If Ever...

La Naïade by Nathalie Vogel

If ever... on a given day

wonder should grip you

and you should find yourself

musing about the sky,

And how it evolves from

bone to fire to indigo,

And how emotions

hum in prism hues,

And how hearts beat red

but sometimes blue,

And how leaves turn gold

when the air is cold,

And how paper goes beige

with graceless age,

And how the sun blackens

behind the silver moon,

I just might confess

how my soul numbs… and dies

when you trick with your lies

and think I do not realize.

Women Behind Windows

Woman in a Window by unknown artist

In this quiet town,

On this early morning,

When leaves are painted

On the horizon,

And eyes are yet

Blind with sleep, and dry,

And a cat is stalking a sparrow,

Meowing obscenely,

Clambering onto shiny cars

And slippery rooftops, 

And into gated gardens

And cloistered mansions,

And sunlight is filtering

Through the shroud of dawn,

A woman in a white dress

Leans upon a windowsill,

On elbows that have known

Other windows in other times,

And looks out into her garden,

Into another woman’s garden,

And that other woman’s window,

A woman who,

In this quiet town,

On this early morning,

While leaves and eyes

And cats and sunlight

Are doing their do’s,

Is setting her breakfast table:

Bread and butter and honey

And milk and bananas and berries,

While the rising sun makes

Painted glass out of the sky;

But a sudden storm swings by,

Shards of liquid ice and

The jerky dance of maples,

Whose silhouettes come alive

In blinked illuminations,

While the woman in her white dress

And the other at her kitchen table

Neither see nor hear

These visits from nature,

As one’s eyes are focused

Upon herself,

And the other’s eyes are focused

Upon the other;

They are hearing another music

Seeing with another eye:

Yearning and birth,

Liberation and death,

And the gratifying memories

Of that first house,

The house where, once upon a time,

They were little girls,

Never lingering behind windows

But always beyond them;

And from this muted recall,

A sliver of white light

Becomes full spectrum,

Blinding color on glass windows

That close… and enclose

forgotten time... and lost echoes.

doppelgänger

Doppelgänger by Agnieszka Szwengier

who are you

you drift away from me

like a leaf drifts from its tree

you drift you drift you drift

and if you were a traveler

you would be marco polo

adventurous and animate

spirit of flight

but i lied to myself and

told myself i had gifted you

had delivered you from hell

and we were poets

and we were princesses

and you were epic

and i was ode

and we were history

but we were children

sitting in a circle around the fire

listening to ghost stories

and scaring ourselves and

one another with flitting fingers

in the dark

and you in my imagination

though right there beside me

you were immobile

not in a state of rest

but in a state of paralysis

defying all axioms

and theories of relativity

defying gravity

and i was stone

and there was a girl

sometimes happy

sometimes sad

with stars in her eyes

and a cloud in her throat

and you were me

and i was you

but that was was

and no longer is

and i sit here

now

wondering who you are

but who am i

while you watch me

deliver myself to evil

and you watch me fall

and i tuck myself into this descent

as snugly as i can and you tell me

don’t go don’t go don’t go

and i see it in your eyes

that you want to follow me

and i see it in your eyes

that you are trying

to fight the emerging flames

and i see it in your eyes

that you are doing the arithmetic

when you are here

we are two

when you are gone

we will be one

and one

gone

and i wilt and dissolve

like flower stems in brackish water

and you float and flutter

like rose petals on a night stand

and you are earth

and you are heaven

and i am stone

and you are grief

and you are tears

and i am fall

from grace

eternal

irrevocable

original

and we are mud

and we are dust

and we are ashes

and you are spirit

and i am flesh

And We are One.

Chrysalis: The Second Transformation

Voyageur IV by Michel Henricot

This is Part 2 of a vignette I wrote a few weeks ago. If you would like to read Part 1 you can read it here.

* * * * * * * * *

He has never told her, Every time I meet you, I arrive expecting to find not you, but another woman asking me: Who are you?

He has never asked her, Do you feel the weight of prison bars on open, exposed flesh?

He has never told her, I feel oppression taking hold of your heart. And your eternity.

He has never asked her, Do you hear my muted wish?

He has never told. He has never asked. Because. Of Pride.

Besides, he has always believed that truly significant things are not meant to be said. Are unspeakable. Unutterable.

Words… no matter how beautiful… are treasons… to the Self. He has always believed.

And her beauty… like words… when expressed… creates pain. He has always told himself.

Is this pain a definition of love? Is it the treasonous words unsaid? He does not say this to her.

She is wearing her other face. The one he does not recognize. Yet, it is always there. That other face. As a determined yearning in her eyes. As a loneliness that refuses despair.

Will you ever find what you are searching for? He does not say this to her.

He sees what others cannot see: the white waves of fixed time. Her lips: delicate. soft. primitive. unspoiled. By spoken treasons to the Self.

My love, how lonely you are. He does not say this to her.

At the end of a day that crashed them into one another through: passion. tears. frustration. pain. She says to him only these words: Tell me a story. And don’t stop until I fall asleep.

Her fragile voice, wounding in its fragility, is powerless before the boundless expanse of loneliness.

Now. He wants to tell her things. To ask her things. And she wants to ask him things, too.

But.

She says to him only these words: Tell me a story. And don’t stop until I fall asleep.

He tells her a story. A fairy tale. Of a butterfly who one day finds her voice. And as he fumbles with his own words, he enjoys yet derides the new adventure.

Once upon a time, he begins.

And she says, Don’t stop until I fall asleep.

There was a butterfly, he says.

And she says, Don’t stop until I fall asleep.

And the sun sets. And the night comes. Always, the night. Like black death on a white steed.

The night. And his treasons. And her silence.