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Damned Hearts

Another day, another time. Waking up wasn’t easy, wasn’t as simple as any other day. I needed to get up, but the blinding light of the hologram was before me, chaining me to the bed. I allowed it, tracing the color of her hair with my eyes, the sleeve of her jacket, the symbol on the ship behind her. 

The blinds rose on their own, filling the room with light. The sharp edges of the hologram faded a little then rallied, and the picture became a little brighter. It annoyed my fresh eyes quite a bit, and yet I couldn’t look away, couldn’t lose this.  

The anger in my stomach rose, the leaden weight of her death, the lack of numbness, depression and all the sadness in me closed around my chest and although my eyes were tired of crying, they cried anyway. I turned over, not being able to look at that stupid photo anymore. Not being able to see her eyes and face and believe she’s dead. As they all are.

Of all the people I had to lose, she was the one I couldn’t live without. 

The flowers has started to grow over the graves, getting into the dirt and staying there. I didn’t mind, it was better this way, they would have liked it like this.

I cleaned off the morning rain and grit from the gravestone before me. Staring at the name embedded into the stone, I started to trace the letters with my fingers but snatched my hand away quickly, that was bad luck after all. 

I immediately felt even worse, anger buzzing in me without fizzing out. Who cared if I got bad luck, who cared if I traced every damn name in the graveyard, they weren’t here to stop me. No one was. 

I’m not buried, I’m not dead, I walk this world. I stand before the graves of those who have fought with me, those who laughed and drank and loved with me.They left me. I swallowed my words around the sound of my pounding heartbeat thundering through my ears. My hands were clenched tight and I wondered what my old friends would say now. 

What would everyone think of me? Would they be saddened or ashamed at my behaviour, would they be angry or would they have sympathy. I wished they were alive to be all those things and more, I wished I wasn’t like this. I wouldn’t be like this if they would just live. If she hadn’t died. 

I couldn’t breath, I knew I looked fierce and terrible all at once, as if I could command an army and perform executions in a single breath. I wasn’t supposed to be here, it wasn’t supposed to be here, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. 

I could see the world start to blur around me as tears came to my eyes. My face scrunched up and I clenched my teeth in anger, before I started to smooth my face out. I sighed as tears fell on the grave before me. The tide of anger had passed, the numb depression had come back. All I wanted was to just go back home and crawl into bed and never coming out again, but I couldn’t move. It was as if I was rooted to the spot before her grave, like another one of her beautiful flowers, left there to wilt. 

I swallowed once before sighing again, there were no tears left for me to cry today, I should just leave before I made a mess of everything again. But no, I promised I would come, every single day until I couldn’t take it anymore. 

If nothing else was left in this world, all I had left was my word. 

Kneeling down on the packed dirt, I plucked flowers, twisting their stems into flower crowns while I started to talk. 

 

I distantly realized, I was crying. The pounding of my heart drowned out every other sound. 

What had gone wrong, where was she, why wasn’t she here. I did what I had to, she had to come back now. The ritual was complete. I knew I shouldn’t have, balance was never something to mess with, but I couldn’t stand being here without her. She had to come back, I couldn’t do this without her. 

“Please, please, forgive me.” I called out again. I didn’t care if she never forgave me, as long as she was alive to hate me, it would be worth it. We had all tried so hard to save this world, we had bled and sacrificed and never gave into the odds, why couldn’t she live then. After everything, why did she have to be the one to die. 

The swirls of the stark white mist around me stood out against the darkness, deep enough to swallow me whole. She should have come out, come back with me. 

She never did and I came back alone, having to pay the price for my foolishness.  

 

Light filtering through the trees, dancing with the shadowing and swaying in the wind, the scene looked like one from a movie, wisteria blossoms floating along the breeze, in and out of sight. The nightmare had yet to end. Dreams were as real as the mind made them to be and she knew them best of all, the unreality of shadows, the crazy colors, the changing scenes, nothing new. 

She watched peacefully as the shadows danced on the dirt floor, the wind whistled and the shadows deepened. One could never tell what was wrong with the scenery around them, until it was too late. The mind lied, trying to trick itself into security, but the devil could never come through on his promises. She turned away from the blossoms just as they started to change color and drip red.  

Before the story came to an end she looked for the fireflies, but none came out before the end. Yet It was already time to come out, she thought there was a way out now, and she had to take it before the story ended, before the scene changed, before the shadows deepened. 

Nothing was truly left behind here, and she had never truly left, but she could go regardless. She thought there was someone calling her. It was time, and yet the world didn’t wait, she had to press forward, into the darkness she slipped as the shadows swallowed her whole. 

