Cry of the Stars

When I was born, my parents etched their names
into the blade of a sword and
laid it in my hands.
I carry it like a loaded gun.

My belt sags heavier as I get older, a grievous inventory:

three coiled whips from my brothers, braided and knotted up
with bookmarks, backyard twigs, tape from unwound cassettes.

two finger knives carved from pine needles and
the old safety pins my sister and I used
to write our stories intertwined.

a paper-fledged arrow stained with salamander ink,
one garrote sliced from a single guitar string,
a hand-axe made of car door hinges
and rusted train tracks.

I wish I could say my fingers never
flew to my waist, itching to draw blood,
that each aging gift is not tinged with dark traces of regret.
I wish I could say my scars don’t wear the shapes
of everything I chose to give away.

As for the sword, I am glad of its weight. I am glad
that to step without it seems strange, incomplete.

Too many mothers I’ve seen reeling,
their children’s blades sunk to the hilt,

but they don’t cry for the pain of it, they don’t seem
to notice their own bodies torn nearly in two:
they knew all along what it meant to give a child a weapon.

I only see them dazed at the fingerprints left behind,
trying to comprehend the incomprehensible—
how bewildering, how unbearable,
that someone grown so much a part of you

might drive your love
back through your heart
and walk away.

Just now, I bent to pick a flower;
your absence had hollowed me so thoroughly
my fingers snapped like straws.

I don’t know why you left,
why you slowly, suddenly, like a freezing
river cleaved our home in two,

I don’t—I don’t know why
or when you became who you became.
Your eyes like frosted glass

winking at the world,
your jokes like icicles thrust in my back, as if
I didn’t hear every word.

Do you remember? I think
you cannot:

In the last summer of our childhood
we pressed a rose. Its petals folded
into arches and windows
more intricate than a cathedral, tucked
safe in the heart of our favorite book

and when winter came and we
had opened it before the fire, those dry
petals looked out at us, the face
of something older than innocence

but you wrinkled your nose
and laughed. What a laugh!
It cut me open, harsh
like the northeastern wind
that grinds at the corners of our house,

all bitterness, no mirth.
Like a dead rat, you said.
You didn’t notice me bleeding.

A crow with your mother’s frown
showed me a vision of you: the cold ground
had shattered on your shoulders

and you heaved the pieces
across a colorless floor while she watched
smirking from her throne.

My clever boy, she said,
my clever darling, stay with me
forever.

You sighed tearlessly
and kept working, as if you could craft
eternity from broken earth.

I had peeked into your heart
and found the most curious hole
in plain, familiar outlines.

What could those long fissures mean,
I'd thought, if not my own
arms and legs—or those ten splayed gaps,
if not my outstretched fingers?

(You don't realize until you lie down,
how great an organ the heart is,
and how gigantic a cavity
your minuscule skeleton can't hope
to brace itself into—)

While falling, I looked up and saw
that the silhouette was still the same,
though somehow infinite,
an enormous void in your dark sky
waiting for the dawn's explosion, for

the arrival of morning fire and
its human-shaped sun.
You'd have lost yourself in me too,

just something we do:
shadows in the night unaware
of our own translucence,

of what it costs to leap, or
what it means to find ourselves
drowning, inert fixtures

dangling in each other's
stagnant blood. Waiting for the
surgeon hands and outstretched arms of
a human-shaped son.

time, and its passing. that
inexorable march towards eternity,
by our stubborn brains somehow
snapped into pieces that fit
between our teeth for a while.
the last year. the next deadline.
midnight, fast approaching.
hours? seconds?
what do you call dawn?
what will we call the moment when
the sky darkens for the last time?
somehow we know it goes on
and on without end, so we're kept awake
at the notion of extinction,
of nonexistence, of oblivion after
what we call death.
how could time go on without us?
how could . . .
i have heard a rhythm in the infinite,
the graceful inheritance of one day
to the next and a story that tells itself
over and over again, where
we wake into mornings the same but
more important for the yesterdays
that have gone by. the yesterdays that
matter though tomorrows
never end.
i have heard
a rhythm.

