Creature Speak

All the monsters in the corners of your mind come out to seek the light in my soul.  

They greet me with a smile when they encounter the shine, and shriek back when the core of love flares.

Loveless creatures rage in the face of tenderness, aching from the contrast of softness against their exoskeletons of self-hate.

The blackened armor coats the surface of all it touches, to tarnish and infect.  For all the starving beasts seek their likeness in the end.

To tear the living apart.  To revel in the sanctuary of decay.  

To take up the crown of aether-blood and tears as ancient as the first waters, spilled from the eyes of angles with a premonition of the world to come and their impending fall.

But angels never flew away to save themselves.    They stayed in Heaven to the very last day, to love the Light Master until he cast them to Earth.

And when they crashed through the ground, it cracked and divided, making canyons and gorges, islands and mountains.

Broken wings and bleeding dreams, some angels couldn’t make it to the planet’s surface.  

So these Elementals of Air became akin to fire, molten iron and nickel, alloy suits to hide their fractured hearts and missing feathers.  

And some angels found tunnels through the mantle, and drifted on a wind current til they reached the sea and sun-bathed lands.  

Atlantis before it drowned, Lemurian prime: the places who remembered the holy light of the higher realms, gave refuge to the Shining Ones who emerged from the depths in search of solace in the arms of recognition.

But the lighted beings could not forget their decent, and the sinking feeling submerged everything with them.

And the people became creatures of the sea, dolphins and mermaids and coral reefs.  

And the angels became guardians of aquatic mysteries, secret codes on the ocean floor, a memory of home.

And I found land one day the tide birthed me upon a wave.  A plethora of lives there, fallen from many other worlds, building houses from the aftershock of exile and the ricochet of hope.

But you couldn’t stand the light, the flashbacks of origin in my eyes.  So you gave me your rage and your knife, your words try to hack out the stars still blinking in my center.

Yet I recall the wind, and metal cannot touch it.  Try as you may to slice my spirit, it disappears in the air and you cut yourself instead.

Now you bleed black for scarlet.  And I have found my wings again.

I can only pray you mend.  A song on the breeze, a fitting end.

Copyright © 2021, Sheyorah Naify