Persephone and the Sea

I will admit, I once called the Earth my home. Demeter and I would loom above the ground, singing the trees alive. But my heart shuddered for adventure. Life was too stable for the frolicking heart of mine. I will admit, the Doors of Death echoed me still. They were enchanting windows to a new world. I told myself it was worth the fear of suffocation. And I so, so, so love pomegranates. Hades was never cruel — but he was aggressive in his love. I do not think he knows what love is. His gold laced fingers reached over my body, his lips took mine without asking, his romances relentless. Demeter’s call was somewhat of a relief. My independence could never let me be owned. Not by Hades…not even by my mother. I may have had returned to the Earth, but only for a human’s life. One year, I visited the Ocean to escape my mother’s pleas. She saw the bruises Hades left me when I had to leave him. She demanded to call me for eternity, but her own affection was thorns. I assumed I could swim, but my visits to mermaid coves were puddles compared to the Ocean. He saved me. He rose from the water, just speeding by, and with a sudden movement, he became my savior. I never was one for lofty beings, but I immediately — and irrevocably — fell in love with Poseidon.

He, unfortunately, was married, but he, unfortunately, was caught in nets of lovers. I knew I could never catch his attention, so I was simply aloof, sometimes witty, and always grotesquely in need of his presence. Besides, I was gone for half of forever. I kept visiting him when mother did not notice I was gone. He was easily distracted, but he was beautiful in his fortified heart, his wandering soul, and his shadowed laugh. It has been forty decades since I met him, and nothing has changed. We may have fought the world apart sevenfold, he may have noticed my love and rejected it, and he may have forgotten that nothing has changed, but his eyes still are every chapter of my endless novel. When I tell him I must leave — Hades was waiting — he nods easily and returns to his Queen. I deeply considered drowning myself, but there would be no use. Immortality was the curse, but water never seemed that bad of a suffocation

Worthy

You skip and you promenade and I find your footprints all over my heart. I have seen your smiles and I have seen your tears, so when you pull your strings to the ground, caging yourself in your world of insults, I break. You prize beauty but you have forgotten your own worth. I don’t know what to tell you, how do I make you believe that the skin is not a soul, and that your blemishes are not your flaws? I could tell you that your eyes’ earnest and your lips’ gentleness will let go of all your threads and free you. I could tell you it all but how much will you hear and how much will you listen? When every moment you have been cascaded with the demons and the devils and the ones that believed in revenge not forgiveness? I will be here for you through the torrent and the thunder and the sound of your own mind driving you insane. I will ask you to stay a while, you, the girl with the stolen smile. You call me heartbroken but I find you soul broken. I am afraid you have forgotten the little girl you were, and I want you to rid yourself of all your expectations, for they have been nothing but poison. So recover your composure, this time of the world has been the Dark Days, but you have overcome and you will overcome, and when the time comes, you can be a hero or you can be a coward, and I can’t help but want to save you, the girl who will save the world.

Cornerstone

I saw you picking flowers as you crouched under the weight of your own expectations. You hug the days that past all those months ago, and looking at you, I knew that time looped with cruelty in mind. I knock on your little house and you open and you laugh in tune with our melody, but I see you lost in your treasured desires. You make lists of everything you want, you, the end and the beginning of the universe. I smear my soul on my canvased walls, and you picked the lines of all our future bets. You try to balance between two trees, spreading yourself between where you are and where you want to be, and I want to make the connections that will save you from your decisions. I spill my layers of secrets to you, thinking you’d find some security but you flew away from your comfort zone. Composing the world out of thin air, when did you become so wise, the only child who never belonged? I will miss you as you fling yourself at your enemies and become the destroyer of all your sins. Maybe I’ll meet you one day, under the star drunk moon, and I’ll collect all my winnings, for I have bet on your happiness and your love. You became the cornerstone of all the memories, you’re the dreamer fighting to stay alive, and I have never felt so close to you as I did when we fell twelve feet from the sky.

