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The sky is too dark (prose)
Page Contents
- MockingBird
- Memories
- Roses in the Hospital
- Hurricanes and star-rains
- The Calm before the Storm
- Summer Tale
- Fairytale-Girl
- Eileen
- Collision and Aftermath
- A myriad of cluttered dreams
- Persephone's Curse
- ...excerpt from the night...
- Family Dinner
- White Kingdom
- The Sky is too dark
- Wasteland
MockingBird
Tangled in purple and turquoise threads, in truths that used to be lies and lies that used to be truths. I cannot seem to find my way through these dull stars. Through reflections and shadows, through dissolving towers, that yesterday stood among white gold moons. I have walked through worlds that shivered with grief, that rippled from torment. And worlds that dazzled like abundant dreams. Intangible worlds. Fragile. They shudder as I lift my eyelids.
& I'm lost again like rain and tears; the walls around me crack and I can't paint it all they way they were before. I can't play this game of deception anymore. The colourful facets and false memories. The running mascara and clown smiles. I can't run fast enough to escape from my own thoughts. I can't run at all. It's all falling apart and I'm standing through the rain - a mockingbird with no face of my own and a million crying voices that I do not recognize.
Memories
Some call it a gift, but it's my curse - to see through the walls of all worlds, possible and impossible, past and future. I can feel the pain of every butterfly you kill, of every flower you step on. I can see what you could never dare and I remember everything. The melodies and orbits of the universe, its heart and the brightness of the sun stars and the absolute emptiness of a black hole, all contained within a dream, a dream of pain and roses.
I know you and I'll never forget.
Roses in the Hospital
People would never understand. About the nightmares that crawl underneath her skin. About the pain and the roses. Those red roses she keeps underneath her pillow. She has used the thorns to bleed herself alive, at those dark days of stillness and endless repetition of whiteness, of bareness around her.
But there are other days too. The days she collects the roses. Those incredibly fast, radiant days when she runs with palms full of sun, eyes like volcanoes, heart like neverland and breathes out glitter and kaleidoscopic worlds.
Are you on cocaine? asks the doctor.
No, she replies, unable to sit still, unable to still the tornado of thoughts that seem to have taken over her mind.
Your pupils are dilated.
No cocaine. Where would I get cocaine? I’m locked up. No key. I don’t do cocaine.
Ok. He agrees. She's just manic. Need to bring her down, before she decides she can fly and jumps off. And gives advice and more medication and sends her off.
She leaves with hopping steps, desperately clinging on the hope that she will fly, that she will never ever crash, never again be crushed down by the devastating darkness that lurks around the corner. She laughs and talks too fast and her eyes are burning. She has to keep spinning or everything will crumble.
Hurricanes and star-rains
Time moves in circles. Clockwise. Anti-clockwise. Existence becomes intangible; it cracks with our every movement. & We fall through coiled labyrinths that lead into motionless worlds with reigning emptiness. We can feel every hard edge and every fracture of the world; it hurts. Winter will soon come and this toxic feeling of absence will grow stronger.
We do not pretend to understand how this works. You don't hold my hand and I don't move towards you. We stand next to each other: with glazed lips and caked eyes, full of fire. With burning suns in the place of our hearts and thoughts travelling at the speed of light.
We give up sleeping and taking our meds. We want to dance on a bed of nails and breathe out worlds the way we breathe in fire. The electricity passes through our bodies and we travel to the edge of the universe, through celestial lanes. We cannot be grounded anymore. We cannot tame the force that binds our minds and connects every distant world and parallel dimension; every world that could be and every world that could never exist. Unable to stop the hurricanes and star-rains, we reject their manufactured truths and artificial numbness. Their constructed worlds of normalcy that reek of apathy and coldness. We reject the stability that comes from deep roots that keep us stranded; we crave Hermes' wings and at this moment anything is possible.
But moments fade away fast. They don't last; not for eternity, like childhood scars do. Like melancholy and pain do.
But we forget this truth and orbit around orange-red suns; and we will play with fire, until there is nothing left of us.
But even so, and even for a just a moment, we will be so violently and so fully alive.
The Calm before the Storm
Falling ocean-deep into a dark whirlwind of thoughts and starry skies. There is a strange calmness as I slowly spin around on the harbour's dark gravel. The fading voices of the people blowing smoke, the bronze half moon that we watch sinking. The tied boats and monochrome lights that create patterns around the small village. All these people who spit out words and laughter, who call me by my name and share their food and drinks and cigarettes with me - all these people I'm surrounded with... And yet I'm alone. They think I'm real, but I'm only an echo. Time and space behave as if in a dream and I'm forced to hash my screams - I know what happens to dream characters when the dream ends. I know and I clasp the rail and hold on as firmly as I can. I will not be sucked away into nothingness; I will not dissolve into air. Not yet.
