what is waiting for you? what has always been waiting for you?
come in, come in, leave your grief at the door, now, put your coat aside. take your art into your hands, into your mouth. begin here as you speak and spark, homed as body and bone, where history becomes just another song to learn from; for all that it remembers, all that it knows. sing yourself into the world, into everything that was, into everything that is yet to come. become, now, anew, time-tinged.
do we remember how to speak about ancient things? about glory, stories bright and golden, sun-stained? to speak of daylight, of magic-soaked legends, of a history preoccupied by so much hurting – it has been like this, hasn’t it? soliloquies, some kind of symphony, soft tones that have been through so much and yet still say rest, you can rest now, do you remember how, should we walk through it once more? should we talk through the dawn? should we sing together another song, speak another story, to chase out the dark? listen, now, we are tied like this, soul to soul. we share eyes, hearts, hands. i am trying to say so many things, now, but all of them are i am here with you. don’t worry about the dreaming, now, our deaths are too easy to lie about.
to stand like memory is to stand in a past life / where you handed flowers to the child who crowned you / where you wept enough to fill the oceans over themselves / where you were swung out switchblade, wearing the whole sky, lifting away each curse and every storm, where we know the rest of story, the ribbon-bowed ending, all biodegradable confetti, all celebration-sung and celebration-danced, the soft sound of storybooks sliding back onto their shelves.
a fortune, or a half-guessed truth that has not yet come to pass: history is a keen darkness, eager to rub the sacred off of stories, and so here is the preface to a name, to a wound, to an anomaly between times, something still and waiting, wildly awake. tell me, where do you begin? where do any of us? here is where i would choose: with you. with the candle burning. with the impossible hope of the dawn. where it is always us, brighter than any light.
scripture and sculpture are two parts of this same story, verses falling around your feet like leaves, like tears. you have inherited inevitabilities, the rest of your life an oncoming storm, something to give into, four-fifths unexplainable, and here, here is where i take your hand. here is where i ask you to be brave, to stand again against gravity's hold, to open your eyes just once more, to see every never-approaching future as they haunt behind your eyes with their pirouette stares, their graceful apparitions, each of their timepieces telling of a hour that never comes until you grasp it yourself, each their own stories, impossible with being.
you can choose, you know. you can always choose. you can always begin again.
here i am. here you are. we are not doomed. are you reading me? i am trying to say so many things, but all of them are you are not alone. so much has come before you. so much will come after. did you hear that? you can lay aside your armour. i will pick up the sword. i will carry your name. look at us: we are breathing. we are dreaming. we are dancing to a tune that exists nowhere else in the world except for within our chests. isn’t that everything? isn't that worth all of it, every shred of every piece between us?
i am scared of starting fires but maybe that’s the reason why i still say strike me – make me searchlight, make me lighthouse, so that maybe then, there is a chance that you will see me. that we will see eachother again. the haunting: will you see me, even then, blinded by all that light? it is worth it, isn't it? i will still try. i know the risk, i know the danger. come now, who said i was brave? who said any of us are, before we take that one tightrope-chance?
somewhere, i think the ancients still need us. we are their illuminated rage, their sea-salt fury, the burning snow, carved-over graveyards that all bodies and no dirt, where we gather together, hand in hand, gunpowder smudged, barefoot, swallowing down matchsticks one by one – maybe the garden isn’t meant for us. maybe we’ve dug too many tunnels to even think of finding it within ourselves, and here maybe eden is just another word for heart. i hope you will still hold mine, even then, where i will hold yours.
come now, let me help you put on your coat. remember to eat, now, and make sure to take some leftovers with you. it's getting colder, out there, and i hope you keep warm. i hope i see you again soon. i do not know what the future will hold for us, but there is this, there is always this: i hope you are there. i hope we are kind.
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