ink on paper

[readasyoubreathe]

Picture it.

It’s well after midnight. The moon is your only companion. After so much pain, so much weariness, you can’t help praying for change, transformation, miracles, something. Anything.

Your eyes fall on a slender object partially hidden in the shadows of your bookshelf, forgotten and left to collect dust. It’s almost cinematic, you think, how your gaze was drawn.

But this is not a story, you tell yourself firmly. This is life, this is being grown up, and there is little room for such childish thoughts

And then—

You feel it. You feel it as the moonlight shifts just perfectly, illuminating the years old wand. That familiar spark of ‘what if’ that had old friends with names not remembered deeming you a Ravenclaw, through-and-through.

So you rise from your bed. Curious, so curious. The first good feeling you’ve had in a while. You pick up the wand. (Has it always fit so perfectly in your hand?) Raise it. Laugh quietly to yourself. It’s silly, of course. No real point, and yet—

“Lumos.”

And then, to your amazement, your disbelief, your wonder—

Light.

[readasyoubreathe]

the wild rose lowered her head in the deep shade of a grove.

“why are you so sorrowful?” the fairy asked.

“the birds. they know what it is to feel light against their closed eyelids.”

the fairy thought for a moment.

“why don’t you leave?”

the wild rose felt another swell of tears rise to the surface.

“sometimes roots ground you. other times, they prevent you from ever seeing the light.”

and so the fairy brought a mirror to the wild rose.

immediately, she reddened with rage.

“how dare you spite me so? force me to look at myself, malnourished and imprisoned in the dark?”

the fairy did not take offense. she knew that sometimes help seemed like hurt, no matter how good the intentions were. rather, she tilted the mirror just so.

the wild rose closed her eyes as illumination in the color gold was reflected onto her shadowed form.

“if you cannot free yourself, I will bring the light to you,” the fairy said. “it may be freedom reflected, but now you will have known its warmth.”

and so the wild rose felt all that she never had.

and so the fairy saw life without wings.

and so, and so, and so.

[readasyoubreathe]

tell me what you need to hear

let it be of how much you are loved

that is easy

that is infinite

[readasyoubreathe]

there is great grief in the life unlived.

[readasyoubreathe]

you say you could find no poetry in me

but as i regard myself in the mirror

careful fingers undoing the work of a hairpin

i take notice of the curve it leaves in my gilded hair

like a wave of ambrosia, glinting in the light of a vanity

i am the poet, and i am the poetry

it is no fault of mine

you cannot read such words

[readasyoubreathe]

i whispered to the moon this evening:

“what do you dream of? when you sleep and the sun’s arms stretch around me?”

she laughed, and the sound dashed across a thousand twinkling stars.

“peace for you, my love. sleeping and waking.”

[readasyoubreathe]

there is much hate to hear in this world.

but those with a trained ear listen for something particular. something exquisite. come closer, i’m sure you can hear it, too. a whisper amidst the screams. a wishing flower against the unfeeling stone. an embrace against the blow. my heart against yours, beating, always beating.

i can hear it.

love.

[readasyoubreathe]

it is my firm belief that one must have at least two favorite books. one that allows the soul to wonder. and one that allows the soul to feel.

[readasyoubreathe]

she says “anything is possible” like she believes it.

she believes in the infinite. the neverending and the unknown. she blows kisses to the stars.

i asked once, what draws her to all she can’t reach. because all she ever desires is the boundless. things you can’t catch.

“i feel this love like no other love,” she replied.

i’ve been reaching ever since.

[readasyoubreathe]

i want to give everyone who’s hurting every beautiful thing. i want to steal you away to a place pain doesn’t know the coordinates of.

i want to bring stars down from the heavens and use them to decorate your hair. you’re far more celestial.

i want to hold you like gravity holds earth. constant. secure. certain.

i want you to sleep peacefully and perfectly, without a trace of nightmares.

i want you to feel loved.

[readasyoubreathe]

i lie before the lake.

“teach me to hold the stars,” i whisper.

a soft rush of waves is my reply. i stretch out my fingers. i feel the ancient spirit of what was and what is and what will be.

i rise alongside another sigh of sea meeting shore.

wading out into the great mirror in which i see the infinite reflected, i lean back into the cradling current. let my hair fan like a ripple.

my tears, unimportant drops before a giant, race to join the masses.

“if you cannot, at least hold me.”

and the infinite was reflected in my glistening eyes.

[readasyoubreathe]

i covered the eyes of the moon.

“guess who?” i whispered, the excitement of a star going nova dancing in my voice.

she answered as she turned, smile aglow.

“someone i know. someone new. you, my light, beginning.”

never had there been more stars in a lover’s gaze.

[readasyoubreathe]

i asked the wind to tell me a secret.

“how do you do it? go on and on without letting anything touch you?”

“let go,” it whispered, “let go.”

[readasyoubreathe]

lanterns over a lake

what do they wish for?

nothing

a child is sure to mistake a yellow orb of paper and candlelight for something much more divine

she makes a wish

eyes shut tight

i open mine

and do the same

[readasyoubreathe]

“can i ask you a question?”

“of course.”

“how can you be angry?”

“...”

“all i ever feel is guilt.”

[readasyoubreathe]

suddenly i feel breathless and i think i know what it means to love. maybe not properly, maybe not according to anyone else but i can feel it. my heart is racing and it gives me the same sensation the sun does when warming my bare arms in the early spring. i’ve had vivid dreams i was weightless and i get the same feeling when i’m awake, when you’re near me. i get moments when i think i know the weight of a heart unable to heal. but then I hear that one song and i watch the sun set and the world is turning and the stars exist and wind races across my body like it can take everything dark on the way to another corner of the world. and you smile when you look at me and i can see now. this is love, the feeling of sunlight pouring from my chest while words spill from my mind all living by the beat of the same heart.

and i’m weightless.

[readasyoubreathe]

my mother once told me i was the entire universe. it wasn’t, at the time, meant to stay with me longer than a beat.

a moment.

but aren’t we all, as an entirety, this universe made up? everytime i breathe, the world has turned once again and someone is born. the sun rises and falls in different places at different times and so does my heart. i see stars in the eyes of those around me, and i know they see stars in mine. if i reach beyond the limits of this world’s sky through my imagination, i am able to find others. i try to sleep and dream of silvery wings that lift me higher than the skies this atmosphere can hold. every time i love there is a pulsar beating in my chest, in an attempt to gift you light. i whisper all of this to the moon one night, for who else will i tell? and when the wind whips through my hair and i scream at you for breaking a heart that wasn’t yours, you see in me the storm of jupiter. and when i disappear fast and bright, you call me a falling star. when i cry, i see constellations in my fallen tears. when i meet a friend of the sun, i admit to the loneliness of being a universe. a world so vast in a body so small. so delicate. i was led out into the light. the sun was golden, then, just about to set. you drew me under the warm amber rays that warmed my skin to the touch, and i shivered as the cold left without so much as a goodbye. you lifted my arms up. i stretched them further outward.

like a bird.

you told me that very evening, that even the universe needed a sun. the day star began to set, and i watched a bird swoop down across the sunlit sky, just to feel the wind race against her body as her feathers were dipped gold. i was her and she was me.

i closed my eyes, and this time i saw only light, burning against every last inch of the universe.