#love2019

[foldedcranes]

What are gods made for it not to be worshipped? What are acolytes made for if not to serve? What is the chalice, if not to pour sacrifices of wine and blood? As with every god, your undoing is foretold in the smoke and stars and cards. You will be undone by red lines that connect heart to heart, by the silver tears that you will weep for your mortal lover, by the sunrise that colors the sky the deepest vermilion and the faintest blush and you will sit on the clouds, peering down into the sea that shines gold under the sun, and you will wonder where the time that once poured as slow as honey went.

You carry yourself with the pride of a thousand conquerors and now the moon reflects a light colder than the arctic, stares down without comment, lips pressed into a thin red line, judging and contemplative in just what to do with us. But you do not notice, draped in emperor’s cloak, the deepest of violets coming up to intertwine around your throat. You fill your goblet with striped carnations and purple hyacinths, with cyclamen and chrysanthemums the color of spring pollen-bearing bees, until it overflows and the petals fall to the ground and crumble away to nothingness. King of the broken and jutting bones, of glass splintering underneath the heavy heel, and it’s probably just some sick coincidence that it sounds like the breaking of metacarpal bones.

If it should turn out that your slaining word does not give rise to lilies of the valley, if it should turn out that your blood is as red as mortal veins, if it should turn out that the spark of the sun inside you is truly nothing more than madness, if the darkness clawing its way in cannot reach you fast enough for the darkness within you has already devoured your heart and soul, if the point of the knife is not enough to bring you out of the narrow-barred pride-drunk reverie you have locked yourself in, then I think I will be forced to shed the blind man’s mantle and claim the godkiller title I’ve sought for so long.

Before you paint me a heathen, name me as the poisoner of the wine, trade out my name for judas’, I urge you to remember that all things have consequences and that I have kept you safe for so long, but now your skin is bared to the eyes of the masses and I cannot save you from the scaffold when you walked up there yourself and placed the rope around your neck. You do not seem scared, perhaps it is more merciful to die at the hands of strangers than the one you trusted most. It is often found that the ones in whom we place our greatest trust are best positioned to slot a knife in our back. I suppose that’s why you do not trust me, even now. How terribly wise of you.

You stare down the crowd that has gathered and your lips move.

I take aim.

Consider this my final act of sacrifice, my final blessing imparted upon you, for you have challenged the wrong god.

for @avolitorial and their february love prompts | prompt #4 - devotional

[foldedcranes]

autumn nights and smiling stars, the leaves are murmuring secrets as summer retreats to the corners of our memories. it is almost nice in the way that your voice almost plateaus, in the way that raw almonds are almost poisonous, in the way that we are almost touching. almost, the word of dreams and false hope. you almost say something nice, but recall your voice at the last second and we sit in silence some more. I almost point out a bird on the branch, but then I remember there aren’t supposed to be birds here. saw a dove get murdered today, you say. I shrug.

time blooms like baby’s breath and shivers like the california poppy in the spring breeze.

I reach out to you and you take a dozen steps back. we wait and wait, but I stay my hand, so who is to blame for these stagnant waters?

for @avolitorial and their february love prompts

[foldedcranes]

Mercury runs down my willing arm, etching the thinnest line of red as it passes, sapphire fine, through my flesh. I divide myself from myself and like the ouroboros, I devour my own tail, find that the hand around my throat is my own, find that the person who stole the breath from my lungs is the grinning me on the other side of the mirror and before I can beg for mercy, the reflection shatters and I find myself alone once more.

There are silver platters and glassware, the refracted light bouncing around the dark manor until I can no longer make out the veil that separates reality from fiction. My rib cage has been dressed with tomatoes and morning glories, drizzled with honey and red wine. I am terribly concerned about the white carpet; what would happen if I were to pour myself a Domaine de La Romanee-Conti? I stir sugar cubes into my tea but it comes out tasting like bone.

I am destroying everything that I create. I rake my nails down my arms, sitting surrounded by shredded papers and words whose inked necks have been snapped in half, the limp body of eloquence draped over my leg like roadkill. I wonder when the vultures will descend upon us.

I am waiting and have been waiting for such a time now, so long that my blood has thickened to a paste, that hyenas have broken through my bones with a sharp crack, and lions have licked my insides clean of marrow. I am waiting for penance, waiting for penitence, waiting for forgiveness from a me that has decided I deserve no such thing years back.