 

“Don’t worry, well get there soon. They’ll take care of you.” She didn’t question it, he didn’t seem like a bad person, really. He had found her after she had stumbled out of the darkness that was filled with white mist, the wrinkled old man with unfocused eyes helped her. He lead her into the town, down the streets, towards the Center.  

The Center, where they took in everyone regardless of past. People who wanted to work, homeless who littered the streets, the young that had no family. The Center was for the lost, and she was lost. 

All she hoped for now was a home.   

 

“Yeah, I understand.” No she didn’t, but she wasn’t about to tell him that, or anyone. She didn’t want them to think she was stupid. Didn’t want them to discard her like she was worthless, she wanted to know, but more than that, she wanted to show them she was obedient. 

She grabbed the clothes handed to her and set out for the changing area. There were already scores of kids already lounged in uniform around the gym. She took the change room just as someone else came out and did her best with the uniform, getting distracted by the material, claps and the fact that she finally had time alone, for however brief it was. 

She recited the rules to herself, to keep reminding herself, to remember, to know something. 

“One, no eating, unless food is expressly given by government chefs. Two, eyes down face forward, don’t look at the staff in the eye. Three, always go to class, do not get caught being late. Four, don’t drink anything and don’t ask to drink anything. Five, do not go near the fence, death is not kind, nor are people.”

The rules dictated the world she now lived in. She knew there would be more later, more rules, more punishments, more work. She knew things would get worse. And yet, as long as the rules weren’t looked at too closely they were easy to follow. Five simple easy rules made for obedient workers, and obedience is all they wanted.

At least she was alive to be obedient.

 

The curve of her face was beautiful in the moonlight. She was smiling, and though I only saw half of it, I knew she was as beautiful as I remember. 

The tight feeling in my chest almost brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t help but feel it’s been too long, and not long enough since everything happened between us. After all this time, I couldn’t understand how I still felt this way, but I knew I would for the rest of my life. 

God, but she didn’t even remember, though I did. I knew all that had happened between us: Everything we lost, everything we faced together, and all of that was lost to her. It killed me sometimes that she couldn’t even be slightly like her old self, though she was her in all the ways that counted. 

I swallowed and reached out, it was time, wasn’t it?

“Hey, been a long time, huh? What are you looking at?” My smile was fake, but it mattered that I smiled right. She wouldn’t know of my pain, and I had to protect her, from myself if nothing else. 

She smiled so easily at me, as if nothing ever happened, as if I was forgiven. God, all I could think about now is how I can feel my own heartbeat. A life for a life, she just didn’t know what was coming for me. I wasn’t about to tell her. I wasn’t ready to apologize, not yet, I just needed a little more time. 

Thank you for being alive, I thought, as she started to point out the fireflies. Thank you for being here with me.

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An Act of Redemption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis

Then.

Marco was someone who looked back. Constantly. Like it was a compulsion that he couldn’t hold back. It was always at the same point, at the end of the same thing. The battle finished, the world ahead and the bodies of brothers behind.

The sorrow in his eyes, the glass and steel to his frame. Marco looked upon the broken battle field and searched. Some would say he looked for meaning in the slaughter, or for a brother to rise and struggle back to the arms of his comrades, covered in blood or not. Perhaps he looked back and thought of his future. Of how his past continued to repeat, of how his brothers continued to die around him, like the season always coming and going.

There was so much to do now, but Marco always thought with everything ahead and the world so terribly unkind, he felt like a blind man. Feeling his way around and hoping not to run into the hell of darkness where his brothers awaited. He knew he would figure it out, everyone kept saying so. He knew things would fall into place; everyone kept saying so.

The light he hoped to turn to at the end, the light of the blind faith he had, in the ideals pushing onto him since birth. The light he hoped would be there. His brothers by his side to fight for it, because nothing in this life that was worth it would come easily; he knew he had a future still before him.

He knew, looking back he knew, with a hope he knew he didn’t have anymore, that he could die tomorrow. He could be the one to never come back from torn battle fields, he could be the one laying beside his brothers, never to march again. His ghosts gone, his memory failed. He was being haunted, but that had nothing to do with the presence of the dead and everything to do with the memory of the living.

Marco closed his eyes. Looking back at the broken bodies of brothers never lifted the weights dragging down his breathing, or helped the cold he felt in his soul, never warmed by any fire. He wondered if there would be time to find happiness. He wondered if he would ever forget the battle fields etched into his memory or the bodies beneath the rubble.

Marco marched forward and wondered if he would ever be able to be blinded by the light again, when he felt lost, running around in shadows.

