appalachia! north east! southwestern! :D
[THANK YOU! I had so much fun with these. Per the original post: stories made of true things. I love loosening up and playing with different stylized forms.]
Gothic Americana Ask Meme
In the dark: raucous laughter with cold breath behind it. Night blooming flowers and warm dry bones–all the better to hold you with, my darling, cozy and close. Flaunted decay, flirtatious rot, all in good fun, and skulls are always grinning. Happy to see you, sweetmeats.
Death wears a top hat and in the dark we pray. in the light we pray. He’s got shades for those sunny days, but in the dark: he whispers dear, he coos, he croons. Skeletal arms are always ready for the embrace. You can reach inside his rib cage and touch his heart or tap a beat on his serum. Strum his ribs like strings on a guitar. Make some music. In the dark we pray. In the shadows we pray. In the dark we dance, and this, too, is prayer.
Death waits in the dark, the most patient lover, and for now he smiles as he kisses your hand and says: not yet, my heart, not yet.
uneasy and whining and pacing in the shape of a cage though there are no bars, no fence, no chains. dirt clinging to my paws where they are wet with blood, like my teeth. blood from chewing on my own flesh, reckless and anxious and remembering both the taste of the river and the scent of the woods while there is only mud and blood on my tongue.
i’m not waiting. i’m not. i could run away at any time, i am wild i am free. repeat: i am wild i am free i am wild i am free i am.
(winds and wolves can lie: i am wild / i am not free)
when the clouds drift free of the moon, i am quiet. my song is silence squeezed from the weight of howls unheard.
i lick the blood from my teeth, settle down in the dirt, try to sleep.
i wait for someone who does not want to run to the water with me.
while i still can, until the hunger drives me mad:
Simultaneously surrounded and alone, because few people make it to the top, but the pool of humanity below is nice and warm and waiting. I wanted to climb higher and I did. The air up here is aspirational and inspirational and cold and hard to breathe, but I’ve been training all my life so that my heart beats easy at the pinnacle, at this precipice, at the top of this pyramid. To go any higher would mean ascending to the sky and stars. I still strive.
Below, all my beloveds shout their adoration. I love my audience. My audience loves me. Mine enemy is my mirror; the only true challenge is myself. Anyone else is a distraction and too easy, too soft. Diamond cuts diamond. Glitter and glass and sharp sharp sharp. Once my rage burned so hot it melted rocks and when it cooled, when I cooled, only obsidian was left. Here there is all the time I need for my craft and with my own hands and tears and blood I carve these blades, sharper than any steel, sharper than words, sharper than heartbreak. I make them but I do plan to use them. While I hone them the pioneers come: grasses and mosses and lichens and finally orchids.
There we are, and now the real work begins. Flora, welcome fauna.
One by one I pull people up. The mosses and the lichens and the grasses and the orchids and me have colonized this space here; we have terraformed it. We have done it all for you. For us, too, but after a certain point: all for you. We changed the soil. We warmed the air. Self hatred cannot stand the atmosphere up here. We breathe in neutral skies and we breathe out love. One by one we each pull another up. We hold them close while they shiver and then we take them to see the orchids: there you are, we tell them. There you are, and see how beautiful you are. See how you can breathe in nothing much or breathe in hurt and exude love instead. See how you do not need to fear, because to love is not to abandon your weapons, but only to sharpen them, should you need them, though here you know you will not need them.
And then, for me: the sky, which is the ocean, which is space, where the stars are made of salt. The tang of star salt on my tongue again, and I thirst.
