Ringing Chimes

When you're downcast, and when you're crestfallen, don't look outside. Don't see the sun be the sun; it lowers into the trees and it boils down to the night. Think of the happiest things. Take a walk through the park, and see the people who sweat and breathe in the afternoon haze. See the hammers break the bricks down into miniature people and trains. And when the day kisses goodbye and the night is now a hue you try to digest, think of the quiet morning when you are all garbed in blank pages. The morning can be sweet. The morning can be a toothache.

Waking up, think of the happiest things. Rejuvenate yourself with dreams of bright flowers and lemon juice. Daydreams would be great, too. In the business of woolgathering, you better watch your hands. In the morning you yawn and everything is bleary, from the stretching of your limbs to the dawning of the sun. And it is now familiar—I know—the sadness that indents itself on your mind. It likes to stay awhile. But it will pass, like the day will. Your breaths may feel like they try to smother you every day. The day may feel inhuman. The world may feel bland. But these things shall pass, like your cough will. You'll escape the immorality of superficially happy walls. You'll find things worthy and terrifically nice. You'll find yourself feeling worthy and terrific and nice. There is light that can triumph the dark. It is the clipped secret of an eskimo kiss, but it is the most heart-warming and touching. And promising.

Don't you get it?

Ice Warrior

She is heading for the east, on instinct with a few memorized prayers in mind and a bittersweet lullaby. Soft lips linger on her hands, where blood is written over.

The vociferous susurration of the wind against her hair, against her ears drummed down into her – a poisonous feeling of not knowing where she is and knowing she should be recoiling with guilt.

But she still stomps over the ruins, over the ash, as she blanches and wills herself she isn’t going to faint. Her pulse rhymes with the wind, and the hush of the drag of her sword impales down on her like the world to Atlas. Yet it also encourages her to be who she is – a warrior of all things. Mayhaps the only female one at the time. It’s a horrendous thought but she will have to fight with it clouded in front of her eyes.

She lives vicariously through the gods.

The cold is like acid sinking into her bones. She looks for litanies to spew, but none come. She can feel the Winter, the Ice Spirit, pass through the trees; the spirit used to be accompanied by tasty rumors – the wildest one drawing the lads closer. Winter is a woman, they say – a mortal once, a writer had quipped. It began as a fantasy, but more and more people of all ages started to ride by and share what they had witnessed.

She is beautiful, they said. She is to be feared, some said.

The female warrior’s name is unknown. But she is known to strangers as Li – the dark, dauntless girl who is very acquainted with the evening stars. The willowy female warrior to be banished at the age of seventeen.

Li’s spine is caked with shivers and they run through her in a queue.

Winter’s breath is deadly, minty, lovely. She dances poignantly.

Li has her sword poised over her shoulder.

Winter washes over her and encompasses her in rest. But she doesn’t rest, she trudges.

Blueberry-shot Skies

You kick into a start and you can already feel the empty air shaping your words and wrapping itself around your exhausted limbs. The world withers and the birds fly thirsty. The world is dying crumbling with corruption you dont know how to hide from the storm. Your guitar heart turns on and off until your face is now covered with shadows. The bruises everywhere remind you of the tear ducts ripping off and your weak weak weakness. In the valley you are lonely and deserted and your story is now tied up and waves at the debris by the road. The lines are drawn and the shotgun is pointed somewhere here or there you break because youre breakable and fragile and uneven. The voices mingle with your head with your nerve cells with your strings. You feel the cuts you feel the drops you feel the PAIN. You write on PAPER from pen to pen and jab jab save save save as then maybe youll fall out of place again and again over and over again because you you cant seem to understand the ways of bliss and original elements. Time is a damn obligation you hate to meet and curfew is nearing but you stand alone stand stand alone in that tiny spot in the corner because just because you know the depression of your veins is hard to bail. You cling to the remains of bones of life and you dont know how to collect and keep without losing while feeling. Emotion emotion emotion turns away and kisses the darkness you built around you for troubled safety and separation from the serpents lying outside. control. Control. Hurricanes break the cement under you and bind the webs underneath together.

You hate the smell of life and the taste of dullness so from branch to branch you kill and die.

Welcome Danger

So tragic.

The slash of one’s sword on concrete, scratching the snowy road, spirits using their inaudible vocal chords to reach the haunted realms of the heavens. What just happened?

Glitter in the air, sparkly, slow and soothing. Sweet on the taste buds. Breathe in, breathe out.

She is reticent, great with shocking optimism yet her façade is exhausted. Flesh scarred with fresh wounds, her bones stutter and ache within every move she constructs, threatening to crack and shatter like glass.

Her fingertips – kissed by the hard-hearted weather, waiting to be put together. Freezing her to her ribcage. Breathe in, breathe out – ouch.

Her shoulders high, no time for stooping. Stay awake, stay awake. Breathe in, breathe out – ouch.

She is dying. I’m dying, I’m dying. She is dying. She is dying. I’m dying.

Am I not?

But it stops there.

Her alive, beating, beautiful heart, warm and thumping with adrenaline, is caged – locked – like a wild animal in the only thing that keeps her moving. The only thing that keeps her breathing like she should. The only place where she can really find her strength:

Hope. It is a dangerous thing.

It echoes inside her emptiness, bringing contentment. Her wild, wide, crazed, open eyes glow with it – hope. Her lips are dry yet firm with the word – hope. Her ears are deaf with the wails of it – hope. She can’t stop thinking about it –

hope.

She’s back in the game.