#poem draft
I heard of a place
and you were the alien trees.
You, dog, were the blue land and yellow sky.
And you, headless champion, were the fire where lightning struck.
I invented it to stay alive
and learned that people live there.
A huge figure like an angel came to me as I waited there for you.
He said You cannot stay here.
He did not have to force me to go,
He let me stay and return as often as I needed
So I could know why.
I still think of your alien trees
Though I am not sure I ever really saw them.
Perhaps I will move to the border of a place
Where it would make sense for them to grow.
Perhaps I’ll stay away and write about staying away,
to leave fire for someone else
Who cannot stay on the dog land.
Perhaps I will go and live there.
It will feel like dying,
But so does being away.
Perhaps it will kill me
but I will stay and live
For the moments I’m aflame.
cury curous curious.
everything is made of wood:
benches and buildings and platforms and tables and, all the while,
hemmed in by wood
the sky, even:
blue-grained wood,
knots swirled white
and he quicksilvers right through,
wings bark-brown and then ivory
–can’t seem to find any animal tracks in the dirt–
What’s your name, again?
carved out under the tallest red trees, beam-bleached plume curls,
then eyes crisp like the tip of a feather quill
Artemis–and yours?
his gaze holds still, fixed within fluid movement,
a reflective luster when the gold licks through the branches
cury curous curious.
Mercury.
ensuing, his timbre hums to the tune of thinly-veiled self-amusement.
steeped in summer sunlight but they’re all looking to pull my teeth.
: meeting new people :
a whole new set of variables ready to input to the algorithm of tearing me apart.
everyone stands in a neutral vacuum until you tell them your name.
hello my name is Artemis, what’s yours, would you like to know that i wanted to die last month?
would you like to see all the ways i can fall apart?
we will all go along happily to our team-bonding rituals and get-to-know-you conversations, or you could just get to the point and punch me in the throat instead.
because you never know who will love you.
more importantly: you never know who will let you love them and then destroy you in response.
hi my name’s Astraea.
she stuck out her hand.
don’t be so ridiculous quit acting like a cornered animal stop trying to look so dangerous.
i reached out.
save your fangs, darling.
i’m–Artemis.
When I glance back to see whose footsteps are nearing,
I see a boy both dark and bright at the same time.
Walking in a quiet confidence,
his rich brown wings tucked behind him.
He’s coming closer.
artemis had twisted her dark redwood hair into a fraying braid to keep it out of her ash-lined eyes. the silver rings in her leopard ears become more noticeable.
the ash distracts from the tired slack in her cheeks.
my sister does not bear the art of flight between her shoulders – the only trait she did not inherit from our father, the only trait that i did. my aptitude is for that of vibrancy, for i can hold pieces of the sky in my hands.
symmetry decorates her face in smudged spots and fangs that mark the split in our genetic strands. her aptitude is for that of complexity, for she can climb into a dark forest and know what it means.
her room is decorated with bird nests and tree branches and rocks and seashells, collected over the years, tied together, painted, dangling about the room. i believe she finds significance in each organic form, and she keeps those mysteries close to her heart.
mom told me i should try to get to know artemis better.
yesterday i asked her about the therapy.
she told me about how she learned how to practice visualization exercises to help her mind get better. i asked her what she sees and she said she tends to visualize flying through the air on virgo’s back, flying over the kallyrho coastline, just below the calm clouds decked in the tremendous sunset colors, then dipping to skim just above the foaming seawater.
we fly over the waves the sun glowing at our backs my arm around her soft neck and hand in her pale mane the refreshing chill of the ocean spray flecks my toes and fingertips.
but she said she never can actually dream of flying she only dreams of falling.
: The jolt awake, the fast-paced breathing, the IT WAS JUST. A. DREAM. :
: But once it was real :
do you ever try to stop yourself from falling, stop mid-air? // To stop mid-air I don’t know what that feels like // what does that matter? // Dreams are just distortions of what we already know Do you ever try to stop yourself from falling stop mid-air? // yes i have. // Because you’ve done it before // it’s true i have. well, what if you tried dreaming up someone to catch you, then? // To be caught I don’t know what that feels like either
she continued to organize her suitcase from that point on. today she carries them downstairs herself.
i throw my bags in the trunk of the car.
i will fall asleep on the way to tethys. artemis will pretend to sleep but she will not. she will listen to music with her eyes closed
: to keep my consciousness under siege :
and when she lifts her head she will not look like she’s waking up, just like she’s been deeply somewhere else.
