Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

you are the noose I weave around my neck

I have built you up from the silences in between
of those moments when your fingers shiver
like the waves of the lake
of those words you carry in your soul
like a half-remembered dream from a
childhood long-since lived

you are the moon in her cool beauty
a loveliness unreached by mortals
(yet something of that still lingers
long since the pretence is over)

and in your gaze
a thousand lakes like this one

a thousand truths
we shall never live together
not like we are now

not when this
is the story I have spun

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one day i will fly with you across the moonlit sky
he says
his fingers twisting through her hair
and she stares at the pale silver light
floating through the mist like shards of pain
laughing
as they pass them by

her skin a violent shiver of delight
whenever he lays his claim on her

she flutters in his grasp
like the melody of a half-remembered song
wondering at how easy it is to touch him
his dark eyes boring into her soul like claws
yet his fingers remaining splayed wide open
across the curve of her spine

and she longs for a time when
she didn't yet understand
the exhilaration of feathers splayed against the clouds

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you see yourself in the shape of my wings
like a pearl folded in on itself
born in all the ways but which matter
of the same love and the same story

but i am more than just your reflection
on the surface of dark water
where dreams lurk too deep to reach
and hopes lie in a watery grave
where childhood drips away like words
spoken far too soon

you cannot twist me back into who i was
i am the silence ringing after your words
and the memory of who i used to be
lies in the graveyard of your mind
frozen forever in the impending dawn

do you love me
i wonder
do you still love me after all

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afterwards, his hands relearn the shape of you
before you've settled into your own skin
after so long in a body so different from this one
weightless and shapeless
like an illusion of a fairy tale
these limbs wear you down and bind you
to the will of gravity once more

and you cannot help but wonder if
touching was always like this
if your fingertips knew other's skin like they
ache for it now
in the hollowness previously filled by feathers
remains lakeweed and endless waves
locked inside the shape of a girl

and you wish
just for a moment
that your skin knew old age as you do

as his arms wrap tightly around
the smallest part of your waist, you
curl up in the shape of him
wishing it would help this ache

in the morning the sun blinds you in white
with your fingers curling tightly against
the wound skeleton of a girl
there is no
biting ripping tearing clawing
for civil creatures must
obey the morning sun

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in the morning sun your feathers lie white against the reeds
your neck bent in sleep, your wings
soft and pliable against mine
my limbs twisting into another form
cradling you against a body so different yet the same

gentleness is a foreign land for us who pretend
we are not birds of prey
but with you i live in the softness of human emotions
in the mornings with sun
in the afternoons with soft rain
in the nights when he swoops in and
pretends you do not belong to us
in the moments when he cannot see
your wings and your feathers and your beak
pushed into my hair like a lover’s

hungry for another’s touch
to erase moonlit memories

to sleep in the same nest as you
i think
is the greatest joy one could ever have
your head resting where my heart should beat
your breaths mirroring the ones puffing from my lungs

you don’t dream any longer
that i know
but if you did

would you dream of him
or me?

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there is a home rebuilt in your head
of memories that do not make sense
of doubled images and illusions and twisting
whirling taste of magic
your hands reach out and you scream but
your lips have been muted

my water embraces you softly like a lover
it tells you not to struggle, not to
fight against a fate which must be obeyed
for your story was written long ago
and you have drowned in me so many times before

from the very beginning you and i
were meant to be lovers

let your hands be mine
let your lungs be filled with me
for i am yours and you are mine

my creature and i

and you wonder
what comes crawling out of these woods
once you are gone

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bones twisting against each other
crackling like dried wood in a bonfire
and a smile that looks more like a grimace

this body does not belong to you, yet
you have to adjust to its limits, its shape
squeezing yourself into a shell that remains
much too real yet not enough
are you the ghost or the memory of one
are you yourself or something grotesque which
they have made you into
are you a maiden or a swan

and you do not know
the answers to the questions they have
or why your shape is an echo of the one
that was there before you and remains afterwards
you were brought here
forced here
welcomed here
and here you shall remain

until water wraps around you
and frees you from the
whims of daylight

let there be wings fluttering against yours
in the silent pale dawns where hopes and dreams are forgotten
in the moments before dusk where lies the land of
all the words we dare not think of;
let there be softness and beauty
when the world upends itself once more

(for soon these bodies will writhe into something unrecognizable
something too sharp and too long
something hideous and yet all too aware of
the spooks that lie under these waves
echoes of what once never was
but for a moment there is peace
for a moment there is comfort
in the fragility of these weary bones
in the delicate lacework of feathers)

and whether there remains anything within
these souls made out of lakeweed and water
shall not lower the sun from the sky —
let days doze in the
gentle breeze of a wind which
does not know your names

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it is the moments in between
you think
when humanity deserts your body
leaving behind limbs bent the wrong way

a face you cannot hide behind
the drape of your wings

the moments in between when there is
so little to hide
this creature you have become
and he declines to look
declines to acknowledge
what he has twisted you into

(and he knows your body better than you do
maps it with his fingers each night
and you wonder when time wore down
all recognizable features)

and as the moon paints your translucent face
you ache for his recognition
to be seen
you yearn for his
gaze to encompass you
within his world of sunlight and mornings