yesterday, i was the moon / raven's.

{♚}

━ and he cried with a loud voice:
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.
(Revelation)

i. 

Crimson; it's barbarism ensnared as a hue, the color of ultra-violence, flashing viciously as Euley Sarasin bludgeoned Mercy to her grave.

However, these eyes never acknowledged the macabre distortion of a beauty that it held until a god bled over ivoried snow unapologetically.

I won’t show the chinks in my panoply; these marrow-whites shall not be glass destined to become shards. I am not Icarus, a creature of descend, but something fearless, with wings crafted from obsidian and radiating a sense of pride for surviving it all. A moon, bloodied and apotheosizing now, dangles close to a broken atmosphere.

Everything’s ceasing.

I saw the crimsons, veiled beneath Caine's cheeks—colored by the glow of paper lanterns from the hot springs. It rested inside his rosy brims when he drew closer to bury a treasure in the crook of my neck.

Afterwards, Bella Rose blossomed this color, a ghoulish embroidery, cascading down unhinged jaws as if the blood carried her veins.

It's what adorned Finley the moment silver gouged a home upon his skin—the moment I robbed a boy of his breath.

Now, I lay upon a threshing pond of this color, stained to my very cores, letting it spread, and spread below.

You only recognize the beauty of a color when twenty-two adolescents fall prey to it; twenty-four if you account a dying seraph and one counterfeit goddess.

Take me home; take me home,
to the forests, to the wilderness. 

ii. 

Blue; I glimpsed it — held, as if it were a feathery breath— within the rivers of stars and constellations above.

One starry night, perched upon a scratched-up windowsill, I tried to map out the star trails but they were far too vast for a boy from seven, far too cosmic.

However, most forget the littleness of a ribcage, of a heart, ancient littleness, generic littleness, how we are but a freckle upon the ever-blooming face of one galaxy. I could recall a mantra:

‘this littleness is not our boundary.’ 

Gillian was a set of tiny bones but she carried a sage’s heart, wiser than her years. The area of heavenly bodies doesn’t whisper their worth—it whispers nothing at all.

Eyes feast upon the storm-scattered, torn-opened sky above and I fathom what it feels to be ceaseless. Perchance, in death’s necropolis, these bones could get an essence of forever, let its sweet aftertaste explode upon a bruised tongue and let it linger on for centuries, for epochs, for the end of creation.

Maybe forever is only
the sluggish flutter of
eyelashes or
a butterfly’s wings.

Those moons, a pair of silver sentries, watch over a dying angel—I could hear their lamentations adrift in air. We’d been each other’s tacit company, the moons and I, and it holds every prayer I’ve whispered, every hymn I’ve sang.

And yesterday, I was the moon,

rising with my panoply of silver, a levitating body, rising above dangers, above Ripred.

Blue was the color of his eyes, which pierced through a dark night as we held hands upon the rooftop, overlooking a fluorescent horizon.

I felt the color, crashing upon the coronaries of a shattered heart so hard they screamed, when Aeson's silver divided us for a moment.

We're reuniting, under open skies this time.

iii. 

Green; everything retrogrades back to home.

These blistered heels remember the soft and the wet of grass, days spent on meadows, sodded earth, the jagged texture of shrubberies and raspberry patches and what it means to be in league with nature, to be a son of nature.

My windowsill had a web of mosses and a bed of lilacs. Every night, I would ignite a cigarette and feed them dioxide—and repeated the deed, till reaping day. So, may they proceed to thresh as a compensation for my charred lungs, may they grow for my sake. The air exhaled from my lungs gushing through their cells—they’re the only breathing remnants of me back home.

I remember, I remember:

the woodlands,
a raw sense
of freedom.

There are deep roots, budding from my innards, and sprouting from my bones, and they’re the essence of seven, a place where Mother Nature sang her psalms, where sunflowers don’t fade away.

And these roots are to follow me to the boneyard, these roots are to be buried alongside my form, these roots are to rot beside my caress.

These roots, carrying the quiet souls of my ancestors, are an extension of this doe-eyed boy from seven.

Green was jealousy and the unknowns as my fingers counted Caine’s heartbeats, predicting how many lovers he had in ten—and if he’d broken any hearts, if he was a persona who treated hearts as plastic instead of porcelain. The mere thought of my lover deifying another makes my stomach churn, but everyone wants a shot with a god. I know I did.

This is a story of remembrance: about a timber skeleton I’ve long shed, about a forest that’s been scorched to embers, about a boy who was powdered to debri.

So, dig through the ashes and cinders—
search for my legacies in the embers. 

iv.

Gray; I was Mercy Woods’ iron skin, the color of armor. But, Stella’s wears thicker, more resilient skin—she was an empire of bones in comparison to my rickety kingdom, a girl sewed together by tangible foundations and steeled backbones. Her valor burns through foggy air, through the agony. She crushes her tragedies underfoot and I was one of them—crushed.

There’s a storm above, roaring, the snow metamorphosing to a howl and every trace of sunlight catches it just right,

giving bloom to gray prisms, raining colors.

I thought of this world as a leaden, insipid flavor on a bruised tongue, but I discovered how it is actually the sweet aftertaste of Dove Sayer’s berry patches, a distant taste of Caine’s pulse—fluttering—and a homemade apple-pie from the past tethered to a memory.

Gray is the eye of a storm, Aeson Kight’s spear.

I despised him for robbing Caine and I of love, wished him demise—but that wasn’t his cause of death. He perished, for a boy cannot carry that much of monstrosity in bones without being devoured ruthlessly by its hunger.

The real wolf in sheep skin amidst us wasn’t Euley Sarasin, but Aeson Kight’s spite. He thought his lover howled when, it was him all along with the wolf sigils. The beast hidden within devoured Aeson, it feasted upon his muscles to bones and bones to ashes.

v.

A clap of thunder drowns out the storm—and suddenly, I’m on the edge of a tiny rock, tucked away in a corner of this vast universe.

Below, I see the darkness between stars, and neon planets with their colored belts of gas.

Behind, is foggy stardust and swellings from a translucent ground, garlands scattered at random intervals. I could feel the coldness and the warmth, everything and nothing.

This is the pith of rebirth, a divine boneyard where heroes and heroines go to bury themselves. The bones I walk upon are holy and ancient, remnants of boys who spit at the face of adversities, and girls who roared when they’re told not to.

I see everyone here.
It’s a memorial, a resting place.

I lay down upon the luminous soils—
Next to the essence of Caine,
And lower my eyelids,
to lay rest to these wary bones.
to fade alongside this dying star,
of pure heroes and heroines.

We’re the anthem of doomed youth,
like light carries on from a dying star,
Our echoes and psalms carry on, carry on.