#wcreview

[betweenthetimeandsound]

21 December

The world was supposed to end today. Ten years ago.

I took my pearls and stretched them to the other side of the shore, hoping I would find someone to gift them to and call me a friend. I'm a young woman with an old soul yet a childish desire for sweets and a little more time to accomplish what I want to do.

The world lays in a note left at the bottom of a wine bottle with a few more drops of porto left to imbue the paper, never allowed to age nor to bless the tongue of the mute.

A revelation is given for a price-- one which will condemn the reader if she does not adhere to its words like an actress to a script to a tragedy. Yet I take it, because it's worth it, somehow.

It's worth it to have more knowledge, even if it's only to know how to fly towards Suzhou with frivolous wings, feathers which only yearn for the sun. I'm like a clay vase with the names of those who graduated college and sought out beauty for its sake, without knowing how to draw flowers or knowing the girls who haunt Sarajevo.

I broke into a hundred pieces, gushing out saltwater and orchid pedals, shattered, able to cut roughened hands, and also--barren.

Barren of children, dried up of ambitions, subdued due to a wine-dark mouth sealed due to swallows escaping with miniatures of my voice. Pitied until I retreated back into my oyster, trying to become a pearl myself, so that I may be loved for a few more years.

Yet when I open my hands, freshwater pearls slide out, dropping into rain puddles, too naive to know they will dissolve.

I keep them to my chest, wiggling through albaster-smooth flesh, knowing that I could disintegrate too, for I am mortal, even if I still

The world was supposed to end ten years ago. It still straddles the edge of a muse's tongue, singing alone.

I thank the heavens for this, for the pastel skies still tickle me, and I can find little flowers in the snow. --Elda Mengisto

[betweenthetimeandsound]

--prompt from @nosebleedclub "sanctified" (2 March)

You kissed me again as my lungs grew roots and started blossoming with faint pear flowers, only shriveling at your touch. Nothing is made holy when love is concerned; once I bear myself to the sun, all my spiders are known, and they crawl into your palms.

I grew up knowing that I wasn't sanctified. You only valued holiness through a single word.

I speak spring into existence, and its sweetness overwhelms me through pastel pink pedals and cornflower skies. You graze your thumb on my eye, hoping I would awaken from my slumber, only to learn I know your moves and how there's a little bit of starlight on the back of your hand.

Who commands who, when the clouds vanish? The rain will not wash away the inky murk which is our sin--it will not arrive until the rivers boil over again. --Elda Mengisto

[betweenthetimeandsound]

Elegy For Beauty, the Last Sacrifice Needed for Armor

--prompt from @nosebleedclub "medusa" (15 November)

As beautiful you were is how hideous you will become, with your serpentine locks and your emerald eyes. Fangs intimidate the intimate despite your lack of bite; gills emerge from your body despite being a child born from limestone.

Why would the sea take you in as your mistress?

You lounge at your temple, with robes falling like rain; you fantasize of knowing the divine intimately without knowing how it burns you. The olive trees try to embrace you, but when the saltwater starts flooding in, they know nothing but to retreat back to their roots amongst the rocks.

You're a beautiful child, with hair braided down your hips. But that has been charred amongst your transformation, so that only your fire burns from the pit of your chest, turning into a beam of light so that nobody could meet your gaze again.

And yet, you still laugh at the world which has conceived of your rage.

Your afterlife is of charred wings and children of vengeance, who know not your killer.

You still see all, blinded and with tears flowing down onto the polis. You know what she has transformed you into, but know not what parts of you died in the process. --Elda Mengisto

[betweenthetimeandsound]

Crown of Roses

Beauty holds itself up only through the arms of demons, like my crown of roses only lives through the thorns. A child could not know this-- as she was arrogant and free, only when the grasses are parched and the figs withered does she know that the vultures are just as necessary to living as they are to dying.

