ArinadaDragonspeaker

& though my skin is steel, I am but a girl without a wolf, without a home, without a name. & though autumn winds still blow, I only feel the cold, for winter has settled into the hollow between my shoulder blades.

Last night, I dreamed of the sea, And of the long road there. The sun cast diamonds on the rising tide As I sought gentle waves to swallow me. Would that I could bare my bones to emerald depths In search of pacific clarity, Where reality is suspended with gravity And I can float as through a dream. But when Ursula can’t give me fins and God can’t give me wings, I remain but a girl, weary of heart and far from home, Walking the dry line between earth and sky With only fantasy-tides to help me breathe. 22 years spent soaking seawater into my skin— Now my pores cry out and choke on dust and heat. But in dreams, I still fol

The stars sang to me, sang such sweet songs that father’s grip nor mother’s pleas could keep my astronomical spirit rooted in human life; I let them go and my feet found a path from the ground to the galaxy, and I thought I could be happy forever in my wanderlust. Beauty, wonder, and awe I expected. It was the cold that caught me off guard. The nothing stretching between planets and stars, between supernovae and nebulae, chafed icily at my skin, and the weight of such fearful emptiness etched weakness into my shoulder blades. The longer I meandered, the more stardust felt gritty, the more starlight burned. When a thread of dark-m

You, my chivalrous dream, my shattered mirror, my broken locket— you were self-righteous heroism and a ticking clock. The day she died, clarity burned tears from my eyes; the dream died with her, and I realized that I was well and truly gone.

On days like these I’m naught but dust in the wind, riding turbulent eddies around building corners and skating along laminar fields, seeking the taste of salt on the air. This transient existence is chafing away my skin, but I know that my search for a seaside to settle on won’t end for years yet. On days like these, I wonder if it would be wise to cut my wings and grow roots instead, but this carmine clay-soil can’t give me what I need to survive. I am grounded for now, but I know I must never forget how to fly.

You are my dreamscape boy; I fall asleep to come alive with you in a whirl of sensory pigments and half-understood plotlines. In dreams, we draw hopscotch lines between stars and leave our clothes on the banks of molten-rock rivers. We waltz across battlefields and hold hands as a tornado passes over us, always seeking the secret light that guides us through the gloom of my subconscious. I always wake before we find it. And when I wake, all I have are your mannequin hands for mine to sweat against. I yearn for the you pulsing with vivid blood, the you with enough warmth to keep my heart pumping as we drift from the Milky Way to Andromeda, bu

You were ballistae and battering rams and trebuchets, and I was the castle under siege, so when my kingdom come shattered I had no one to blame but you. Katabatic, I flowed down from my sky-perch, and I would have frozen you until you burned as one slick with boiling oil if I could. You and the future eluded me, though; now, I simply drift on zephyr-currents, heedless of past, present, and solid ground alike, searching for a place to drown.

The crown of Olympus quaked beneath the weight of a behemoth, a beast of a god wreathed in serpentine twists, come a caelo usque ad centrum to lay judgment at its feet. As Typhon’s monstrous cacophony echoed off stone and clouds, mother and son fled ‘til water barricaded their way. Then, aquatic mercies surfaced, clad in scales like mailed knights to aid mother and son in their flight. Bound together by silk-strong threads, they soared across the sea to African safety, where mother and son and cowardly gods listened to the roar of thunderous battle. The ram fought the titan, and, in fine, claimed violent volcanic victor

At the doors of the arts school, I met you, panting and panicking. I can’t for the life of me remember what the name of the school is, but the word SURVIVE is swinging against my skull like a bell-clapper. “Do you think we’re safe out here?” I ask between gasps. You weren’t given a chance to answer me, though. “DID YOU TRULY THINK I COULDN’T FIND MY WAY OUT?” called the voice, the dreadful Satanic roar that permeated everything. “I WANT WORDS!” SURVIVE SURVIVE SURVIVE was screaming out of every orifice now, out of my ears and eyes and nose and the pores of my skin. You looked at m

Sand covers everything now—houses bowed and cracked under the weight of it—sand that once formed proud dunes held together by slender grass and dead, scrubby brush. You remember how that brush played at prettiness like a girl going stag to prom, lurid colors and heady scents hiding bones sharp with thorns. You remember your mother’s hands swatting your own away from the delicate dune-grass. It was supposed to protect the beach, but was rent asunder instead. The grass is still there, though, clinging to battered clumps of sand and playing at solidarity in the face of ever-encroaching tides.