Getting outside does stuff to you...

One day I was a woman king.
Swords swung at my side all the way up to the hills, where I held them like flowers.

My eyes held the golden mountains, behind my teeth were songs and war cries. I was as a warm stone. The wet air shielded me in armor light and strong of cobweb and silk and I was not afraid of men, or of shades, or of anybody.

I walked upon drums and felt the heartbeat of the earth slip under me like waves. I wanted to kiss her brow, the mother earth, who watches over me, a daughter and heir.

Branches pushed all directions with tattered leaves, to remind my hands that they have learned signs and symbols used by the silent; I am insured for the day my words fade and I have nothing now to fear but sleep.

I reached out and touched the air; it lay soft and cool at my fingertips, stirring very gently, like the breathing of birds, the soft grey reverence of doves.

I turn on the skin of the earth, I turn like leaves to the sun. We told the sun to bleed once, and it obeyed, leaving a deep red streak along the last horizon of the day. A moment later clouds closed over it like tears, and something soaring on black wings screamed overhead.

A gull calls across a thousand miles and my hands drop, remembering when once he held my heart in his hands and told me it was heavy as the sea. It was then I watched his wrists turn upwards, dark and worn thin enough to see through all the veins.

All I lack is flight, now, and victory. But I won't catch that gull.

My swords swing at my sides like breezes, sweeping away the shades of past and present, crushing through the ice of culture and brick, slitting the throats of the stone-faced and empty, who may never know.

The sea runs still in my blood, all of it, but the mountains are in me now, growing like ash grows along the arms of a burning tree.

Kind of absurd, really
bitter, like lack of sleep
but comfortable because I know its anatomy
and I know what to expect;
that the taste of salt is safer than to guess at the flavor and texture of honey.

But you blink for a moment, for a night only, and in the morning the sun will bring armfuls of new light and new bees. The salt wanes then, and honey colors the world like Midas, and you find even your footprints filled with the sweetest softest gold.

Maybe then somebody will teach us how to open our eyes.