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.”

 

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.

 

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.

A New Need for Escape

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/569564684115409517/
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me unafraid.
– William Ernest Henley, Invictus

The only thing left of the new day was the sunlight filtering through the dark, blood red, window stained glass. Everyday there was nothing new to that glass; no dirt, no mess, no blood, no real color to make it pop and stand out. But everyday there was nothing left to look through, just a dark hole in the end blending into the ash black wall .

He picked the book back up out of the shelf, the same one he read every day in this hell hole. There was nothing else given to him. How could he survive without this one little page turner, splitting at the seams. It grounded him, rooted him to the ground like a pole. Made sure his sanity didn’t fly away with him.

“You are powerful but your not god, you have no control over the miserable lives of men. Don’t ever think your responsible for the death you cannot prevent, don’t place that burden on your shoulders, you’ll never come out from under it. Its too much for any mere mortal to have.”

He could almost hear the voices. Strong; unyielding, even when they cried out from a place filled with tears and wrath. They called out to him and as long as he had that head on his shoulders he couldn’t help but feel they would always be with him, forever. Probably the only thing that could make him smile in his bare spartan room.

The book wasn’t as good as many others he had read over the years, but weeks in this place and with this the only book he had, he now found it his favorite. Yet it also represented every moment he spent in his captivity with this book his only companion. He chose to love the only thing he had, rather than throw it away any time soon. He couldn’t afford to throw it away.

The story depicted inside and the heroes that called for justice, the people that had been uplifted from tyranny, the villains beaten and never to be found. The book didn’t give him hope like he wanted it to, no it reminded him or his family, of his life before, of his loving wife. Well, she didn’t love him enough not to sell him out.

They never told him why he was here, they never told him where he was exactly, they never told him why they took him, only who sold him out. He didn’t even know who they were. There were so many questions to ask and no answers at all. All he knew was that his lovely wife had gotten something out of him being here, he didn’t care to know what. the monotone of the days were only broken when he first got here and he had to go through test and tests, still not knowing what they wanted from him.

Now they only came to give him food and slide it through the hole in the wall, he was left to his own devices and nothing more happened to him. That day was no different, he wanted the people to come back and he wanted to just fall into his book and the story and never come out. He only got one of his wishes.


They watched as the man laid back down on his bed and started to reread his book, they took notes on his condition and didn’t interfere. They watched until the screens suddenly started to black out one, by one. the image of the man no longer being projected onto the screen. Some of them started to panic, others called the guards.

Only one reached his cell in time to watch the red light of the sunset stop reflecting off the wall, to watch the window become a dark abyss. A wife of one year watched as the newly-written-off-as-deceased husband faded like a ghost as the light faded from the room, plunging it into a deep black.

Shock started to grip her heart. Part of her was panicking and incoherent, but she was calm if enraged and calculating. She turned to the statue still guard beside her, her lips thinning and her face hiding a pale, calm rage.

“Find him. What ever it takes.” The guard didn’t answer her but instead started to move, back down the pristine corridor to the multiple doors and bars and traps.

The woman stood there, hanging in the door way and staring into the pitch black room. Her eyes catching onto the little shapes in the dark and the shifting shades of black. She didn’t say anything, but a quiet triumph went through her. She was right in every back deal, every phone call and every decision she made regarding her terribly different husband.

She was right and it scared her.

Dear

Dear Death,

You’ve given us lots. I know appreciation of the other sentient beings in this large, vast place because your here to make our time limited. What would we do with all that time if it weren’t so small. There are a lot of things upon here, I won’t lie. Life has given us as much as I’m sure you’ll give us. I just know we won’t be bored or lonely and that means a lot.

I can’t imagine how I would continue to go on and never stop. I’ve never wanted to be immortal. Maybe others have and on this journey called life they would learn that maybe they don’t want to be. People are scared to come into your care, that I know, the unknown has always frightened us, yet who even knows though. It’s all just a merry go round and only you know when we come off, don’t you?

