[x]

Whiskey Laden DreamsBitter eyes and tears might taint a drink, but sitting in this bar alone with your stool pulled out next to me, and the Martini poured regardless of your presence still brings a smile to my face; despite the taste. I'm having a whiskey myself; dry. Yes, I know I don't drink, but every once in a while you need whiskey to solve an intricate problem, and mine is the distinct lack of alcohol in my life.

There are people everywhere and it amazes me how none of them are you, from the woman in the black dress coming down the stairs to the signing couple in the corner, laughing silently. They're not you at all, and that's what's amazing – in an

i want to tell youimagine a world without gender
a world where we are not confined
to the arbitrary interpretations of
an inexact biology. imagine we could
rise above the places
below our waists, reside instead in
graceful hands, in angled cheekbones
in some deeper conception than this
skewed perception of you.

I strip myself bare of unforgiving flesh,
squinting behind dim caverns of girl parts--
what are girl parts? all we have are beating
hearts.

I sit inside this trembling body, shoulder
to hunched shoulder,
stacks of bones too unsure
to be brave enough to tell you that
my gender will never fit on the plastic sign
above a bathroom door.

a

SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki

earth circuitAnd when the sun sinks, the earth's skin crawls:

I.
I wonder if this awkward creature would notice me the way I notice him.
He's so tragic at his throne
I stare after him longingly.
And yet,
He never realizes that I'm the one
Who forever basks in his brilliant beams.
If only he knew how much brighter he could burn
[with me]
He'd light up the universe.

II.
I heard him speak of thirst, once.
The quenching lust of the stars had run dry.
So that night, I brought along a jar of acid.
(And how it gleamed in his glow).
I handed it to him, wrapped in taffeta ribbons,
screaming
I wish curdling joy
On my gurgling boy

sunrise, yulethis was the year of traditions begun. the world still dark, the morning still early, i climbed into my uncle's car. we drove out to the ocean, where the rippling sea fuses with the sky. white-headed eagles were perched still in trees. they cocked back their heads, opened their hooked mouths and screamed.

across an empty parking lot where once a cat had followed us. over driftwood pale with frost and sand hardened by the cold, we walked. our breath came out of us in thin plumes. it rose above us and hung there like smoke signals to the gods.

there were gulls on the water, gulls sifting through sand, gulls with their grey backs and fa

tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.

in the seams(a) when I was young I was a robin that stole the eggs from another's nest.
fitted upon my stare there was a warning –
personal's too personal for me, well i
would not use wings if i had 'em.

a child of rye with a silhouette spoiled by the sun, I was, I am.

and sometimes I see some vengeful sparrows still under my fingernails;
their glistening beaks snap melodies that rib a hundred bird-bone cages,
so light you could blow 'em away with a twist of your lungs.

and there are still words jailed between my teeth and my tongue and I do not speak of,
do not think of
them,
but they rattle between bone and flesh and I
drown them s

The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the

A Pocket Full of SkyWhen I was young, my father would take me to the highest tower of Notre Dame precisely once a year. It would be cold. Freezing. But we'd stand there, and take deep breaths of air, and peer down, towards the tiny ants of people below. Down, towards the sprawling city beneath us. It was always winter, when we'd go. Always cold. Freezing, freezing. But however cold it was, and however dull and bleary the weather, my father would ask one thing, and one thing only: that we adhered to tradition.

"Lucie," he would say, with the fond smile and kind eyes I always remember. "Lucie, my peach. Whatever you become, and wherever your heart and mind leads

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

preludesi.
blue rose into the city backdrop
like balloons, a million for the
morning sun prelude.

ii.
i've not slept a dream
but i have cried a salty face
and letters spilled like beans
into my moleskine,
almost as virgin as i once was
with few stories between my covers.

iii.
the kettle's belly boils
like my head upon a pillow.

iv.
i am guilty for rarely finishing my tea
even when i use the small mugs;
pour, rinse, repeat.

v.
perhaps today i will play dead.

vi.
perched behind my blinds
it dawns on me that i am surrounded
by walled neighbours, strangers,
they're just preludes to lovers
the way i am always
prelude to the one.

chromaWe were merely children when the stars came.

They rained down from the sky in a burst of light, like shards of glass pouring down from the heavens. Supernovas blooming in the night sky, petals raining down onto the barren earth - angels, falling with their wings sheathed, glowing, as they glided down. We watched, starstruck, as the glow overtook us - we were mesmerized. We waited with bated breath as the meteors landed, the celestial light subsiding as dark forms started to pick themselves up from the dust.

