fairytale

This is a fairytale.
It's the story of a little boy
who was invisible
and a little girl who knew
he was there.

And all she has to do is know
and believe
and he will become real

but he is timid and scared
so she has to be very, very quiet.

These little children knew each other
before
but the little boy got left somewhere.

She can feel his heart
still beating,
connected to her heart
by a golden thread.

And so she goes to find him
but he can only visit her
in dreams

so she dreams with him
until he wakes up.

She had been a dream of his own
for the whole long time
he'd been orbiting the black hole of death.

He woke up for the first time
in ten years
and was himself again.

- -

The Amber Peach Child

Once upon a time, a little boy and a little girl met and were created in dreams. They were spirits of the dream world -- little embodiments of its essence.

As such, they were invisible. But, because they were both of the same stuff, they could see each other and the glowing light held inside each of their chests. The little boy and girl were siblings -- kindred -- and they loved each other very much. They told each other stories, and when they laid together, this is what they felt:


stage I

Closing eyes leads to
thoughts, visions
of pink clouds swirling mysteriously
like Japanese wallpaper.
This nebulous form is dotted
with a uniform panoply of gold flecks,
a frail shell
which contains and controls the pale dream
as it spins silently
through black velvet space-
a capsule unto itself.


stage II

We are lying
I hold your hand
both eyes are closed
but we talk
and I think that we are traveling;
the small of your back arches gently.


stage III

You are here, on my planet

and around us, the air is humming.


- - - -


But something happened to the dreamworld. It was wrenched and sundered (the tower) and they were torn apart. The little boy got left in the dreaming, while the little girl awoke to find herself in the body of a human. she was very confused as to how she got there and missed the boy and the dreamworld very much.

But she adapted. She found other people who had been torn from the dreamworld and put in human bodies. Eventually she began to realize that most people had been born there, like she.

Eventually she forgot about the little boy -- but she was nonetheless aware that there was something missing, something wrong.

People couldn't see her. They could see her body, sure, and they could see the things she had conditioned it to do. Some people were very impressed by how she'd trained it -- they were amazed by the breadth and depth of her skill for self-cultivation.
But nobody saw her -- they saw the contours and motions of the living flesh that she controlled, but not her, the puppeteer. she was a spark and a force, not a living human body.

- -

Then, one day, another pair of eyes found her. They looked through her body -- into her -- and fixed on her. She froze. What was happening to her? She'd waited for so long to be seen again, but now that it was happening, she was scared. Every time she looked back, she felt her gaze being captured and drawn within the other body in front of her.

Those eyes connected straight back to the dreamworld.

The girl realized this in a rush that terrified and enlivened her. The force behind these eyes -- the spirit -- was still in the dreaming.

The girl became drawn to these eyes -- magnetized. She needed to see what they led to, but the force and power contained within that place were so raw that she was unable to maintain her gaze -- every time she caught a glimpse of it she had to turn away. But how she had to look…

- -

Eventually, the girl became accustomed to staring into the heart of the dreamworld. She began to be able to look for longer, to slowly pick out murky forms. She kept looking, and as she did, she noticed her heart began to change itself -- it began to glow.

The girl remembered this. She knew she must be getting close. There was something in this place -- some spirit -- that was connected to her own. This spirit was meandering, aimless, but alive and so very present. Slowly, the girl began to feel it watching her.

The glow around her heart was getting more and more intense. As time went on, the girl began to feel the glow taking form, unspooling from her chest to create a line extending from the front of her. This tendril soon unwound farther than she could see.

The girl chose to follow it.
She took a step further -- finally, she moved.
She was fully in the dreaming now.

The girl allowed the thread to lead her like Daedalus. She was in an utterly new place, but did not feel disoriented or scared. She had the golden thread to guide her -- and so she began to feel comfortable where she was. She began to remember how it felt to walk in dreams.

- -

Eventually she will see him.
What will happen then?
Will it be like seeing the sun and becoming the world, as in tarot?
Will they both die?
Will she return to the dreamworld?
Will he come to the physical world?
Or, will she eventually leave him, having to return to her body and, upon waking, leave him back where he was?

Or, will he wake up? He will wake up and be himself, aware and alive. And she will have been his dream.

eulogies

my grandfather believes he has died
because my grandmother is gone

i will always remember her voice
and i can see her
from when i was three years old
teaching
as she pushed the swing
back and forth
with me flying a little
closer towards knowing
what it means to be alive

- - - -


The process of eulogizing
is seeing what shards we hold
on to over years of dropping
the bowl of our memory
of putting it back together
weeping with glass in our hands
because it will never again be what we thought it was.

- - - -

my grandfather asks my mother to call him on the hour
because he believes he has died

and wind rips around the glowing box
of his apartment, screaming
like the stray cats my whole family loves
to feed and cradle in arms.

- - - -

my grandmother is gone
and all my family can talk about is feeling
around in the darkness
we are all blindfolded
by a grief longer than we've ever known

and we reach for the same similes
groping for meaning and comfort
over the phone,
processing her absence like walking
through a long, dark tunnel

each of us praying
that we won't be left there for good.

- - - -

grief

is

a clear
light

- - - -

hold me.