Now.

This child, on seas longer and harder than any man should weather, knows pain. Knows loss, knows the burning of cities, the sound flesh makes as it meets a sword, the cries of the dying. This child, some would say, is tragedy. All wrapped up in survival and terrible loss.

He sits, quite as midnight, on the end of the bunk, eyes staring, eyes broken, eyes like ice and steel.

“Why are you on my ship?” Is the first thing I asked him, and the boy shrugged his bony shoulders. “That’s not quite an answer.” I told him in response, but truly I didn’t expect him to speak. He reminded me too much of frightened animals to expect anything but a bite from any reaching hand. The boy had sharp teeth and sharper claws, hiding around there somewhere, his survival depended on it.

The rocking of the ship punctuated the silence. I watched the waves outside my porthole window and wondered at what would help. Would I be able to say anything that would strike a chord? Would I be able to do something to help someone I thought needed my help? Would I be able to give anything up, of a heart too weary and cold to give up anything?

“You know, the fall of Troy was a long time ago, it’s been many years, but one never forgets such tragedies. The honor that was stolen from men who decided to do depravities far beyond anything they ever should have done.” If Marco looked back at the boy, he would see the twist of his face, the tightening of bone and muscle.

“I wasn’t there, I wasn’t anywhere, really. Everyone is lost at some point, I think. Not everyone finds themselves. Here out on the seas, it’s everyone and everything that surrounds you that counts. You’re in a place where the world is bigger than you are and every day you can feel it. If you died this day, your body would be left to turn to sand, to dust under the sea and there would be nothing.” A tightening around the corner of Marco’s eyes, that was all the story the boy needed to see.

“In this world, there is steel and there is strength and there is everything in between. You can die fighting to get to shore before you drown, or you can die fighting with fire; with your brothers by your side. There are so many ways the dark can take you and the light can blind you, but there will always be the in between. Where you can find yourself, where you can make a home with the lovers and those that lost and those that can give you everything.”

The boy watched as Marco looked at the porthole and never turned to him. The boy stilled as Marco talked. The ugly turn of emotion, the twisting, withering mass of dark things in him. The bitterness, the hatred, the lack of light and the blinding clarity that the world is a messy, terrible place. All of that out in the open, all of that and more.

The boy watched, and the boy learned, and the boy saw that Marco was something else. Someone else that could be like him. That had been like him. Regret, anger, fear, loss, uncertainty. Everything Marco was showing to him and something more. Something that looked like redemption from the loneliness. Something that looked like hope, fluttering in a dark cage.

He didn’t know why he was on this ship, why he was sitting on this bunk, why he was staring at this man, but he knew that there was something he had to acknowledge now between them. Something that Marco had put out there in the open. Something that could kill him and save him. He knew that this decision, this moment, could last forever in his memory and could never be forgotten, not by him, not now.

“My name is Theseus.”

 

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Towards the End

Mary looked up and saw the sky, never ending in all directions, filled and filled with the dark of the birds and the butterflies. Flying and flying, like soldiers into battle they were always heading towards the end, their end. They never stopped, all of them going at it, as if it was their duty.

She walked faster, she needed to get to the shop, now. A sky filled was a bad omen after all, on the blood moon it was just so much worse. There were feathers falling and falling from the sky, a few dead butterflies joining in. Mary walked by three in one sidewalk block and immediately started to run. Bad omens indeed.

The shop in the brick wall was as it always was to those that could see it. It still had the strange writing on the shop door and the windows were very much covered, the closed sign always there for those that bothered to see it.

Mary didn’t bother with the key and barged straight through the wood of the door, which was quite rude to the wood who bristled and shuddered in her wake. She winced, “sorry for intruding, that was rude of me,” she whispered to herself. Deciding to give it a good shinning later, it didn’t deserve her rudeness with all that it kept in.

The shop was in complete disarray, the books had taken refuge on the ceiling for all the good that it did and the charms were barfing in the corner, their magic making a lot more things than rainbows. There was a black hole on the far wall and a white hole on the opposite wall, gravity had became optional, which wasn’t good for any of the antiques on the ground level, they were temperamental as they were.

As Mary came in the shop flew into more of a tizzy than it already was, dust and books flying around her, the cleaning supplies wouldn’t settle down. She covered her head as she headed for the backroom, the best time to leave would be now and she needed to set in the navigation’s.

Stepping in various piles of poisonous glitter that started to resemble mold, Mary took out her keys and shoved it into the blessedly magic-proof lock. She twisted it in and stepped towards the navigation charts easily enough. The door slammed shut behind her and Mary whirred around to see numerous other locks settling into place. Those weren’t there before, but she had no time to do anything about it.