Cerberus nestles on my toes, adjusting to the dark. An hourglass lets it sands sweep up the unexpected youths, floating on clouds and shining fairylights across the sky, wishing for solace, or at least a little more time to relish on the trinkets which the gods sprinkle on them with a constant flow.

I eat a pomegranate once again; its juices flow like blood, but I do not flinch anymore. Children burned in more violent ways, but their sweetness only emerges when I feed them the exact same seed so they may know hooe in the pits of despair.

Just like me...

[betweenthetimeandsound]

Vetiver

--prompt from @nosebleedclub (26 October)

Although the sky is the color of cornflowers, a gentle breeze rocks that field, and keeps me off balance as I walk the line between sufferance and indulgence awkwardly, like a newborn duck adjusting to land.

A zephyr tickles my inhibitions and teases my impulsive nature; it drops perfume oil on my awkward flesh, goosebumps rising, I refuse to understand how life cycles through its abnormal dance, always falling from grace.

Drops of vetiver oil fall onto my clavicles like acid rain from frothy clouds. I let it burn my skin and eliminate the remains of what others people applied on me like a canvas for a muse turned human with awkward hands and an imperfect smile. --Elda Mengisto

[betweenthetimeandsound]

The Broken Wing

The webbing gives way to falling feathers-- a snowstorm constricted to the memories of finding one's thread to the world. It does not glow with a scarlet flare, nor does it connect one with God-- but it exists through the dying pines and the shriveled fields of lavender.

Swans guided my way since birth, but I only know how to scream out through my limbs expanding in all directions. I evolve only as a spider hiding in her own web-- I risk death by snapping the dew-dropped threads of my being.

In their place, my back glistens with the feathers that stay; they are neither delicate nor beautiful, but forged from the coldest trenches of my own hell-- a garden of ice-covered daisies and swords made of frost.

Spring comes too slowly for me, so I lift up my right arm, and aim for the mountains.

There will still be snow, but it won't be too shallow for me to slam on the rocks.

And I take off, without wind, but without the burning fear coals attached to my neck provides.

I defy gravity. --Elda Mengisto

[betweenthetimeandsound]

A Lost Song

--prompt from @nosebleedclub "soft singing" (6 September)

My tongue curls and waits for the cure, but the bells don't ring at the perfect time. A clock ticks and another person is shot; sirens ring out and it only keeps me back on the sidelines behind the window inside the grates. The prison reaches out to grab me, but I resist through an awkward dance flailing my hands and arms towards an invisible ladder which won't hold me up.

I grind my teeth and open my mouth, but I lost the time along with the battle. Dust flies around and gathers on my lips, but I have no relationship to the antique-- they rust and decay on my rough feet as I prepare my notes and relish on the stage Moths crack open from silk cocoons and escape from my throat-- nobody knows the darkness could sing from the wildest depths. --Elda Mengisto

[betweenthetimeandsound]

Meadowlands

Where could we go where home is the safest place to be?

In the marshes I find solace through wealth; we could hide under the bridges and make diamonds out of our hands. Here we walk on stable ground, with only the filthy water to stop us from going where we need to go--

but where are we going, other than the grave?

Even the summers aren't sweet enough to keep ourselves happy; all they do is decay the dead until their shells emerge from the dirt to confirm that they had once lived and were known with chrysanthemums in their eyes.

I have my words; they fester in my scars until I could release them through clouds of birds flying in the sky, letting go of pity and shame, as they head towards the sun.

And how many pieces of my soul do I have to shed before I am saved?

I saw hell, but I got no salve. In a river of wine, I only find an island of salt and swords to welcome me. I live amongst blood, yet I cannot have my own to give to a son chosen to save the world--

a world which turns only one way--only at the finger of the father.

Where's our arc?

Where's my arc?

I'm going to hell again, for this man. Not as a true soldier out in the trenches, but falling asleep amongst the reeds, struggling to create a new dream amongst the ducks quaking at me. --Elda Mengisto