They moved towards us with an otherworldly grace, their steps leaving no marks on the earth as they descended upon us. Frozen to our sp

Survival of the IllestAre those hints of lemon I detect?
Look, I'm just here to get wasted, don't try
to make it more than that.

I'd drink motor oil if I thought
it could get me high; chase it with a shot
of antifreeze
so
you can keep your survival instincts,
locked up
in that pretty velvet box (along with all
those other things
you thought you could convince yourself
you lived for). Instincts are the bare
bones of the impossibilities we wanted
to believe in,
remember,
those times you tried to tell me that
adrenaline was God's way
of saying
that
we were His chosen ones, we were
special, we were free.
I tried to tell you that instincts an

It starts with a flash-bang and a Majulahi.
June's hauled her here again and
she's tapping at my classroom window,
A gazillion tiny fingers rapping in succession
(When she said "invitation" I didn't realise she meant
soaking half the country, the spike in umbrella prices has
nothing to do with me)
What's worse than an impatient child
is one with the whole atmosphere as her battering ram
when she tries to say something the urgency brims over
and one million exclamation marks
is beginning to sound like static frazzling
out on the pavements

ii.
She is without choice: when Cloud mother tips her out
she must go, and go she will
caught in an obtuse cycle, fought over

my howls are silentI, too, see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. We are decomposing too early, our souls dying before our bodies can catch up. We are silently ravenous, a quiet craze in our hearts, not quite the same as your generation, Ginsberg. We do not shriek "Holy! Holy! Holy!" as we burn. We drown soundlessly.

The overeducated, proud products of postmodernism dissolve in a lukewarm soup of ennui, bored balloons filled with hubris rather than helium. Fragile dolls with flaking bones and hair and skin like flowers wilting, weighed down by indomitable wills and insecurities... these plastic girls starve to death and diabetes in the car b

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the primrose pathit would be a quick thing,
she figured -
a simple slip
from the shivering limb of the willow
tree,
the breathless swoop
catching
the daisies wrapped round
her slender neck;
brocade skirts blossoming
as they seized
the breeze of her fall.

it was a long thing,
truthfully -
water gushed numb
through that slender throat
as daisies bobbed prettily, kissing
heat
into chiffon cheeks.
breathless had become her most
hated word
by the time
she thrashed for air;
and as her mouth at last parted
as if for a wish,
for a kiss,
she mused that
the primrose path
was nothing close to painless...

lonely heartfragile you grew
like a tree, like a tree
and gently you wept
next to me, only me

lonesome you were
like the sea, like a tree
and softly you sighed
like a plea

angry you raged
like me, like the sea
silent you screamed
undersea, far from me

and broken you fell
as soft as a plea
and darling, you're gone
but darling, you're free

the color of blooming"Papa," his baby girl asked one day, "what color is love?"

He paused for a moment. His fingers couldn't decide whether they should be drying the macaroni pot or smoothing the iridescent tears from his daughter's cheeks.

There were many things he could have said: that it is the color of a kiss, of a glance, of the shimmering warmth in a smile; that it is the color of a life taken by storm; that if anything, it is the color of roses, because that was what he had laid on his wife's grave just a few quick years ago.

His daughter's cheeks were flushed like the wild rose. He slowly put the pot down.

"Love," he said tenderly, "is the color of yo

Fierce DreamerFierce dreamer, I like to think I know you.

I know the shape of your wry words
and the sharp twist you give them,
the one that you soften with a smile.
I've seen the tears that weigh your
cinnamon lashes; I've ached
for you, wept with you,
learned the contours
of unconditional love.

I know your rose-gilded
pipe dreams, the ones you hitch
to stars and blow away into
the night. I've prayed that
they come true.

Dreamer, I am because you are.

But dreamer, I do not know your secret heart.

No more miles to goWhen I broke, I wanted to break you harder,
but I settled for forgetting.

They say there is nothing like long miles churning under a car that isn't yours
to soften the hard knot of anger in your throat,
to melt your muscles and deepen your breathing.
This is not so.
I ground your image into the hot tar as I drove
like a bat out of hell. (And that's maybe all I was.)

I spat on your quiet laugh as I pulled out of Jackson;
I let your blonde hair and wide smile whisk away with the oily gusts of I-20;
your length and lanky bones I left smoldering on 285;
and it was coming home on 400 that I took the last lingering strands of you

One-Word SupernovaThis "hello" is infinity unraveling,
a star falling,
a sun coming to life.

It's movement.
It's a breath drawn between two surprised lips.
It's staccato,
the quick crackle of a match catching on sandpaper.