Altair peeks his face in the nearly shut doorway and asks if I need any help with my bags.
: I told her I felt like family doesn’t count because they kind of have to love me. But I knew when I said it I wasn’t right but I wasn’t wrong. She smiled below her fox nose and told me they really don’t have to love me. She was wasn’t wrong but also wasn’t right. :
: She is less right about my mother. I know my mother always loved me until I left one fucked up evening and didn’t come back until the next day. She asked me where I’d been and I told her I ran to the park and slept there for the night because she would know if I lied. She wanted me to swear I would never do it again. When I told her I couldn’t promise her anything she blew out all of the candles in the house for a week and a half. But, like I said, that only lasted for a week and a half. :
: I know she is more right about my brother. He dances in public when he feels like it and puts his arms around me when he feels like it and scowls at me and says things he knows will make my blood burn when he feels like it. :
Before I tell him no thanks even though they are more than enough for me to carry – I notice he is wearing the necklace strung with the wood pendant I carved for him as a present for his eighteenth birthday.
His wings absentmindedly nudge the door wider on its hinge when he turns his back to leave.
In a few hours he will be all that I have that breathes.
I lean down to pick up my suitcase and backpack.
My baggage seems to get heavier every year.
But for some reason, it still hasn’t kept me from walking out the front door.
I had a dream last night that I collected all of the clouds and made a castle in the sky
We flew into the throne room as rulers
His head crowned with the sun
My neck and arms gilded with all of the constellations
We built a bridge over the Silver River where we could look down and see the shimmering ebony feathers of the magpies spread bright
Catching air and light
When I woke I greeted the heels of Rosy Dawn. I drank my tea. The day began when I caught sight of the tips of his wings.
Beads of sweat gather on my forehead. The steel bars tackled my sky.
I’m trying to pick the lock.
The tools slipped out of my sweaty hands.
I turn into the corridor before I open the door her room, warm as pumpkin soup.
She’s waiting for me, a small fox lady with little fox ears and a little fox nose.
She looks at me like I’m a bird in a cage.
Did I choose to be this way?
Maybe you chose to get in the car but that’s nearly like choosing to wake up in the morning you didn’t choose to make it crash. Does that make sense?
She says my mind is a snowball a snowball pushed down a snowy hill, and down it goes it grows and grows and grows no matter what I chose it grows and grows the nature of the snowball is to accumulate the matter that sticks to its icy velcro down it goes.
Did I push myself downhill?
Why couldn’t I have been a stone, leaving rough rocky edges and everything else unnecessary behind?
Does it matter? What matters if you want to take a step in a different direction. Does that make sense?
I’m moving this summer to work in the wildlands near the Western Sea, I tell her. I want to wash the smog of the suburbia out of my veins.
I can’t run very fast. I’m running as fast as I can.
But you’re a snowball not a stone you grew and grew and collected the dirt and twigs and slushy piss in your path you’re a snowball not a stone you could barely heave your suitcases in the fucking car
: I’ve got a junkyard of totaled relationships in the crabgrass backyard behind the soft spot of my aorta and it’s fenced in with some crappy barbed wire I strung up myself :
When you feel the fire coming, remember how to stop and make yourself breathe.
She looks at me like I’m a bird in a cage.
She’s trying to reach through the bars.
She’s holding out the tools to pick the lock.
I have no sisters.
In my family
It is I
and Altair borne by Leto and Aquila. They spread their wings over the skyline.
Brother Apollo fell asleep below the earth.
I watched him buried.
I run in no wolf pack
But stalk the forest fang-footed,
Panthera uncia, lone spotted nymph,
I am running as fast as I can, the horses in my head driven hoof-wild
they trampled the amygdala gates to stampede the winds, to stamp winding bloodstream trails. Deep as craters.
I open the door with chipped nails and toss up my keys in in pavement-pecked and punched jeans.
There’s a dark shadow sewn to my feet.
I can’t run very fast.
I’m running as fast as I can.
