i don’t know how to write with poetic symbolism— pretty enough words to explain the way our paths have crossed over and again through those little blips of unrecorded time where fate pulls life in for a kiss on the cheek like the lines on our palms spell out one another’s names so that when we look down we’re reminded of how our chests have hurt a little less each time lady fortune puckers her lips. so i’ll take the worlds in my head and turn us into the heroes we always talk about to give us proof and preserve it so we can go back and read it whenever the ground starts shaking. ---------------------------------------------------- we’ve been for years two warriors on different parts of the map; bloodied and battle-weary with fissured armor we have hammered out ourselves each time, fighting every skirmish alone and always just barely scraping through to the next, nursing wounds that sink so deep that neither of us want to show the other the newest scar; they are reminders, the sting of losses and we wish they weren’t so permanent. but when the dragons come and their wings black out the light, when their fire destroys everything we thought we had left to fight for, and alone there is no weapon; no spear or sword or bow, no magic spell we can conjure to bring them down— it’s almost as if one hears the other, that pull, across valleys and mountains that sometimes have our names displayed as weathered signatures carved into the stone we laid ourselves to keep us from being the next scar to add to our respective collections— one becomes two as steel sings against steel, a long overdue harmony after too many years of wading through dissonance: twin blade points forged from different fires yet kindred all the same, now facing down the enemy with two more hands than either had to start; an oath on the battlefield sworn with silent, but absolute resolve: we can slay the dragons together.
