I built myself up from deep under ground but it isn’t enough to contend with night. The monsters and ghouls cannot bare the light of a new day when their eyes have been sewn shut for ages by their own hands. A needle to pierce the flesh of tender eyelids and turn them hard with the threads of fear. Then come the demands, the strands of illusion to be forced upon me. The creatures beg me to take the needle to my own skin, still flush with life. You cannot be a real girl, they say. Beating hearts cannot stay here. You cannot bring the water of your tears to our arid lands. You cannot bring the fresh air of feeling to our musty basements, oxygen to our suffocated cells. Let the poison in and it will change what you are. Become a living scar, dancing in the shadows cast by the moon, creeping in the corners of eyes afraid to dream. Hide inside the pain in chests and twisted knots in bellies of the living, convincing them that they are you, for that is what monsters do. Fight the binding of your soul to half-life and you will bleed, for all creatures have to feed. No, I say! I shall not fight, but rise instead, like mountains and tides. Like broken birds who relearn to fly. To reach so high I touch the sun who does not burn me but gifts me fire to streak the sky with. And I will paint the sky in glow of purple and rose, and dab the night with stars. And I will bring the light to your scars that they be made soft again in the kiss of compassion from the gentle wind of my wings. The feathers of gentle love to brush your cheek. The silent song of forgiveness to touch your heart that you may wish to live again. Copyright © 2021, Sheyorah Naify
Art: Dance of the Firebird by Energy ART.
Creature Speak 