Ashen Pages

Our destinies became intertwined, dancing together in moonlight. We sat in the park, in the dawn of day, reaching for faint stars that glistened under our crowns. The air was crisp with perfumed with soft lilies that were etched in between blades of grass. In that moment, a breeze slipped into our hair, breathing us into the Earth, our oxygen fusing with the dark sky. I grew weary, watching your eyes as they canvassed the moon, searching for something. Perhaps a message saying: you are here. Unbeknownst to me, there was a stranger lurking behind you, a rapture unfolding as it towered over your head, holding its palms out to greet me. I felt the black magic as it brewed underneath my skin, tugging at my fingers, asking me for my soul. Frantically, I called out to you and asked if there was anything that you wanted to say. Your mouth opened and then closed again. No words came out, leaving me to retreat back to my inner thoughts, the ones that told me you weren’t really there. We talked about other things like how the world would change, the seasons would turn, and our bodies would morph into skins that we may no longer recognize. In another life, we would be in a different one, sipping chamomile tea with honey, on a porch somewhere down by the south, wondering where all the time went. Greed oozed from the irises, blazing through the spring. I was like Persephone, falling deep into the crack of the Earth.

We grappled with life, mesmerized by all the wonderful evenings that lay before us. Yet, we knew that there would come a time when the clock would keep ticking and we would no longer have time to sit in the park late at night, enjoying the breeze as it came. Our minds were freshly woven by our own hedonistic ways, tasting of supple foods and spiked drinks that gave us light headaches. The hours melted into each other but we always said: There’s always tomorrow. The sun would rise again, brightly peeking through our curtains, summoning us to adventures. You tried to take my destiny for your own, molding me into a doll, propping me up for the world to see. My sunglasses were rimmed with desire, blocking the strangers that cowered towards me, on their knees, begging me to take them as my own. I could feel the magnetic pull of your symphony, the hung bell that lightly swung back and forth. The ringing became louder, in such an unapologetic way, I was distracted by the swings. I averted my eyes from it, only to find that the intensity was making its way to my insides, crawling inside of me as if I’d left the door to my body open at night. The kismet of my life, held in the palm of the stranger that sat on your crown. My fate was sealed in tandem with all the nights we shared.