Work Text:
Travelogues
i. some kind of teleportation in just acknowledging
what i know is i'm not any taller
or smaller or thinner or longer.
still, i am
overwhelmed with the sun outside of the tomb;
overwhelmed with how purple the twilight;
or blue; or something just against the dark of the trees;
difference, is all it is.
difference: clouds smeared over the mountains, or dragons
hoarfrost beneath the blood moon, if not thunder on the waves.
i shiver or sweat with the dawn and dusk,
i press on
and whether i'm in the air or the earth
temperature always gets
places
sends me
someday coming back to you
ii. stretch
every day i make like a mountain:
leap for the sky, and erode.
i'm not stuck in my bones but the way my spine twists
when i try relaxing, the tension
in my knees turned more than they could be.
i'm not stuck in my pattern, but the site i'm finding them from.
new cells following old limits, new blood,
new blood in my mechanically resurrecting heart.
every day you make like a mountain:
watch from the land, and erode.
who can say what the gods feel?
[but your voice is always so urgent.]
iii. no breaks
Always,
You’ve waited for the gods to speak
reliant on prophecies reliant on legwork.
But while you wait, you speak
write, pace, stumble, order, grumble!
First, spite.
for miles of frigid fires, miles of sound and fury
and no quarter for my carefully measured breadth.
Then one mote of respite:
bitter in the rain
ashamed in the sands
not really respite after all but
the reversed momentum of your stubborn heart,
asking me to help with your alchemy
steady study partner in time
and. before Lanayru, before —
That post perfect afternoon,
how mysterious!
Pink ribbons of sun through the trees
dipping into all our frozen footprints
in the briefest instant before the next climb.
What a riddle, how warm ice can seem.
so then, and please:
Present perspectives you love to see me listen.
i know all your catchwords and i know
they are not a catch-all. I will never apologize for promises i may not keep
because i will never stop having meant them.
iv. Tabantha Stable
The roof the sun through my hair
and the hold my hand has on my mouth.
Dinraal swimming south.
(They sang, the hero and the princess,
hand-in-hand,
Hylia’s power at her command,
They sang— that the same cold stones could be your graven
prison, monument, and watchtower!)
If I stopped leaning on silence, I would flare,
if I stopped leaning on silence I would devour air like fire, searing
Like the sun does thatch in the summer.
or the barest flash of your hair—
From here the east is always burning.
v. the call of the hero is collect
the feeling of I love you and let me prove it with my life!
something fierce, I'll swoop in, I'll fly for you,
a love that changes the routes of you,
unearthing new colors like light washing every next day,
light licking every sunrise like a knife, whittling —
at your word,
Skyloft falls! and the earth turns and valleys uncover
glaciers in their implacable onward, onward,
woods and waves and plains and rivers
and the whole sky furling out! to ensure
we’ll meet once more.