Lovers

The lovers left me with soft wounds

So, I stood between the trees, listened to their whispers, telling me why these wounds smell of death's shadow, they said;

I have let my wounds rot in the palms of hope

I have let them suffocate from the healing truth, with bandaged hurt

And I have let my own shadow, become death itself

I then sowed a seed in the night

The lovers became dreams

I could taste my own blood on their hands, my eyes became black like the widow's soul, i knew i sought healing

Water came as a spirit, i washed my wounds, i was tired but i washed them clean

The lovers became doves, with twigs in their mouths that carried parts of me i had lost

The twigs fell to the ground, i went to collect myself once again

My shadow had starved, and i remember the fire that fed it

It was, my forgiveness, i forgave myself, for not listening to the lovers as they murmured, 'heal yourself'.

♥

Resonance

Bleed child, that's all you can do

Bleed the power he fails to see in himself

I know the knife he turns burns like slits of a self loathing queen

Revive his spirit in your screams, silence is too still for him

I know your eyes are suffocating with pictures of his face

As they slide between the pain that feels like eternity to you

Just Bleed, my daughter

I know he has cursed you with colours on your skin, reminders

Like pillows left pinned 

Cry it all out, i know the venom burns your cheeks

The wilting of your soul resounds demon moans crucified by the furies of hell

I wanted to soothe your wounds with honey as soon as i found you

Thinking maybe the pain will taste sweeter for a while

I carried you like an angel of death towards a light that seemed like despair

In my heart knowing, the pieces he has taken

Can only be found in the tears that wish to heal you

Bleed child, that's all you can do

For blood, is said, to have saved humanity a time ago!

Florencia

Strings, bells, voices

All weaving together as signs to the pilot who drives her

Seeing cracked faces like puzzles waiting to be fit, her hands fail to

‘I see martha, she wants to be friends again’ .. she says to her mother that passed two years back

Each of her fingers has a mind, she wants to touch her toy.

When she writes her homework, letters flying as she tries to ground them on paper

‘Here is your colouring book, darling’ ..points out her father with his eyes moving to his hands

Colours are black, paints are white.. she hates the thought of a classic life

‘I paint with them on the other side, not with all of you out here, even mother, I paint with her’..

Her tongue scrambling words that are too piercing to her father

She falls down, shaking like her broken core, she falls, but she is smiling

You see pain is the only thing she has known.. since she can remember

Rounded candy as she names it… numbs it down, makes her rise again to her playful nature

She plays piano, effortlessly, her release, she calls it the eyes to her world

She reads books, like layers of her favourite dress

The only time her smile fades is when sandy comes, whispering

‘blades, needles, they are the real fables, use them, freedom’

Lines then scatter across her skin.. mapping, directing and freeing an anger she fails to understand

‘Even if it’s on you, dad, she says its fine, you are also a fable’

Most of the gold frames she sees are in the gallery of her mind

She feels it whole, they see it fragmented

She is twelve, she says she is ageless

The Mysteries of the dunes

I felt the air wearing me like the sun does the dawn

Wrapping my dry body in a moist that was hard to touch, eating the air seemed possible

I’m thirsty, ’30 more miles then we shall see him’, said Azania.. but I’m too frustrated to capture this

Words would only make my mouth drier, reminding me of the metallic scented water we collected

Only drops remaining in the container that looked like a melting bottle

I’m talking in between my worries, the dunes seem like waves of an ocean now

My eyes are becoming too heavy to truly see that I’m in dry lands

The delusion was comforting, like hope is

Facing the east as I walked my fifth day on the desert sands

We saw the compound a hundred feet from where we stood..my feet desired to leave my body behind

All I was depending on was a single sentence

‘He turns dust into gold’.. this couldn’t be a riddle, I pictured him doing it

I saw him grabbing grains of sand, yellow crystals forming within the depth of his hand

I would see all of it, no magick, or potions this time, but reality bended to his will

He looked very normal, like any old arab man would, wrinkled with experience

With a mix of black and semi white as his hair, I thought he would be more fascinating

For a man who could do such amazing things, miracle would not suit such a deed, it was more

 We walked toward his shrine, my skin raising to the energy my body couldn’t contain

Or even question, let alone understand.. it felt like the levitation me and Azania tried before

Our shoes had to be by the mat,my feet were breathing for the first time in five days

 We had to chant ‘ure li bo gre’ before entering

To invite our spirits to be welcomed, the energy was sacred, my body felt even lighter

The container he held was like sapphire crystals carefully crushed on each other

It was really beautiful, I never thought a container could be so beautiful

The sand was not like the sand dunes, it was darker, but still looked like soil

His hands were vibrating, slowly, then he poured it in his right hand

His pupils changed from blue to a glowing black colour, reflecting a light that wasn’t even in the room

I stood there, with no thought, thinking just seemed like a foreign language I had no patience to learn

It was like all of us were stateless, like a particle that exists everywhere

I saw something like how a river would reflect a sun ray, yet, still absorbing it

