I hear a song ringing at every corner of the earth, rung out from every human heart. A quartet, a chorus, full in every part, but empty; rich with every swell, and yet it wanders, imperfect in its beauty—flawed even in the depths of each new chord.
This text is black. “Like my soul,” says my generation, stringing up skeletons and spiderwebs and painting their walls and wardrobes to match. I watch the murky words fade into dull ears, and the reality of evil creates a cloudy ache in my chest. Colors are not tools to poke fun at its existence.
Two broken youths in the wild wood watch the dying daylight fade among the ancient ferns.
We strung up lights and put stars in the sky, and she held me as we danced over rain-kissed earth. I listened as the voices that calmed me most sang our favorite lines in breathless whispers. We ran into wet grass with fingers intertwined, and the sky’s contented tears ran with my own.
Dear Rose, Why do you quiver when the breeze brushes against your face? Does the wind scare you? You protect yourself with thorns, but why? Is beauty so much a curse that you choose to hide?
For many years, I’ve stood alone; I’ve watched the world grow old and gray; I’ve seen the lands around me fail; I’ve viewed events both wild and fey.
Life changes in a moment; In a heartbeat the color fades. Sunbeams chase the shadows and are gone with the laughter. Grief, in the darkness, in the cold, in the view when the sun is gone.
I sit with twiddling thumbs, Always wondering if it’s done. What more could I add? Is its countenance too sad? I rub my thumb over the scar on the left cheek, That fake story about the fall I had that one week.
I know the war that keeps you wary, and the burden that you carry,
and the weight that seems to tarry as you search for something more.
Stomp, rumble, thump, roar! Overhead pterodactyls soar! Jurassic, Triassic, Cretaceous, Iguanodon, Protoceratops, Diplodocus. A flood washed these creatures away, preserving their bones for a future day.