Flight has nothing on those
lush syllables -
they soar higher
than the playground of angels
and we cannot help but follow.

Sunstruck,
lightbright,
the word glimmers between us -
clear and iridescent,
a soap bubble caught in the air.

I reach.

You touch.

And -
a star falling,
a sun coming to life -
hope bursts open inside
our slumbering hearts.

"Hello," you said.

The word rests breathlessly
along the curve of my

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Whale Songs of the Pacific

by ~Sora-Seraph, Dec 5, 2012, 7:19:37 AM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / Philosophy & Perspectives / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

Listen, the girls swallowed by whales are the ones that grow up lucky.

Listen, no one will warn you about the little boys with the magpie eyes and the fists swinging splinters of glass. No one will warn you that their smiles are sweeter than their words are sweeter than their souls are sweeter than their intentions. No one will warn you of the sheer weight of the world.

Listen, sometimes girls are fragile. Sometimes girls are frothy. Sometimes girls let boys nuzzle "I love you"s into their necks and sometimes girls drink the wine of believing them.

Listen, sometimes the boys really are sweet, and little girls' tart puckered mouths can't taste the difference.

Listen, writers are the ones that drip fishhooks down their throats to coax out their hearts. Writers are the ones who fling those heart-hooks into the sea even if they have a message but not a bottle. Listen, sometimes fish swallow them. Some of those fish sink to the bottom of the ocean with the weight of the world in those hearts – those Plath hearts, those Hemingway hearts – and some of them grow feathers.

Listen, I can tell you to try to grow a feather-heart but I'm forgetting that one day, most days, you will not be a girl with feathers. Most days you will understand the weeping of water and whales. You will try and fail to shed your heavy bones and you will try to forget the whale's mournful song and your heart will be too weighted to even imagine the lightness of seafoam.

Listen, you can unwrap your heart from the blackbird's feathers or you can unravel the whale-song from your throat but Pangaea will never fit itself back together. You can't steal back your fishhook and swallow your heart again.

Listen, though: you might not have a seafoam smile or a fishhook with a feathered heart but you can throw yourself into the ocean after it. You can chase that weighted heart to the bottom of the sea, you can wring every ounce of song from it, you can sing your pain into poetry and shame that un-sweet boy like he wouldn't believe.

Listen, the girls with the heavy hearts will drink the wine and believe the sweet nothings and drip fishhooks down their throats to coax out a heart with the weight of the Pacific. Listen, the girls with the heavy hearts are the ones who dive in after them.

Listen, the heart will sink and the girl will sink and a whale will swallow them both because he hears the whale-song pouring from her eyes.

And listen, that whale will grow feathers.

Whale Songs of the Pacificby ~Sora-Seraph

Literature / Prose / Fiction / Philosophy & Perspectives / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

True story.

Maybe someday I'll write about the boys who are swallowed by whales.

Requested Critique:
• This piece was written after a breakup, so it has a focus on young girls and their relationships to boys. Does that specificity detract from the bigger themes of the work?

PS:
• dysrhythmic recorded a beautiful spoken-verse rendition of this piece for The Elocutionists. If you'd like to take a listen, you can check that out here.

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-12-22

Whale Songs of the Pacific by ~Sora-Seraph The suggester writes, "Odd in a refreshing way, emotional but calm and thoughtful as well. " ( Suggested by ~YogaTeacher and Featured by `thorns )

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`FuzzyHoser Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Phenomenal!

*0hgravity Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

so nice to see this in my inbox again.

if I could fav it again I would.

beautiful spoken-verse rendition indeed.

oh, and congrats on the DD. much deserved.

~Sora-Seraph Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

You're so sweet, thank you!

*0hgravity Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

*TouchedBy-AnAngel Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

_{Wow. This is awesome. I especially love disrhythmic's take on it. <3

+ fave}

~Sora-Seraph Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

She did a beautiful job. <3

*TouchedBy-AnAngel Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

_{She sure did.}

*disrhythmic Jan 14, 2013

Oh my gosh, this is beautiful.

-fidgets- Would you mind if I read this aloud? I'm a member of #Elocutionists and we have a blog where we post audio versions of great dA lit--I'd love to include this.

You can listen here: [link]

Let me know, yeah?

~Sora-Seraph Jan 15, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Oh wow, that's amazing! As long as my work is credited/linked, I'd absolutely love to hear it spoken. If you do end up recording it, would you mind sending me the link? I'd love to listen. (:

*disrhythmic Jan 15, 2013

Awesome! You can give it a listen here: [link] Just download the file. ^^ If you like it, I'll post it and link back to this deviation and your page.

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