never young again

dear mama,

i remember a day, i'm not sure when and i'm not sure why, at a time where i still saw myself underwater. there was wind that day, in that time underwater, and you sat me at the edge of the earth. the infinite horizon and the white stallions galloping as an army towards rocks i sat on, their foals licked against my toes. i briefly remember looking at photograph of that ocean once, and i watched as the waves rolled forward to greet me, i turned the print over and over in the skin about my hands to made it stand still.

i see my father by my mother and the sunflower they grew, intertwined with their love years before i was born. the sun grew that flower, my father the sun - he grew me that tall until my youth began pondering. then the moon took me one night, unveiling himself into my midnight sun, he unravelled my father and i laid on the ground; a dress to my knees, hair tinted with blood. i held onto my sister, delicate as a water-lily and still remains that way.

there were times of blood, and of darkness, mama, and i still love the blood and crave the darkness. we curtsy each other every now and again. i thank the ones that sang to me. i thank the one who saved me. i thank my rational mind for loving my escapist mind and for letting me spend every moment of reality somewhere else. no matter how scared it makes me that i may now never be able to leave. 'but i never want to leave' i argue with myself.

i am in a lake of freezing water, without my moon's tides keeping me afloat i drown.

once on an evening, perhaps a night or a morning, where i cut my nails with rusty kitchen scissors and let them fall to floor, for they were just my nails after all. i thought they'd soak into the floor until i remembered it was carpet, not my earth. i think they found their way somehow.

i fell awake one morning to find my favorite small creature lying limp; she, entwined in dirt and her blind eye glowing her unbind eye's red. i held her for hours that mourning, i did. that night the ground was wet so i watched her leaving her body. streaks of soul orange moving further towards her sister, i buried her them together in hopes they remain that way; away from black cats and black bats under wood that made love with green.

yesterday was the final day that my rational mind tells me i should be full of angst and uselessness, and i spent it alone in my meadow. the creatures all came to bid me goodbye, one by one they kissed my skin with their spindly legs. i could only return as different to them. i promised them that i would never, and they looked at me with such pity.

it has been eighteen years since i met you, mama, a youth ago as i will say, and a further eighteen minutes, mama, since you told me one day i will fade. eighteen scratches, mama, since i begged that i can never.

love forever,
never young again

-

dear the dark haired crow boy of my mind (the one i named with a singular letter,)

slience slience and your rough breathing.

thank you for giving me the strength to hopefully move away from you one day. thank you for making everything okay. thank you for stitching my patchwork skin back together with your shaking fingers and threads and glue. i wish you and my other freckled self all the beauty in your make-believe lives; i hope if i grow into that white-haired woman i see, the one that i fear so very often, that i will find the understanding and the patience to share you with this reality.

love forever,
never young again