Mary turned to the maps and took out the pixie powder and radioactive salt. With the infinity gems they worked perfectly to scatter all over the maps in small, mesmerizing waves. A little flicker of dark swirling smoke from her fingertips and they were off on the magical hunt to find another location, with better omens and clearer skies.

She didn’t quite get what she wanted though.

The light of several moons greeted her as she peeked outside her door, it was brighter than day outside, though the night had stars that shinned distantly they didn’t greet her here. Mary swallowed and closed the door, if this was the best the shop could come up with then the worst has come to be.

The shop was now on its best behavior, Mary wasn’t in her best temper getting to the door and hadn’t cared much for its method of trying to get her attention. With everything in its place getting to the counter was easy and finding a newly placed map there was easier. It did try running at one point but the medical kit under there decided to betray its location.

The map itself was special enough that even Mary didn’t like it. The map spoke to her and not even in the ignorable whispers that spoke of death and eating glittery souls, no it was annoying questions which Mary knew better than to answer anyway.

“You know where the broom is and yet you don’t do anything about it, is that even a wise decision? Don’t you want to know where your sanity went? Do you want to find the memories about what happened to the girl in the lost glass? You miss the white lady, want to know where she is? You started the bad omens and don’t even know how, don’t you want to know the answer?”

The voice that came from the map never stopped asking questions, and the map itself never stopped moving The only way to use it was to start asking the right questions, so it started asking the right questions. The real danger was finding yourself in the questions. Mary had found herself to many times to like the map.

“Where am I? Why am I here? What am I going to find? When will I find it? Why will I find it here?” Mary was shouting by the end of it, because getting her questions mixed up and not started with W could be very bad for her.

The map finally started going down to whispers and mutters and finally started showing her a location. There was a dot on the map, near the shop, and it seemed to be getting closer, but then collapsed as in the dot got smaller and stopped moving.

This all struck Mary as a little peculiar and very much suspicious, as this dot didn’t even make it to her front door before collapsing. It didn’t even have the decency to come collapsing into her shop door in a shocking and very unsettling way. Now Mary would have to go out there, how rude.

Sighing and resigned to her fate, Mary stepped out the door, ready for anything as any shop keeper would be.

 

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Barren in More Ways Than One

To have a heart filled to bursting. To look at another and know – just know. How romantic, how beautiful, how otherworldly and something so devoid of reality.

I pretend to know heart break, of shattering under loss and what it’s like. To let love go and watch it never come back. Can I truly know, can I truly understand, can I truly ever feel the rhythm of another heart, beating alongside mine, with mine, connected? And can I ever let that go?

Our hearts are easy to lose, easy to wear thin, and it’s even easier to keep it forever. Enough time that even it gets sick of staying in a chest, locked away. With a key that never gets taken by anyone else.

We don’t stay young forever. Our souls don’t always have that innocent shine to them and we don’t always give our heart out, when we do shine; more brighter than the sun.

I don’t know why. I just know we don’t have much time, but in the end, in that little something, we had something going – something special I wouldn’t give the world for.

All along in a dreary, forlorn world of hunger we had something. Something between us and for us, only us. We were the only ones in the world for the shortest of times. And we didn’t hate it. Did the opposite of hating each other, which might have been worse but by god I wish that what it was now.

Because all I see when I close my eyes is you. Forever and always you – as if every memory we’ve ever had is etched into my heart and soul and we were all that’s left.

I wanted so much more together, we could have had anything – and now nothing, but I didn’t care as long as we had each other. Our arms wrapped around each other and everything in between us.

You looked more beautiful, in that moment, in our bed, than I have ever seen you.

I have seen you in the moonlight, scantly clad in the river and joyous in every line of your body, you were beautiful then as you are now. I have seen you in the light of day with the wind washing away the hair from your face, sunlight highlighting the best parts of you and your eyes slowly coming to meet mine. I feel as if I have seen every inch of you and yet I have seen nothing at all.

The many moments between us lead to me wondering about the way your hair would feel, the way your body would feel, the way your lips would feel against mine. The very moments between us stretch onto infinity in my memory and I find when I meet your eyes, I cannot look away. I wonder if its as difficult for you as it is for me.

There is something lost between us and I know it. I watch from afar as you dance away, in the grasp of someone else, in the hold of another, in a way I cannot come near. I have never felt so numb with fear.

You have something and I wonder constantly what it would take for me to touch it, just a piece of the light to hold within my grasp. You are something I have never wanted to lose and everything that cannot be mine. Watching you now, I wonder if our worlds will always be apart because even if I’m on the other side of a mirror watching you become something more; I wonder about our hearts and everything in between.

