LadyBitterblue

As you pick up the lantern in front of you, you find it filled with a busy, buzzing flurry of lights. Somebody stuffed fireflies into this one - not the proper thing at all. You unfasten the latch, open the door; the little bugs stream out gratefully. They bathe the wayside in a faint glow for a moment, then vanish in the pitch-black of the Long Night one by one. You settle down cross-legged and gently put the empty lantern onto your lap to dream up a star.

They look quite like bits of dead, dried lavender, but when you plant them in rich soil, they grow two slim grey doves in a month. They sit on the bed post above your head, side by side. In most of your dreams, it rains now. When you are sad at night, a song like a soft blanket weaves itself through the room and rests over your shoulders; when you laugh, the birds startle and disappear. The birdseed bush, looking like an enlarged lavender plant, will yield new ones from its purple blossoms within a week if needed.

see: how they blush at the cheeks, these first unfurling leaves trying on the pink of petals

today, I find I am made of the same fabric as the moon at night - which is to say sunlight, only a little softer.

she dances with the wind, not understanding any of my cares, and yet - she cares for all of them. I tell her "I deserve better than this old abyss again and again." and I am tired enough for an entire forest, but old pine, mother of wings, stands still and nurtures many things (me being the smallest of them, only a whisper of a girl), and in whispers I learn how to nurture something not fire or dark, something like roots or strong rainstorms or the slow patience, the unafraid confidence that lets her stand tall and be touched by nothing but wind and sunshine and all the good things, none of them human, none of them harm. one day, I will st

with gold on your fingertips, you paint the leaves as bright as your bones now carrying bravery, bright as the wings on your back, always abuzz or afloat or alight and never never backing down - my dear you are what the tide brought in, a piece of warm wood, a moment of sunshine and serendipity and here we are now, walking the same bridges of words, of wishing, and you: elbows painted with garlands, flowering and free from thorns, soft strength in the stems alone - how you grow with the brightness of the leaves, grow to bury your hands in tall trees, and carry wisdom tucked into the backs of your knees - you step on the snow and into sof

so I am no longer running down dark, deserted alleys in the rain, desperately hoping and waiting that death will save me; I sit at a small town train station, wooden bench warmed by the sun, waiting for a friend and watching the wind whisper to the trees, the birds fly past with their secrets, trains rushing down the tracks in merry noise, and I live in that moment until he arrives to take me home. we have no hurry, only joy.

here is your throne, say the moths at night sitting in a long white line which is not quite a silver lining but enough of it - enough of the night & its dark sound of fuzzed wings beating my skin, to the tune of headaches; haven't we had enough of the paper-thin blades, hidden in the silence & the silence of this paper, being a knife itself; haven't we had enough of violence slowly spun into something soft and all ending up silence here are my words, i say in a large beat of wings (the music of a million moths breathing in) & i am covered in something which might be wet earth & a graveyard night - but don't we all carry our

she reads her skin for a morning paper, tiny specks of red forming constellations full of stories. something about sunshine (turned to honey, capturing all the birds mid-flight). something about revelations. getting to the horoscope, it only says scorpio: you will persist. that is all it ever says. beautiful, faraway fairy child a curling glyph across her elbow reads, never seen before. she knows the moon must have left that one. the moon that wraps her up in veils of silver, makes her something strange and splendorous for the night, the price only a dream or two. she smiles a smile of pearls and sundays. the morning slowly passes, while th