Ballad of a piece of Silver by nsikhonsou, literature
Literature
Ballad of a piece of Silver
Oh Pot
I'm glad
You called me black
For now
I know
I'm perfect
And every imperfection
That I thought
Was mine
Alone
Was merely
Your reflection
Oh Pot
I'm glad
You called me black.
If I am you then what is me?
Could you find me
In the solid verbs of
A hissing bee?
The poisoned dreams
Of forget me not lilies.
The frozen hue
Of a whistling sea -
Immobilised for all to see.
When I am you I lose
Those foolish dreams.
I used to be
A solid ray of moonshine
Dancing on a violent sea.
You couldnt see
Me weeping
In your own reality.
Handcuffed to the question
That is you
Is it me?
Little Miss Mary
Your flowers are dead
Their petals are rotten
There are thorns in their beds.
Dancing the waltz
In a dull petticoat
Your feet, they are bleeding
But stop - no, you wont.
Little Miss Mary
Ive long wondered how
It was you stopped laughing
And fell to the ground.
Only to jump to your feet
And to dance
The song of the graveyard
The death of your plants.
You shattered the faces
Of those you loved first
Tear stains and bruises
But yours is the worst.
The face of a woman
Who sings in the dark
Over and over
Of the death of her heart.
Is there anybody
Out there
Who would not
Stop
And smell the
Flowers?
Stare
Into the
Sunlight
And
Remember
How it felt
To watch
The world sit
swimming -
With a paintbrush
In their hand.
Digging
Their toes
into the sand
Head high and
Dreaming
Of mermaids.
Is there anyone there
Who would not
Stay?
It all started the week before Christmas Eve, a bracing, slippery December morning. The interval between heavy snow and pouring rain, in which breathing itself was an intake of chill.
Tying her scarf the way she always did, she was not unaffected by this change in atmosphere - after all, a cold or a flu virus is a most unattractive thing. But, as she stepped onto the luridly painted bus and reaching out to pay her fare, those kind of thoughts were immediately swept aside and replaced with ones of her destination.
There was a book store in town that up until the fifties had been a tea shop. In her youth, she had visited with her grandmother
Transparent, with no finger tips,
Man made you
Just to be
Dependent.
And so I wonder
When was I
Intoxicated
By this mechanical Eden?
Though scentless,
Shapeless,
Without a soul
And no door to walk inside,
I am sheltered
Within this paradise
Of artifice.
I'm not asleep
And yet I'm here
Watching you
Watching me.
We're standing by the radiator
The paint is flecked
The heat is off
The floor is a shade of magnolia.
In your hand is 'Wuthering Heights'
You're complaining about Lockwood,
The class,
The teacher
Did you complain
About me when you were alone?
There are one thousand oceans
And each one is dry
Lurking at the bottom of this
Merciless divide
There are one million buttercups
Which I planted and cried
I knew
You would pick one
And tell me goodbye.
I remember him standing there; blue eyes, dark hair - brooding statue of a man in front of me. Any clue of feeling, any gesture could give me away.
I hated how he watched me, expecting me to shatter. Waiting for some kind of switch to activate my emotions. A switch he believed existed in the deepest, darkest room of my soul.
I remember just the day before we laid on the grass outside the cemetery, in the shade of an enormous chestnut tree. Dreaming of the future with his head next to mine, there was a part of me that knew these were our final moments.
Taking this knowledge, I gave myself to him completely, believing that this way we could
To everyone that knew her, Alice was the bookish type, retiring to the library after classes to catch up on her reading. Nobody at school knew much about Alice, only that her personality lay reserved to the pages of her favourite hardback and the few words she spoke outside of class were to the librarian.
For as long as she could remember, Alice had loved James - the mathematician in her class. She loved his brooding nature and passion for the subject matter, matched only by her love for fantasy. He didnt know she existed and that was the way she liked it - from a distance she had the chance to wonder how it could be between them.
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