But for how long?
We see clouds gathering on the sky. Sunlight never lasts. Soon the darkness will come - as it always does. I will sink in it and let it consume me whole. And when I jump into nothingness, it will be willingly.
Summer Tale
Underwater light falls like a feather; the sun-rays drip and spill all around.
The sun's turning orange and crimson, burning the sky with the last of its light, before slowly fading to the infinite night.
She is white like porcelain with green/blue/purple eyelids. She has fallen asleep, naked on the sand.
We've been running all day. Underneath the sea-waters.
It's alright, she said. You can breathe. We are mermaids. We can reach farther and farther, with figures ever-stretching, ever-reaching and minds ever-wondering, ever-searching.
Just breathe.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Now she's lying next to red poppies and golden gravel. I kiss her lips and pay her in sea-shells and summer berries. I have to leave before she wakes up and swallows me whole, with her red-coral-hands and carnivorous starfish eyes.
Fairytale-Girl
Underneath the midnight blue sky, her eyes are flickering, glistening, dripping salty pearls. She's frail, like wings of a butterfly; parched for colours, for rainbows, for stars undead. Standing in the middle of the rainstorm she is calling to the moon, the sky, the water nymphs.
She wants to be a fairytale. White like snow, red locks of hair like flames, and ruby lips like a blood rose, like the poisonous apple. A butterfly-like girl with a swan neck and a silky purple dress, long enough to fit the moon.
Eileen
Today is another of the grey days. The slow ones. The ones with a lot of background noise and summer rain. With a kind of warm embrace, yet almost suffocating.
The sky is full of smoke from burnt dreams and tomorrows that will never be. There are ashes in her eyes and a burning sun-star in the place of her heart. She looks serene, but her reflection reveals the sorrow curved scars and the ghosts that haunt her fragile figure. Her frozen breath leaves a cloud over the mirror. She can feel the earth move, she can feel the sharp edges of the world and the desperation of the sun. She can feel a disarray of sunrays slashing her skin; and that ever-consuming, ever-burning and so deeply embedded inside of her, that incessant yearning for another's embrace.
At sunset the sky is bleeding. Orange and red streams flow towards the west leaving behind an indigo shadow. There is no moon. No stars that she can see. Eileen steps on a rock and gazes upon the darkening sea. A flower is drowning. A seagull is flying. It's quiet. It's lonely.
Funny how she used to love being alone when she was a child. Now she makes paper hearts and lets the wind carry them away. But before long the gravity pulls them down and the sea melts them into nothingness. She watches them fade away, she watches her reflection and loses her step. With her dress covered in sand she sits there and her eyelids flutter, pushing back burning tears.
She has seen the darkness, she has swum in it and she will forever carry it with her. Inside her violet-blue eyes and pounding heart. Pounding, lapsing, lashing, pounding - leaving her gasping for breath, crashing like rain on rough shores.
From the deepest caves under the sea, ghastly shadows call for her. They promise her the best seat on the ferry and a silver throne at the Elysian Fields. And sometimes she moves towards them. Her pale skin shivers with every wave the sea sends towards her. There is something compelling and cleansing about the sea-waters. Something eternal and dark that penetrates the earth and forces her to swim and resurface. It forces her to breathe. To live.
Collision and Aftermath
Did the sun set? Did I fall asleep?
[Tell me]
Did the tide drown my flowers? I feel so empty. Numb.
Tell me. What happens when our worlds collide and we are pulled in opposite directions?
What happens then?
Will you hold on? Will you stay?
[Don’t forget to breathe]
We are embers of eclipsed dreams left afloat inside steel walls and blankets of coal smoke. Our lands are marked with the kind of trails that sorrow leaves behind. Our sky is barren, stained with star-ashes. And April is just an afterthought, tucked away in some old chest.
There’s a money-made sun on the sky that blinds us. There’s too much pain and not enough love.
And so much silence. Deafening, piercing like diamond blades. Can the sky bleed?
The trees are bent, the dreamcatchers broken, unable to trap any nightmares.
*~*~*
The moon gazes upon the point of no return. And standing so close to the edge, for a moment – such a fragile, staining moment – it seems that we could fly away. That we could escape.
Don’t let their flaws and unrequited wishes define you.
