sometimes the sun rises like the glorious swell in the orchestra just before the end (where musicians herald the end and hold it in their hands like they might a child, God has always loved beginnings); and sometimes it comes behind the quiet raindrop kisses, muted and lovely amid the grey clouds whispering life down and asking for nothing in return. you love the rain as i do, loudly and with your hands raised up to greet it. sometimes a storm rises, early, far too early for the stars who love to watch and to listen to the rumble of thunder like the trumpet of the seventh angel. and on those days when heaven pours its will into the sewer there is naught else to do but watch, laughing, tangling words like shoelaces and wishing they could be more.
i do not have much to give you. i tell you this because one day glorified love letters will not be enough and if ever i am lucky enough to see you with your arms crossed and your heart waiting for more i will not have to remind you how little i have. i will offer my library because i am not good at sharing much else. i will offer my words because they are my only pride. i will offer you one hundred and one sunrises, one hundred and one rainy mornings, and one hundred and two storms; and if ever the sun fails to rise i will try to offer you the more for which you’ll always want to ask.
We were careless in our dreaming, and
In the way we wore our midnight revelations on our sleeves
Like badges of honor earned through valor and courage.
These are the things I do not possess and the dreams I wore
Were a catalog of my cowardice.
I am possessed of a great and monstrous beauty called Wanderlust,
Which builds itself up as the ships of wood and sail and leaves behind it
A trail of snapped red strings wrapped tight around my fingers while I
Imagine the things that Cannot Be as though they are the things that Are.
Cities are things built on the combination of
Maps and dreaming. I, also, am the product of a dream and
Of a genetic map of brown eyes and crooked teeth. I am a city and
Its citizens are going mad as though the twisting streets and
Endless streetlamps are not enough. But still, I am a thing that Is.
God has built me in His image and forgotten the blueprint and so
It sits on a bookshelf somewhere gathering the dust that one gathers by living
While I gather my own dust and wonder if God can see His own reflection,
And if it looks like me. Meanwhile the hummingbird flits from flower to flower and
Laughs at the things that can’t keep up.
I think it must be hard to love a hummingbird if it strays so far
So quickly, and so of course I refrain. But one must admire
The way its wings beat like the wind turning the pages of a book while
The bees amble drowsily against the wind and the world turns from day to night
As does the carousel. The hummingbird is impossible but it is also glorious.
The dreams with which I adorn myself are those of
A girl driven mad by wanderlust that great beauty, which
Grows everyday as do the streets that line her sleep. They are
The dreams of an aspiring hummingbird too afraid to hover for
Even a moment to find its map.
something something old dude
ii. light
You are a collector of words, and, consequently, at this moment you are also three separate and only slightly related things:
- A teller of lies
- A devout follower of truth
- Waiting
i am a museum. in me are the relics of a world half-realized, and the things that are to be seen rather than touched. but the trouble is, i suppose, that people don’t always follow the rules and if they want to touch then they will. they often do.
ii. love
these are the things that i am built on:
sharp right angles, strangers’ smiles
aimed at other people, lost game pieces
and the words of a little girl who did not know better
(and a woman who does now).
i have lived in constant fear
of being unmasked by tall people who
always knew better, but now i think that
sometimes i might know a different better
and i think perhaps the mask was shed years ago.
i am trying to be the person that
i told myself i would be, the storm that
works its way silently through the vacuum of time and
pulls with it the debris of the ocean, the shells and
the lost toys dropped by the lost children,
and i want very badly to wind through and
turn things over in the hopes that perhaps i will find
the toys that i lost somewhere on the shore.
but the truth is that no storm can be silent
and i am very good at being silent.
still, somehow it is okay that i have been called “selfish”
and “rotten” (or was that me to me) because
despite all of that i am still not a storm but a
very subtle wind that brushes with its fingertips the
lovely bells on the windchimes and brings forth music.
“despite” is a very ugly word but sometimes
i love it very much.
Artist: Chopin
Album:
Played: 9 times
i. beginning.
The rain fell in heavy sheets, obscuring the ground below and the sky above. It had been falling for fourteen days now, and would likely fall for many more. Years ago someone might have gone so far as to say that it was raining cats and dogs. But there were no more cats and dogs, and there was no one there to say that they were falling from the sky. In fact there wasn’t much of anything except for the rain, which seemed in the emptiness to take on a life of its own. It was going to live for quite a while longer, but its death would be just as sudden and unexpected as its birth. Its mother the clouds drifted slowly across the sky as countless blimps.
If the rain falls for one hundred days and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