The grains grew larger, heavier, his hand shaped like a globe

All of a sudden, it was like a gold foil solidified on each grain, each grain becoming the other

Four crystals formed, all this happened in front of my eyes

The size of each was of a pearl, even more delicately made

His name is Muhhad, he lives a simple life

He isn’t rich.. he says nature has all the richness beyond the gold he can make by hand

Dark Skin Child

They said her skin reminded them of their past, the one they wished to forget

The colour of the coals they carried, the whip that raided scars on their backs

The dark nights that lengthened their labour, their sadness

She had been born into a stagnant time, in which your skin was your crown, at times, a crown made of thorns, piercing her heritage with persecution

Pain was always associated with her colour, it brought tears to her mother, she swallowed them like bitters

Her aunt had told her that when she was born, people mourned silently with their faces

‘she be of dark skin child, darker than any we seen with the eyes’ .. they murmured

Giving gifts of sympathetic glances to a woman already in pain from labour 

All the children started work at the age of two, helping with their tiny hands

They had mistaken it for play, they enjoyed running around the rows of cotton plants

She would hear songs about redemption on the fields, soul soothing comforting songs about a lord that saved people, yet she saw a light skinned person on the portraits, with the skin tone of the man who would take her mother away and spread her thighs in front of her

Her conflict was like a birth mark, only it covered her whole body

They looked at her as a painful reminder of their daily struggles, inner battles that they dared not mention in words. They feared death, but she didn’t. Her life already resembled death

Most days she sat at the barn, milking cows, seeing how white the milk was, wishing her skin was the same, so she could smile, laugh and be greeted with the same happiness they showed to their master’s eyes. She was only 10 years old, but her existence seemed longer, her eyes, frail with sadness, the spark of innocent life, gone, forgotten to be emphasized

She was taught to hate her skin, herself. And that is what she did. Nobody was there to show her how the dark soils were moulded into beautiful clay pots to collect water, how the coals gave life to food.  How her skin was of ancient goddesses that were worshipped in early times

All they ever did was spit on her with looks of detest, as if she could hear every woman praying that their daughters never become such a tone, full of damnation and scrutiny, when the very same people that hated her, had a similar tone. She felt inferior like they did, they fed her a poison they claimed was running in her veins.

The last they saw of her, was in her writing, when she mentioned how she was going to town, to beg to be lynched. As her own kind, had killed her at birth.

Merania

She was born the day the sun was covered with a ball of darkness

The tribesmen used to call this mysterious happening the blood of the sun

It’s bleeding signifying a foreseen greatness within the clan, an ancient prophecy

It said a woman with the sky people’s blood, with marks of nature’s carvings on her back, a wind symbol, will give birth to this child, an old soul becoming of flesh.

The puzzle pieces laid before them could not fit, ‘this is a girl child’ they said. This could not be.

But the gods had willed this, a girl child is the life giver after all.

Course long hair covered her head. She was the last of her kind. An aquarius, the one who can speak with the wind

Her eyes became the colour of the water spirit goddess Meran, at the age of five, the colour of perennial rain

The name she was given was Merania, the wind goddess, the name now owned her

Her hair would sing when she was the happiest, the healer’s trail as they called it, marked her as the one who could save her people from being annihilated.

When she was seven, which in their numerology symbolised perfect growth, they took her to the forest where her feet had to meet with the wilderness, to fuse with her spirit and ground her fragility, she needed to remember  how to use her gifts, and the mother giver, nature, the earth womb, would teach her within the silence.

She spent 60days with what felt like her real family, speaking with other worlds masked as trees and flowers. She knew this is where she would build her home

This was a time when foreign men would kill people for land, she had to be the barrier, she had to speak with the wind to offer protection for her people

She would summon ancestors, ten feet spirits that could manifest physically, to scare the foreign men away, their metal sticks had no magick, her hands did. They could not penetrate the seal of love she had blanketed her tribe with. This seal was considered the strongest

In the dawn of what was supposed to be their winter equinox , the wind told her it was getting heavy because of the cold, so it would not be able to protect them as it has did before

The foreign men had found an entrance that was much further from the forest, she could smell the blood from her vision, innocent blood

Her hair began singing a very painful song, the one that was written on the stones, by the ancestors who had come across the same fate

The people of her tribe heard it, they were ready for what was coming, their bodies were of no meaning now, their souls knew where they were going

The smell of copper bullets raided them, smoke, blood, fused. Spears and arrows piercing hearts, it was war. Merania was having a spiritual one, her tears had become bullets to the ground

The wind whispered ‘it is done, child, become the air that has made you’

She fought harder, conjuring a wind storm killing hundreds of men at once.  The earth stood still when she opened her eyes, seeing a massacre of both her people and these men she regarded having wounded souls to have committed such a deed.

The household that included her mother, which had twenty people inside, was the only legacy left of their tribe, the Watchers.

Even with most dead, they knew they would see them in blossoming flowers, on fields sprouting of fresh grass, even on the rays of the morning sun

Their tribe was selfless, the love they had for each other, was stronger than death itself