Look outside Time, further than dim eyes can ever see.
At a world exiled between eternity and empty space.
Tell me you can walk away from it, that you can ignore what could be,
because it does not fit in the glass jar of society. Because they can never understand.
[Don’t let go.] These walls are not impenetrable.
All it takes is a whisper,
an echoing song for the sun. The real sun.
&&& I will never leave you behind.
A myriad of cluttered dreams
I want to dance under translucent stars and candy-cotton clouds.
I want a world decorated with strings of velvet threads and coloured waterdrops.
A myriad of cluttered dreams and peacock feathers.
Words like quivering storms and burning stars. Rose gardens, that the rain can't trample. I want people to break the walls that keep them apart, to break the bubbles that keep them safe in their ignorance; and turn off the digital quicksand that pulls them in so fast they forget their names. I yearn for tears of laughter instead of pain and anger. Love like hurricanes, and hearts like galaxies, like fire and oceans merged together. Swallows that don't fly away from winter, but decorate the trees with snowflakes. A world that does not need to be politically correct. That does not greet others with bullets or indifference. I want the backyards and the dusty attics to look like Dali's paintings. I want a moon that sings, and men that kiss other men and the crowd applauds.
(Because if you think you are better than them, then you are so much worse.)
I want to fly too close to the sun; I want to run until I have no breath.
I want to live.
In a world, that's worth living in.
Persephone's Curse
Today we saved a butterfly and painted glitter flowers with tiny pollen flakes. This is another faerie dream that has sprung out of a rift in nightmares. And I think I was crying in a dream, but I don't remember what you looked like.
All I can see now is tiny star-shaped flowers sprinkled with fairy dust. I see kaleidoscopes twisting, swirling and disappearing like rainbows on a cloudy sky.
The sun hasn't set for days. I can't seem to stop running. Chasing light gleams and sea-songs. Almost like a child.
Almost. Because deep down I know the truth. I know the sun will set. I know it would have to die. I know Hades would climb up from the depths of the earth and he would drag me down to the mouldy darkness. Always. He always comes and I always fall.
...excerpt from the night...
...
The little round table was made out of wood. I could see butterflies flying around it, I could see its roots keeping it alive, I could hear the birds singing. So many images and sounds merged together. People were talking and laughing. It was rush hour and the coffee place was crowded.
My mug was empty, but I continued staring at it like it was about to tell me something fascinating. Alan was sitting opposite of me. He had curious eyes. Big, brown - they shined during the day. He played with his straw for a little while and then pushed his empty glass away.
"I don't understand", he said. "What has happened to you?" But he meant, what happens now.
"I don't know, Alan. I don't know. The sky got so dark, so suddenly. It scares me how empty it is, how harsh, unforgiving it has become. What has happened to the stars? The light? The keeper of the lighthouse? He seems to have abandoned his post. Who will guide us now? Who will show us the way?"
...
"There's always the Doctor" he joked.
"Right. With the sonic screwdriver or maybe Harry Potter's wand?"
"Well, I think people are supposed to somehow find a way. To create a pathway through the darkness." He paused. "Let's go out for a cigarette. And take your coat. It's not just dark. It's freezing outside. Can't you feel the cold?"
"Cold? All I see is darkness. Emptiness. I feel nothing."
"You are going to be cold."
"It's not col..." I stopped when I noticed his eyes: they were cold.
I sighed. "Don't worry about it. The cold can't hurt me now. I'm ill, because of my heart. It's damaged. From the darkness."
"But then, light can save you, can't it?"
"But there isn't any light, Alan. Don't you see? All the stars have crushed down. The moon has drowned and every flower has withered.
"I know there's still light out there. Somewhere. But not for me. It's late and I'm tired."
"I don't want you to go."
"Yet you don't love me. You never did. And I know you care, but when my heart fails you won't be able to put breath back inside me. You won't be able to save me."
His eyes looked unclear now. Fading. Elusive, like dreams born at twilight.
He stepped on his cigarette and closed his eyes.
"You are right. But I don't want you to die. We'll try more doctors, more therapies, more meds, more..."
"Why don't you light another cigarette? Why don't you sing to me? That song, from when we were kids. And we didn't understand the world. We didn't know. Sing to me. I know you cannot give me the light, I know you cannot save me, but you can give me a gleam of peace. I'll be gone before your cigarette is out, before you open your eyes. And you won't remember me. Only the song will remain. A flickering star, above the ashes..."
