Work Text:
The salty shores licked scarcely along dampened skin,
Tickling it’s noisy music into my ears,
Filling my senses with the sense of foreign happiness
As I sat there, water thinning my lungs into nothing but–
Happiness.
An odd little foreign name,
An odd foreign emotion,
One of which I felt so scarcely before.
It rested against me timidly,
A stray unsure of whether my hand would
Crush or cradle it.
So I remained still,
A sudden plaguing sense of guilt remaining along my skeleton,
Like a bird, it’s tiny talons scratching along my bones–
Too scared to remain perched for too long.
I didn’t know what to do with this sense of foreigness.
As sorrow had always fit me bestest,
A cage that never contained so much as it reached.
A bell that never rang so much as it wailed.
A mirror that never showed so little as much as it showed much too many.
A stray that never stayed so much as it awaited.
A hand that never cradled,
As much until now,
A hand that wanted to crush,
Even now.
The tides pulled me in softly now,
A tiny chorus ringing within me,
An echoing chamber with no reflection–
It rested against me angrily,
An enraged tiny flame flickering lightly–
As much as it spoke.
“If for what you must do is to cradle,
if for what you must want is to crush.
Then what must you do?”
I held no answer deep inside of me,
Only a sense of belonging,
As I stood, rain pouring in wet pelts–
Against already wetted skin.
The silver pellets sliding right down my face,
All my soft features contrasting dully with the sharp ache–
One I could not contain so much as grit.
Sorrow however,
Had always nested deep within my bones–
Adorning itself with familiarity.
Nested itself beneath my tongue,
A sensational adornation of words
That always would fill but never be full.
Curled in the dim ache of my ribs, as if it housed itself to solely be sculpted there.
But this?
This sudden lightness,
This sweet unbearable bittneress of aching.
This sudden warmth,
Lingering like coiled poison sitting on my tongue–
Pooling into nothing but wet myth.
This sudden softness,
This sudden brightness,
This sudden heat,
This sudden myth of coiled adornation.
This label,
This title,
This word.
This thing.
This … emotion.
But if for me to feel the sudden coiled warmth of a sunset and to never reach upwards into the fallen skyfall–then what is the point?
But this, this, this emotion.
It carries me inwards, and onwards into the slope of the ending night–
As skin washes over me in waves,
Of gore–
And of–
Happiness.
And so I stand here.
Awaiting a new arrival.
But of not love, or joy,
Or even the angry sting of anger–
But rather.
Happiness.
I stand.
M.