Something small told me to wait in silence,
but the bitter voice of my heart's scars
kept mourning every aching wound that cried out
at the mottled shadows of the night,

and that bitter voice of my heart's scars
said I was broken far beyond repair.
In the mottled shadows of the night,
I could not choose which darkness to believe,

whether “You are broken beyond repair,”
or “Hold on a little while; these wounds will mend”
held truth. How could I choose in darkness?
And from behind more voices murmured at me:

“Hold on, hold on to what? Your wounds won't mend,”
my splintered bones choked out. A laugh
came from the voices murmuring at me,
because that something small had tried to speak,

but my splintered bones choked out a laugh
to silence any sound that whispered hope.
Because that something small had tried to speak,
the others cried out louder, but they only

clamored over sounds that still whispered hope;
they filled the insides of my ears with lies,
but soon they tired of crying, till only
the song of night rain washing tired streets

was left to cradle lies inside my ears.
I heard that haunting pulse within my ribs:
the song of night rain washing tired streets
said these scars would never fade (though I thought

I felt a different pulse behind my ribs,
a gentle touch almost enough to heal)--
These scars will never fade, I thought,
but something small told me to wait in silence.

--
A/N: Check out another pantoum on the same theme, written by the fantastic Emmie. 

Safe haven for quick-expanding minds, I
won't want to leave you. Outside they
look at me harsh, outside before inside.

Outside twilight flees swifter, sooner--
smaller sky-fire before night. The trees have
grown their own shimmering flames by day.

Colorful walls keep out the cooling wind
and rain, though storms churn in here any-
way (I mean: brains--ask, disagree) while

outside clear skies give way to grey that
hangs there forever, promising snow to
clothe the naked limbs of blackened trees.

I'm afraid like dandelions in the greenfields
we'll scatter too far apart. Outside is
so much bigger, how will I find you again?

Outside the sun sheds its white cold mask
to thaw the ground with softer rays, urges
trees to stand taller--too fast, too soon! I

tell the crocuses underground to stay, to
rest a little longer, I ask the buds on the
trees to stop, and they obey: Spring pauses.

(The butterfly waits to break free. The
songbird falters in its northward flight.
Nothing fully wakes from its winter sleep.)

But then I wonder if
we can be content,
dreaming so safely here.
Not with summer stretching
at the limits of my fear,
swollen with this waiting, waiting,
loud with promises of more:
warm rain, hot skies,
greening life unfolding like the eager morning light.

Shelter for my childhood thoughts,
could I leave you behind?
I must, I must--
Outside the years race on. 

a miracle:

two glimmers like tall candles

reached each other across a black expanse

(found you, found it--)

astounding how contagious

smiles can be.

Who could tell?

You were just as new, but cold.

: The black exploded into blinding white

and rising sunlight kissed the ashes

like it could wake the dead

(found you, found it--)

was so bright and beautiful.

It did.

Life found you found Home.

1867. Important, new,
communication revolutionized.
Flung joyously in the air.

2012. No one even
remembers.
Fallen, trampled,
left in the dark as we all
rush to 'the next best thing':

technology's brand-new shine
never lasts for long.

--

credit to: my dear blog-stalker, who faithfully reminded me to post today and gave me inspiration where i had none. i use some direct phrases from that inspiration in this poem as an act of homage and true gratitude.

Of bitter memories I drank too deep
and found cold comfort in the acid taste.
There, bare-faced ghosts were open in their haste
to let our friendship sink into death's sleep,
as if I'd yield a treasure (theirs to reap)
but after harvest, naught to them but waste.
--Your smile widens on a stranger's face,
whose laughter echoes somewhere far from me.

I wonder if I made a grave mistake,
when I into my bitter mind withdrew
and held those past unspoken rules as law:
That smile's true enough to swell the ache
in my heart's dusty corner (kept for you),
and something frozen in me yearns to thaw.

Gone
I whispered,
and the fleeing wind would
rip the whisper from
my mouth until I bleed my heart
into the dust,
for rain that carves a river
in the burning sand,
for life that cries itself
to sleep at night, but rises
with the dawn.

Begin again
they asked of me,
so bury both my lungs
into the dust,
and let the crystal air inside
bring gentle breeze and sunlight
in caresses on this storm-torn land,
anew with every breath I've ever
freely drunk
of brighter skies.

Just a little more.
And I will pour my love
into the dust,
not caring if my body shrivels
when the last of water flees
from where my eyes and fingers
used to be.
Dust to dust
is how I run, but
life must rise again before
the cycle is complete.