Requirements For Magic

requirements for magic

the faeries said you had to give up something to be with them.

the wolves said you had to have teeth and claws and a howl like cold air on a moonless night.

the dragons said that fire comes from within and that you needed to have a spark.

the vampires said you had to die.

the warlocks said you had to know sorrow for immortal years and the devil in your blood.

the witches said you needed magic, strong and dark and earthy.

the winds said you had to have hollow bones, a body that could be lifted.

the woods said you had to know how to grow without knowing which way was up and to fight for every inch you gained.

the ocean said you were already a part of it, salt and water and blood. you just didn’t know how.

the cliffs said you had to be made of edges if you wanted people to impale themselves on you.

the mountains said even they started out as little as you. maybe you could be strong one day.

the desert said you had to know thirst before you understood how to love the rain.

the rain said it would wash away everything if you let it.

the storm said you had to be wild and raging for its magic to work. you had to be angry.

the night said you do not how to be a creature of the dark, magic and manic nights. you could not be one of us if you tried.

the day did not say anything. it simply rose and let you learn in the light.

you gave up your sadness to their faeries and learned how to dance.

you showed the wolves your teeth and told them about the blood on your hands. they taught you how to scream and bring down the moon.

you took a drop from the sun (or rather you lit a match) and gained a coat of scales made of burns and grey cold ashes.

you died. there was no coming back until they pulled you from 6 feet under. you died but you were not allowed to leave and that is how it goes.

you told the warlocks that they could keep their devil because you had your own. yours just was your sorrow and your blood.

you brought the witches a tree and laughed when they didn’t understand. they gave you magic and in return you buried the sapling.

you undid the chains that bound you and let yourself go free. nothing could tell you where to go except the winds, and even they would not bother.

the woods were dark and lovely. so were you, even in the light, but you always knew which way was up. that’s where the trees go.

you were the ocean, salt and water and blood. there was no changing that.

you sharpened your knifes on the rocky cliff-face and jumped to prove your point. the edges broke. you did not.

you told the mountains how tiring it must be to be made of stone. they agreed and wished to feel something at all.

you knew how to love the rain long before you knew what it was like to thirst for water and thought maybe the desert wasn’t dry at all. it just didn’t have enough to love.

you let it. the rain poured down and you were clean.

you became wild and raging and fierce like a storm, left alone to run its course. when you were angry, you were a hurricane and even the magic feared the collateral damage.

you learned how to be the night and understood why it was so dark. you could be it if you tried. you could be magic.

the day said you are.

about tuesdays

i’m working on a project and cutting my fingers open in the process. can we have a thing about tuesdays where you don’t ask me what’s wrong and i don’t tell you nothing today’s just a grey day, a tuesday and you don’t worry when i am angry for no reason and sometimes i might scream a little just a little it won’t hurt and i might be sad so sad that you won’t know what to do other than to do what you always do, which is worry and ask pointless questions? i’m just trying to make sure that i don’t hurt you when i’m like this. that you understand i am and i am not myself. can we have a thing where you don’t try to get me to make promises you know i won’t keep like the one you always say that goes now promise me that if i leave you won’t hurt yourself and promise me you won’t be dead when i come back? if you can do that i can’t promise anything more than to stop cutting up my fingers in an effort to paint the roses red because it’s still a tuesday so the best i can do is maybe i won’t kill myself in a place where you would be the one to find the body.

we dance among the stars.

lithium is the third to last element expelled before a star goes supernova and can be found in all of us. somewhere a star exploded and its elements, the molecules that make it up, rushed out into the great gaping abyss until they were put to use making us. someone once told me that all matter has existed since the beginning of everything, not just time because time is something we constructed, but everything. i think it was in my seventh grade science classroom and now i can remember it, first hour with coffee and bleary eyes even that young and hearing someone say: you have been a part of something before you were something and you will be a part of something after you’ve been something matter can never be created or destroyed it simply is. how it felt to know that the parts do not add up to a whole even if the whole cannot remember where all of its parts have been. i think it was comforting, the idea that everything i was was something before me and after me there would continue to be something of me that was once a part of me and the subsequent conversation later when i said sorry to a chair after bumping into it and my mother said what are you afraid of hurting its feelings? it’s not alive and i said it is alive because we’re all made of molecules and the molecules that make up that chair could’ve been part of someone i bet you were a chair once how would you feel if someone ran into you and didn’t say sorry? and she just laughed at me and said kid sometimes i wonder about you and ruffled my hair so i just laughed too and didn’t tell her that i thought it was beautiful, that the chair could be alive and still not because it was made of molecules and people and dust, lithium, real stardust or what could’ve been, only it didn’t know it.

my voice crackles like the edges of burnt paper / absinthe and green tea the lining of my throat / is ragged from disuse and the effort of healing. my words are sparks and gasoline / burning their way up again and again and the scar tissue covering my wounds / is made into flame

@cityskylinesofimaginaryplaces, SCAR TISSUE (excerpt?)

road trip: everything looks better framed by a car window

holland and magic shell

[laying still underneath the trees i think]

this is not bad. quiet can be good. i smell like lake water and chocolate, ice cream melting into my tongue. i have done nothing of importance today and it has been alright; i could call it happy even. this is a change from what im used to, this sudden quiet drop into happiness. shockingly cold i slide into it without warning, the way i stutter and take that final step over the dune and plunge into the clear water expecting to take another step. that last gasping breath, pulled out of me sharp and the way it feels being submerged, that lovely under.