Are You Ready?
The maw opened, swallowing her world in chunks, and for Sarah, darkness followed.
—-
You miss strange things. I miss the smell of the city. The choking smell of coal smoke and rain on the street. And English. Oh what I would give to have a proper conversation with anyone in my home tongue.
I know what you’re thinking, “What about the darkenss? The maw?” I can’t fully say how I am here, only that it was as if I die in my world, and was reborn, body and soul, into another.
—-
Are you ready? Three little, innocent words. A simple enough question. I answered, ignorantly, with a “yes,” not knowing just how not-ready I was. James pulled the switch, closing the circuit. The device he had built was supposed to give life to his clockwork miniatures. I don’t know how he made the thing – what vile science he used – but it did not give life. It instead gave new meaning to the word backfire.
The circuit, now open, fed the contraption. It pulsed to electric life, straining the newly laid lines that Mr. Edison’s team had so diligently just installed. The hairs on my arms were standing up, either from the static in the air, or from my excitment and awe of it all. I could smell ozone. The clean, tingly smell of electrified air. My tongue too, could feel it, taste it. I tasted copper; no, not quite copper. It was similar, but it was more that I could feel the energy arcing across and licking my taste buds.
The sound began as a jolt, almost like the first strong chug of a locomotive. A whine followed. It was high-pitched at first, but quickly lowered into a rhythmic, pulsing thrum. It was then that the light entered. The prismatic swirl of light had the look of what might be a star birthed into a coalescing liquid orb of celestial white.
Then it all went to pot.
The light splintered then. It began flinging arcs of what I want to call lightning, though it was formed of the most umbral darkness. My excitment? My awe? My ignorant affirmation of readiness? All instantly replaced with terror, as I witnessed this…this thing, flailing its inky energy about the room. Each time a bolt struck, something would go. The fated object would just be gone, disintigrated with the sound of a rifle crack. I was screaming when it happend.
I was hit.
I died.
—-
I am alive again.
I live here now, in this new world. A world with no electrict currents, no James, no smells from my city. And no English.
My last life ended with screams and darkness. I have been born into another. I choose, in this life, to walk within the light.
Soft Voices
Soft voices lull me from my darkness
Pressing into the quiet places where visions tread
The ephemeral fades as the theater of my mind winds down
My eyelids; curtains holding back the day
Soft voices call to me
My world is suddenly shaken
Violent tremors from either side of me
My eyes jolt open as I hear the shrieks
Soft voices giggling
Good Morning Daddy
Ages of Eternity
Were I wrought from the star-stuffs
So I could outlast the ages;
The ever-sea of time and space reverbs with myriad outcomes,
of decisions made and remade;
The memories of each, tattood upon my mind.
I have been created and destroyed;
built again of adamantine bones,
And still I struggle against the tides of eternity.
Not Visible
My tattoos are not visible
the images exist, though not extant.
Tattos and scars tend to tell stories,
both on the surface and etched on our being.
We all have such stories; writ as memories
Those we choose to, or not to share.
My tattoos are not visible,
but my stories are still there.
I see your ink and wonder,
What does it say to you, that I don’t see?
When you see my ink-naked flesh,
Do you wonder:
What does it mean?
A Part of You Dies
I stuggle to find the words
To describe this hollow shell of a feeling;
Full of both sorrow and hope.
Imagine that you’re a parent of a kidnap victim,
You hold out all hope to one day see them again, safe and whole.
But at the same time, you must harden your heart.
Encase it with tungsten,
Because they may be forever lost.
And you still have to wake up.
You can’t grieve. That the worst of it.
With death you can go through all the dregs of your emotions;
Go through the stages.
But you can’t grieve what isn’t fully gone.
What are you supposed to do with this?
They’re still out there.
You must live on in this meta-state; endure.
Not at first, of course.
At first you are reduced to a sort of gelatin.
A jelly of fear, rage, and tears.
But when you go on long enough, and you aren’t any close;
You aren’t finding them, not holding them.
Eventually that coagulated mass calcifies.
A part of you dies then;
Maybe the best part.
Was it your hope?
No, not fully.
You keep waking up, still in a half-life.
Your thoughts – always with them.
Are they okay?
Do they remember me?
You can’t completely surrender to those thoughts.
Lest your adamant shell crack,
Forcing you into the jelly pool one again.
No, you can only give in when you’re strong;
Whenyou have someone, or something, to bring you back.
Back from the brink.
So I must make each day a strong one.
I will harden my heart.
Encase it within tungsten;
Until the day they come to melt it once more.
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