They watched the flowers in the dark; the moment between them wasn’t made of solitude or even gratitude. This moment was one of unsaid words, of watching each other before looking away into a night that could swallow anyone.

The immortal looked back at her and said, in a voice that meant he wanted to stop hurting,” how can you bare to be mortal?”

She didn’t turn to look at the curve of his face; She felt a crushing breathlessness in her chest instead and stopped to take a breath. Her shoulders hunched in, her hand still trembling from thumb to index finger, she thought before speaking.

“Some days I can’t bare it. I look at everyone around me. I think about how I belong. I feel the home I have now down to my very bones, it’s with me and keeps me warm, drives me on; and I can’t bare to die.” She looked at him then, at the pain in his beautiful eyes.

“But I am mortal and that certainty hangs over me. I could die gloriously in battle or asleep surrounded by friends, I could die today or tomorrow, or even at the stroke of midnight. It wouldn’t matter, what would matter is how, is why. My death would only mean something because I lived, because I found my home and because I loved and because I lost.” She stopped then and for a long time not one of them spoke.

He could feel the weight of her mortality now as if it was on his own shoulders. Weights that might have felt like chains in one moment and blessings in the next. He knew mortality, but had never felt it before. He knew death, but had never embraced it himself and now, now he felt strangely adrift from words with far more wisdom than they should have. He knew nothing at all.

“You know.” She started again, staring at her hands in the darkness, her fingers running over each other.

“Your going to have many, many moments before you. We mortals, we have our stories, just as you have yours, and ours are far shorter. One day we turn into paintings and tales and mothers and fathers, but I am watching the stars stretch on and breathing fresh air. Right now, I am not history or a forgotten memory. I am alive, with you, and in this moment, we are infinite.”

Her eyes were wide, were beautiful, were heartbreaking, and with gentleness that belied the way he trembled, he sat beside her and took the curve of her face into his hand; wishing for eternity, though it was granted to him.

He knew he had to let her go, let her be forever free, she was never anything that could be held for long. Some birds were never meant to be kept in a cage, but he loved her more than anything.

His heart was already breaking, turning to grief. He just wanted, knowing he could not have the heart connected to his, beautifully beating. For this instant they were otherworldly and devoid of reality, for they had everything between them.

His heat was lost and wearing thin, it knew of heartbreak, of shattering under loss, of letting love go and watching it never come back, of staying in a locked away chest the key lost from grief.

When he closed his eyes then, when he leaned into her, still trembling, she shushed him gently and held on. “I love you,” he wanted to whisper, but the words never left his lips.

All he saw when he closed his eyes was her, every moment of her, etched into his heart, with everything in between. He loved and loved and knew eventually it would be time to let go. Knew with everything that cried within him, their moment would end, and the rest of history, beginning

He loved more closely than the rays of the sun

On her cheekbones in the morning.

Looking and feeling more keenly

he could never imagine it felt like this.

 

A dance, with whirls and spins,

with the briefest of eye contacts.

With everything between them.

 

In the height of passion

He wonders what you would do with his heart.

With the beating rhythm that holds you captive,

never lets you forget, remember the infinity of this moment.

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Chained

 

 

https://hiveminer.com/Tags/shackles%2Ctorture/Recent

Rain and shine

the water was divine

there was fire in my soul

they had encompassed me whole

 

I only wished to see, to say, to show

the lonely nature of my foe

long gone was my spine

a coward stood before me

 

fleeing in the dead of night

a face hidden by shadows and a deadly fright

there was no end in sight

there was no future before me

 

Life, Laughter, Love

gone to a deadly poison the mind alight

In terrifying fright

once again the end was no where in sight

 

Waiting, Watching, Wanting

I couldn’t help but see

there was more to me

but there was no one to see

 

Falling, Failing, Fearing

I couldn’t do it

the coward I see

stuck in the mirror in front of me

 

I couldn’t flee

wishing to light my face without the dark

I wished to see the end

there was no end for me

 

I only wished to know, to say, to show

my foe had gotten the best of me

broken and spineless

a lonely fool stood in front of me

 

Fires and lies

they had no hold on me

my soul was alight in failing might

the light was swallowing me whole

 

https://hiveminer.com/Tags/shackles%2Ctorture/Recent

This poem was made from a feeling of loneliness that goes away and sometimes doesn’t. This was something that can go into determination or anger, it feels like shackles. Writing about an emotion like this, makes it easy to turn into something vague and something big and scary to something not big and scary. Either way its good material.