I continue to wonder about your relationship with life. Who are they to you? Are you friends? Just happy with each other and chatting amicably every time life gives you gifts? Or are you terrible enemies where you steal all the souls and sparks you can get? I truly hope not, I want you two to get along even if that means just being acquaintances. We all feel like there’s more to you that meets the eye. Your a complete mystery to us and also not at all. Regardless of all that though, I may not know you well but, I want the best for you, after all that’s happened.

Time gives us some very slow dances and some fast swings around the ballroom; we think their friends with you. We won’t ask for another dance, it’s not for us I believe. Are there many of you around this ball room? Some say they’ve taken many dances with you though I don’t remember having any yet. Until then, just know of the appreciation you have. The love so given to you, your just something else you know?

Sincerely,

Mortals

https://www.stereogum.com/1628522/the-10-best-grateful-dead-songs/franchises/10-best-songs/

 


Dear Universe,

There are many things I want to say to you and many things I don´t. You are someone who I don´t think about often to be honest. Only in those small moments that strike like lightning and without warning. As someone who lives, much smaller than you, I want you to know that I love that your here and that you can be someone I can look toward. Sometimes in anger, sometimes in love, but mostly in wonder.

I always try to find the time to wonder at the beautiful; whatever you decide to grace me with. My cat is particularly cute, you know. Today, I took a moment to stare out the window at the snowflakes. Though I would appreciate them less if I was the one outside. There are many people I met today and many things I did. I remembered to eat some food today and that really helped my ability to be around all these humans you house in one of your planets.

I hope you know that this is a very beautiful planet, a planet that houses humans of all different kinds. Some are lovely, lovely people. Others are more grumpy and some are just terribly unpleasant. I must say that those lovely, kind people all around are trying their best, in the circumstances they end up in. Universe, sometimes I love how everything pulls together to put so many people in so many places, in so many times, all in such a vast place.

Universe, your so vast and unending that no one I know can ever explore every inch of you, but we try our best. We really appreciate you, I hope you know. We have these beautiful pictures of you. Where your golden stars stretch across our canvas and nebula with space dust and other things make you look particularly beautiful.

I hope you know that as just a few of the creatures that live and thrive within you, with your help and guidance; we love you. We love everything about you and wonder about you constantly. I hope you know that we also wonder at how interconnected everything is around us. How everything we do always impacts in many different ways. We wonder about you universe and I hope you know we love you too.

Sincerely,

Sentient beings.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190116.html

 

 


Dear Love,

I have to say, I think about you constantly. Dreaming about every situation I can think of you in. I hope you know I worry about you but I always do my best to think the best of you. Your the hero in every situation, the best you, you can be.

I hope you know there’s so much good to you, so much light and happiness and everything that you need is right there inside you. I know you feel the shadows in your soul, burning your mind, you find it so very hard to keep the desolation at bay. How hard it must be for you?

Love, just remember, I will always think the best of you regardless. You will always be growing, compared to so much your so young. Just know that your faults may be laid bare to me but I will embrace you still. I know you will always do what the situation calls for, to be the best you you want to be. And that’s all I can ask for.

My love, I cannot help but want to be near you more. I cannot help but want to feel good in my own skin, enough that I love and love and my heart opens to more. You change me and complete me and the more I find about you the more I realize I see the things you want me to see. I’m as ever evolving as you are. I cannot help but feel our connection in ways that almost frightens me at its intensity.

I cannot help but wonder: do you hear me when I call? Can you feel the light under my skin, waiting to burst out, calling to you to not extinguish it? My love, I cannot help but wonder at the actions you take. Do you know me, do you know who you are? Do you know how much you mean to me? How careful I cannot help but be around you. I want the best for you, though sometimes it may not seem like that.

I pray for you and hope to God for what else can I do? I wish to be there for you, whatever may happen and whoever may come. I hope you know I’ll always try my best to be there for you. Yet, I hope you know it cannot be so, by God it kills me that it cannot be so. I love you, though I may never truly know you.

Sincerely,

The Author.

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