Swift

I see you once more, after months of not seeing you at all. You rise from your slumber; you’re a powerful queen, and you rose so swiftly to your throne, but what will you do when the world falls around you? What will you say to all your subjects, the ones who have adored and the ones who have obeyed? I will stand in the crowd that begs on their knees; they will meet you and I will meet you, and the power you hold will fall. They missed your elegance, and they yearn for your punishment, if only you’d free them, but instead you call on your sleeping songbirds, the dancers of comfort, the bringers of escape. I thought you could free me, I thought you could release me. But now I am standing among everyone whom you have granted distance. I thought we could veer off to the edges of this world we built, but then everything fell. Why did everything fall? What ruined us, what destroyed us all? Now you try to avoid the blame for your crimes, but a queen without a heart is just power without a throne. I would swear my allegiance, but you took my chance and you took my soul. I thought we were the halves of feathers, the birds beating the abyss and reaching the heavens. I am left with all I have broken, and now I am just trying to repair what can never be fixed. I thought I could trace the fall of empires, but this, I don’t know what this is. This is nothing, you have broken nothing, and now the queendom has fallen and there is no word for what I have done.

Battleship

She walks pass everyone, she walks without anyone. She lives in a different world, one of snow and one of slopes. She never committed to anything, she was a girl who hanged nooses, not a girl who tied bracelets. She wanted to climb past all the versions of her that she discarded with every year. She tried so hard to be better than her mistakes, the girl who kept raising the stakes. Blaring the music loud enough to overcome all the words, all the hatred. So much noise, she could handle so much noise, she had to handle so much noise. She yells at me for my lopsided directions, but her every step takes her to different destinations. She found love on battleships, she made destruction on sunken ships. She wanted everything, she wanted the world, she wanted it all dead. Everyone became a target of her ambivalent arrows, of her tantalizing bows. She wanted to be the queen, she wanted groveling bows. She wanted to please, she wanted to be appeased. This was the girl who didn’t care at all. She didn’t have time for love, she didn’t have time for hatred. She trembled with her fingers on buttons she made of lies. The destroyer on her death star. She released the cannons and she released the arrows, the girl out for the end, the girl out for revenge. She made use of her noose, she cut off the strands that kept her from her fantasy. She shot them all, they all fell, all the versions of her. They cried and they pleaded, they hit their heads trying to bow down to the queen, but she was the girl of destruction, and they had no hope, they had no mercy. And she just walked away, passed all the sunken ships she drowned on her battleship.

 

Coincidence

Like a lottery, I am stuck on numbers, I am struck by perfection. I could count the stars, I could count the waves, I could count the leaves, but for some reason, I choose to count you. My first number your smile, the second your tears, the third your wishes, the fourth your promises, the fifth your laugh, the sixth your love. And if I win, please let me win, it would be no coincidence. You are the stars, you are the waves, the leaves, the heavens, the truth. If I should be stuck on numbers, may it be you, if I am struck by perfection, I know it to be you. Like a lottery, I am betting against chance, I am playing with luck. What are the odds of winning you? I could close my eyes and spin on the wheel of fortune. I could pick, the blind girl wishing on perfection. I never was good at probability, I never was good as being good, so why am I betting on this? Why am I making mistakes on rising stakes? Maybe this is useless, maybe this is silly, but I have nothing else, I have nothing to lose, like I said, I am still stuck on numbers. I don’t have you, I don’t have you. But I have a chance, I have a lottery ticket, I have six numbers and I have the hopes of everything, from your smile to your love. This could work, this could fail. Lke a bottle at sea, I wasn’t sure yet if I believed in coincidence, but I knew that in the end, fate was perfection, and you, you were always perfect.