Family Dinner
She wore a black dress and red lipstick. Her eyes were like stormy seas. Dark and erratic, full of fire and ashes. He was sitting outside trading silence and cigarettes with himself. I must have fallen asleep beside the dinner table. I was awaken by the smell of burning cake and coffee. There were apples scattered all over the table and half-empty wine glasses. The ashtrays were full and the butter had melted on the bread.
She took one of the knives and started cutting the apples for me. Her hand moved like a hyena, but she was soft somehow, soft like the white bread I filled my small mouth with. My stomach was filled with the vanilla and spiced melancholy of that room. The thick air that tasted like whisky and rain. The white walls tightly kept inside of them all our abandoned dreams and broken tomorrows. And unlike a family, but more like lone winter blooms, we sat watching the walls in silence, waiting and fading.
Slowly fading...
White Kingdom
--The Wolf--
This wolf is lost inside the rivers of the night
It's calling for the moon. Lonely, with two immortal stars trapped in its eyes. It breathes
the night dew of the wind and dances alone.
The secret of the other world in its heart it keeps.
Forever.
--The Raven--
Feathers made of gloom's thread
My lost raven - messenger of the dead
Eyes made of ebony gleams
Bird of darkness, thief of dreams
--The Jasmines--
The jasmines bloom underneath the white castles of the changeless in-between. They paint white the echoes of the moon. They sing of dreams.
--My Dream--
In this world I'm lost; enthralled in grey forests of stars that shine with a light that longs
for innocence.
Therein I dance in a frozen lake.
In the twilight mist I'm almost drowning.
Alone I shall be.
Raven, speak to me.
I know there're walls I cannot see.
Places outside the mirrors - I can never reach.
I'm fated to be in a reality that is but a dream; away from Time's kingdom of life.
Here, in the in-betweens, time is frozen.
A world only real for us.
Raven, hear me.
Don't let the ice break. Save me.
Forget me.
Time won't reach us. And no one else will.
-------------
It's the curse of the secret beyond the dreams. Wolves, ravens, jasmines. We are the children of the night. The keepers of the secret of the White Kingdom. We carry the blackness of the night and the colours of the dreams in our hearts. And forever we shall be alone.
Cyprus: The Sky is too dark
They came one day with guns and told us our country didn't belong to us. They took our houses and our lands. They shot those who resisted. They captured the moon and tortured it until it bled silver. Friends and relatives fell like tree leaves in the autumn. We grew up with an invisible, yet impenetrable wall that wouldn't let us stand in the ground that was ours. I saw the soldiers. I saw their guns. I felt the pain and their hate. Time didn't bring relief. It didn't bring peace. Only oblivion. For less people care now. They've accepted thing as they are. It is easier for them. But there is still a hollow place inside of us. Still a black spot where the moon used to be.
Cyprus: The green black line that divides the sun
I remember once, Holy Saturday it was. We were around the church with candles in
our hands. Only half a step away from the border. I turned my head and I saw the
gun. The hands looked so friendly. So familiar. But you held a gun, not a
candle. And it was pointed at my heart. Unbending, life consuming hate wrapped
in metal. So cruel.
What a job you have my brother. Did you choose to be there dividing us eternally
or where you chosen and trained to hate us? We learn to hate you too. We were
chosen... when the stars were refused a place in their sky, when our homes were
taken so violently thirty-something years ago.
Have you been standing there since? How much longer will you stay?
You won't let us cross, let us go home. You blow our candles, outside the
church. Frozen I stare at you. And maybe I don't believe in God, but the light
was real and now it's gone.
My brothers how could you?
Wasteland (She could not love me, for I could not be perfect)
Apr. 19th, 2007
She smelled like cigarettes. With crushed pills inside her palms and poison in a crystal glass. In the floor around her laid broken porcelain dolls with blue dresses. I could see the tears on their faces. Almost smell their sadness. There was sorrow in that room. The room with the white walls and the symmetrically arranged furniture. Almost perfect. But the white paint covered a child's drawings on the wall. It covered the suns and hearts I drew with colour pencils.
Inside her eyes I could see a wasteland of abandoned dreams. I could see her replacing my lollipops with plastic strawberries that smelled like whisky and vodka. I have seen her crying moments ago, so I drew her a card with pink hearts. But she didn't look at the girl of nine with the hungry eyes. She didn't talk to me. The hearts dropped from her hands and she traded them with a cigarette. She wiped her tears and slowly made her way out of the room.
She had glued my eyes open so I could watch her leave. I called for her. But she didn't come back.
I was not her daughter. I was nothing.