I take my clavicle in both hands and break them apart, the whispered wish of wholeness slipping from between my lips. I speak those words and carve out another slice of my thigh to serve.

for @avolitorial and their february love prompts | prompt #5 - we consume what we adore

[foldedcranes]

The golden, curved horns of the devil can be mistaken for the halo of an angel in low lighting. Slip and snake, she is winding herself around me, murmuring the tragedy that befell young gods when they dared to love too deep, fly too high. I lash out in response, but her body fizzles and breaks away, transparent and intangible. She reforms right in front of me, and I take a step back in alarm, but there is no malice. Under the moonlight her skin shimmers pearlescent. There is the scent of nicotianas adrift in her room and the flutter of sheer curtains in the soft summer breeze. It feels like a dream, some idyllic figment of the imagination conjured up in the depths of peaceful sleep.

we could have been so much more. She skims her nails down my neck, the gentle touch of a lover, the threat of a gouged out throat. Her eyes are downcast and there is something somber in her tone, something contemplative, almost regretful.

“We couldn’t have been,” I reply, firm in my beliefs. I will not be beguiled by tranquility and the unstated promise of something soft, of a restart that will right all wrongs.

you have worked so hard all this time. I wonder if you ever breathed for a little while.

“I did all that for us and now you would turn your back on me as if I were nothing more than a stranger?”

I appreciate all that you have done, but consider the situation from my perspective. everything needs to go smoothly and you are disturbing the process. I am forced to cut you off.

“I am only reacting as such because of your betrayal.”

betrayal is a strong word, my dear.

She is now a fleeting scrap of sleep, hazy and dark at the edges, a shard of god, the paper-thin, iridescent wings of the dragonfly. I can’t make out her true intentions underneath the silver light that floods through the open windows.

The weeping willow begins to sing. The koi in the pond drift without aim. The moon is at its peak. The rabbit hums a tune to itself as it pounds medicine.

We stand there for an eternity more.

for @avolitorial and their february love prompts | prompt #6 - dreamscape

[foldedcranes]

it’s the world you always wanted, I whisper and gesture to the neon lights spanning ahead of us, strontium chloride meets fire, and you carry a lighter around even though you do not smoke. are you an arsonist, I asked once as you snapped the lighter closed, and perhaps you are, but we will never know anything about you for sure. the masses will not be able to wrangle a confession out of you with the threat of damnation and bloody carved letters, so there is no hope for us indeed.

metal birds flicker on and off against the navy canvas, false stars that blink to the beat of the city.

the wind is running through our hair, whispering silver nothings and reciting the lies of the moon. it makes me wonder if you would grasp my hand tight to take me with you should I shove you off the skyscraper now. the void beckons. it is best to not dwell on it long. it is nothing we haven’t both dreamed of, only difference is that I wear my scars on my sleeve and shape my lungs into eagle wings. you expose a clean wrist, brighter smile, to the private academy’s gates and the security guard sweeps an eye over it like a barcode scanner. beep, beep.

your hand is cold, but mine is colder.

from my angle on the ledge, I can make out lollipop pink wire shaped into a girl blowing a kiss.

there’s a train somewhere in the distance. there’s someone’s leg being cut off at the knee in the distance. there is the sound of rats feasting on the pulp of flesh in the distance.

for @avolitorial​ and their february love prompts

[foldedcranes]

There are golden willows swaying in the breeze. They bend to the touch of summer and, in the clear voice of the goldfinch, sing to me, calling me to their side to take shelter among their shade. The field stretches to the horizon and then past that, rising on its toes to graze its fingers against the nauseating blue sky. I have to turn my eyes away from the sight, if I look too long, I might be swallowed whole by the endless azure.

I take a seat by the eldest tree, one that has outlived its predecessors with gnarled knots and leaves withering under the heat. I packed a lunch of strawberries and sandwiches. It has been a long time since we’ve conversed. You are ethereal in the fact that you never stay with me for long, in the sense that you disappear with the rising of the sun as if the touch of light dissolves your body into sunshine dust. It is always summer somewhere.

It is always summer when we meet, the sand softer than silk, the waters warm and like velvet on a parched tongue. I almost drowned that summer, in the ocean, in you, heading into both knowing full well I could not swim.

I open my eyes to the blue and in the clouds, there lies the sweetness of the overripe orchard peach.

for @avolitorial and their february love prompts | prompt #8 - your eyes, in every life

[foldedcranes]

flourishing ink mirrors now the nonsensical madness // gift of nights spent in venus’ ekanite hands // splattering thoughts and a very much kind of nothingness // all over the ground scatter the fifteen thousand words i’ve etched in your name // and what have i received in return, comes the wondering thought imparted from lips of the calm-eyed storm // an answer i have not // with dove bloodied hands and aconited throat // spare me the lecture and the searching look // the professions of only searching for the truth // truth is not something i can offer // wearing all my hearts, all my scars on the sleeves

sealed with wax drippings of heart.

break me open and watch spill forth the ruby-red seeds of the pomegranate.

for @avolitorial and their february love prompts

[danilomecozzi]

#love2019 #welcome2020 #lovemoment #mecozzimoment (presso Kraków Old Town) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6vmJabIetY/?igshid=16ha8ycna8rwq