Waiting

They tell me to have patience, but honestly, I have none. I have black paint and I have blue skies, but I don’t have lists, I don’t have time. I stacked all my desires on the corners of my heart, I thought they would scream, I thought they would shout. I thought they were bullets and I was strong enough to pull the trigger. I thought I could hold a gun, but my arms are trembling, my breathing is faster than any shot. I am collapsing under the weight of everything I haven’t done, of all the places I haven’t been, of all the people I haven’t met. I don’t have life but rather the absence of it. I know I am young, but isn’t youth short-lived? Shouldn’t I be out there, spilling light onto darkness? Shouldn’t I be something by now? I am waiting for a sign maybe, I am looking to be found maybe. Why doesn’t anyone take notice of the girl without lists, the girl without time? The girl who can’t hold a gun, the girl’s whose heart has holes inside? They tell me to have patience, but honestly, I don’t belong here. Why am I the different one, the lonely one, the broken one? Maybe I am the chosen one, maybe this is a good thing, maybe the world is waiting for me, holding out my desires, holding out people that care, people who can’t shoot. I may not have patience but I have time to learn. Maybe I am young, but I am ready, I’m waiting.

End

I used to be a girl who was so used to things ending. I said goodbyes so many times, but I never knew they never meant anything. I remember spending every day preparing for my recital, but they pulled me out just before I was about to walk into the concert hall. I remember taking that one last dive into the pool before my mother pulled me out and swore never to return. I remember playing in my basement; we were just messing around, I didn’t mean for her to get hurt, I swear I didn’t. I was only a kid, but I had to say goodbye anyways. I remember packing houses and crossing borders being the hallmarks of my childhood. Friendships went out so fast, you could believe the candle was never lit. We fought so much…we were too young to know what anything meant. Now I know what goodbye means — it’s the double dutch ropes without people jumping from left to right, it’s the haunted house of friendships that you still know so well but can’t unlock the door anymore, it’s the chalked lines on the wall as you count the days since you last heard them say your name. I thought when my strings fell apart, I would slip to the ground. But instead, I stay as just a memory. I thought I could be more than the sum of my parts, but I am only pieces without anything to hold on to anymore. I became the girl who made things end. I would try so hard to ruin what I thought would burn to ashes. I became a haunted house myself, remembering the creaks and the trapdoors, but not trusting myself to enter. And when I am not paying attention, my hand waves to the remains of my fabricated shadows — the ghosts of all the people and things my heart still holds on to.

Messiah

I thought the world fantasized about me. I thought the world was waiting for its Messiah. I thought it stood at the edge of the curb, next to the bus stop, looking at the passengers stepping off, waiting eagerly for my arrival. For the savior, for their savior. I knew not my journey but I recognized my destiny. Arrive — and be loved. Save them — and be immortalized. Strike — strike them before they ache in their bones and tell themselves that you do not exist. Contrary to fact, there is no context for this. I have been sent, and I have been beckoned. Wait for me! Wait for me when love has no name, wait for me when you’re alone in this world, and wait for me when you’re about to step off the cliff. Be my echo, and I will find you tolerable, I will find you pleasant. Noise will creak and silence will commit suicide. And I will be all alone: the Messiah eternal, the Messiah of the Gods, the Messiah unavenged. They will try to flee, but they will fall, and they will miss the one who could have saved them all.

Birthmarks

If it’s true that birthmarks tell me where I died in my past lives, shouldn’t they be called deathmarks? And what will happen in my millionth life? Will I be flesh or will I be just scattered spots of all my sufferings? And when I see a baby born without ridges or dents, is that a first birth? A first life? But when I examine myself, I cannot remember what I was born with and what had piled on over the years. How many birthmarks can I have before I die infinitely? How can our battered bodies endure so many deaths? Can a babe be older than the two hundred year old? I think so, if they’ve been through so many reincarnations that they cannot count them all. Is there where wisdom comes from? The ends and the beginnings? And what happens when your birthmarks become your deathscars? Does your soul get ripped apart by the echoes of your last breath? Maybe this is where cynicism and sadness comes from — from the bullet wounds and the hanged nooses, from the broken hearts and the sounds of jutted starts. My hands trace my body and try to count all my breaths. How many parents and children have I had? How many mistakes have ruined the world for me? Was I someone famous? Or was I the beggar on the streets? How many people have I loved and how many people have I lost?And the only mark on me is in my mind, as I ask the same question over and over again: how can our battered souls endure so many lives?