On a cool afternoon, I died curled in a midnight blue
cardigan – the patches of cartoonish stars splayed across my chest and belly,
pulling the piece of clothing tight around me that I could almost feel myself
suffocate against the missing buttons. I was ensconced in a rocking chair as I
swung my feet playfully under me, making sure I didn’t kick my cat (because I
did love that stupid slyboots). The floorboards creaked as I peeked through the
slivers of the curtains and out at the neighborhood. It was an old sight,
colored with swaying trees and games. Then later I let myself rest back and
gulp down – with little difficulty – a mug of newly prepared coffee.
But then the sliver disappeared and the stars pushed
forward, leaving me scrambling for light and air.
Light. And air.
With a quick swipe of a blade against my ribcage, I tumbled
down onto the dusty floor. I let loose a horrible cough as I willed my eyes to
open, but they were already open – I just couldn’t see. Beneath the sound of my
heavy, troubled breathing, I could hear a song I was forced to remember. It was
a minute of alluring voices as I slowed down, trying to grasp anything like my
ugly cat or the feet of the rocking chair. I froze when I heard the door scrape
open. I froze, I froze, I froze.
And I fell down.
I fell down with the blackness clinging onto me – its hold
on me like a blanket of metal, twisting around me like a slithering snake.
Ouroboros was what it looked like from the corner of my eye. By then I had to
listen to the sound of my heartbeat – quick, nimble footsteps pounding on
soaked ground like thumpthumpthump. They
collided as one until my eyes were blown wide and I felt like a mighty lion. I
fell down until I sank down. The shoot led to a cyan world of nothing but me
foolishly attempting to gain purchase on anything that could help me swim to
shore. I had told myself that I’d swim to shore like a brave sailor, a cap’n
alone but warm with a beating heart. But here’s the twist and I suffocated more
with the revelation.
There was no shore in sight.
I was stranded and I was dying as the cold blew above me and
the stars flew to the sky. They danced and pulled the night into the view, and
the night did embrace the little stars with its own blinding light as they
twinkled so carelessly across the sheet of bedtime. Bedtimebedtimebedtime – my tears were as cold as the wind, cruel as
the blanket around my shoulders.
I did not understand how fickle and evil the world was until
then.
But I kicked,
roared,
fluttered,
breathed
until I felt wings behind me growing gradually with light. I
carried myself over the waves and in the air, suspended for a while so I could
watch the stars sway and so I could learn from them. I made them tug me to
land, and so I was like a moth to a flame but with more control. There was
nothing dangerous about the heat of the stars. There was only me.
I had sand in between my toes and the ocean in my hair as
the blanket bid me goodbye and trailed under the gentle waves. My ribs were
gone and maybe my heart fled away too, but I swore I could feel my heart like a
flame inside me. It was the fire that was life and not destruction that made my
eyes rife with ember. I could see the red and orange through the reflection of
the water – they reminded me of the books I used to read. They were fragile
pages of fantasy and mystery coalesced into a beautiful genre.
But then I was the fantasy and the mystery – a book yet to be
opened.
