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You know, in the Age of the Fae, human knights had few options for carrying trinkets to battle.
They'd tuck letters and locks of hair into their underthings. Mementos, they'd carry, of a home to fight for, or a love waiting for their return. The gallant hero would weave blooms into a maiden's hair, the stem curled over her ear. In return she’d stain his skin with the blue of the woad to staunch bleeding. But men melt like heated metal, dripped into molds for making weaponry, the human body the strongest blade. Like rivers of man, floods poured into Britannia's valleys and we would sip wine from her goblet of victory.
For Britannia.
When a human child returns home with tattered clothing, their parents teach them to sew the holes shut with needle and thread. They weave blankets with love-laced patterns and knit to rhythms the dead cannot play. They clutch flowers to their chests, sopping wet in rain, and nature's colors bleed through the pages, blue and red and gold.
In an endless garden, those same colors drip from your lips as you rest your weary head in my lap. You wished for this moment of peace to stretch–stretch and reach the beautiful future you believe in. You asked if it could be so. And I laughed, for I knew better than to answer the whimsical rhetoric of a hero with their stems detached and petals torn. A precious flower among the gardens of forever, reaching toward dawn with wide-open arms.
Like a flower with drooping petals, I press you between pages.
Your limbs, like leather bindings, I thread together once more.