspoken and half-accomplishments left hanging thickly in the air. But then again, what are we, if not constant?

I want to write something that will evoke the warmth the winter season brings, the warmth you feel when you gather around a central source of heat with friends and family and sip gingerly on a cup of indulgent hot cocoa whilst sharing the spirit of the season.

In my selfishness, you swallowed my heart whole.

this “t” is blooming on the breast pocket my heart can’t even seem to fit in

busy people time passes in a whirl

I have never seen a greater Contrast than the one in you I never foresaw a man So great as a construction worker So supplemental to building me up Become the demolition worker Behind the bulldozer Manning the wrecking ball