12-14-2017, 08:12 AM
Her stomach drops to her ankles.
With blood staining her lips, she is pulled back.
With pleas of mercy ringing in her ears, she is taken away.
<i>Worthy</i>, it says, that voice that is at once fierce and fine. She’s not sure that is true at all, but she looks anyway because she loves it. Loves her. The thing that regards her from its throne atop the stars does not wear Kangaroo’s face (doesn’t smell like lavender, doesn’t remind her of nights on the sand with the salt breeze stirring their hair). It is bony and massive and so very powerful. But she knows, intrinsically, that it is her. That’s why she is compelled to move forward when it asks, even if her physical instincts protest madly inside of her. That’s why she smiles back at its fiery gaze with the cold blue of her own, the corners crinkling, even.
The monstrous thing that had been her woman regards her with love. It is a terrible love that she can feel will break her and rebuild her. It will rend her ribs apart and burrow deep into the meaty center of her soul. But aren’t the greatest loves made of such pain? She has followed Kangaroo to the ends of the earth, and perhaps the beginnings, too – as the stardust spins around their heads. So what if she falls apart and her atoms join the rest of the universe, building and living in another in the future?
Zosma steps forward onto the blanket of stars and doesn’t look back.
The pale woman spends countless days, months, years, millennia, wrapped up in Kangaroo’s teachings and the wide space around her. It is sometimes hard. Some of the lessons are dark and horrible. She quakes with her newfound knowledge of pain and precision. Her scarred skin is delicately flayed one day and sewn back together. Her body is a chalkboard onto which the most wretched words are writ. But it is also wonderful, too. Because the red-eyed thing puts her back together, everytime. She builds her better, even. She draws pleasure out like building waves upon the shore. And these times, Zosma thinks she will break and she welcomes it. The bright light that explodes behind her hooded gaze is like the birth of a galaxy, raw and real and decimating. She learns to love to destroy if only to make more, feel more.
One time, the thing tells her to stay quiet and wait. She tells her that her baby sister is so close that she can taste her in the air. Z stills the excited breaths stirring in her lungs because she is dead. The little girl had died in a field of poppies, her blood indistinguishable from the bobbing heads of the flowers in the prairie breeze. <i> “Remember, Cecilia?”</i> <b>“I remember,”</b> she tells the red-eyed thing. Because she does. She remembers, with tears hot and staining her cheeks, how He had ran her down. She remembers how he had struck her, over and over and over until she was like pulp. <i><b>“Good. Never forget the rage. Never forget the pain.”</b></i> It is the hardest lesson. She sees an apparition of the filly (and whether or not it’s actually her or conjured by the demon, she doesn’t know or care) and she remembers. And vows never to forget.
Time is endless and meaningless, but it passes until she has to go.
Zosma doesn’t want to. <b>“Please,”</b> she echoes the angel. But Kangaroo doesn’t hear or heed. She waves her clawed hand like she is nothing, like their time together is now over and she is being dismissed. But the pale woman feels it, too. She is ready, as painful as it is (as its been). A harsh red glow starts and it feels like the embodiment of her love; she lingers in it. Until it doesn’t. The pain pulls her apart and she finally breaks. This time, there is nothing pleasurable about it. The flesh pulls from her bones and she screams. It changes her, strips her, makes her <i>more</i>.
She wakes with spent breath between her lips.
She is alone on the Mountain. So very alone. So very <i>different</i>.
The stars feel so far away.
With blood staining her lips, she is pulled back.
With pleas of mercy ringing in her ears, she is taken away.
<i>Worthy</i>, it says, that voice that is at once fierce and fine. She’s not sure that is true at all, but she looks anyway because she loves it. Loves her. The thing that regards her from its throne atop the stars does not wear Kangaroo’s face (doesn’t smell like lavender, doesn’t remind her of nights on the sand with the salt breeze stirring their hair). It is bony and massive and so very powerful. But she knows, intrinsically, that it is her. That’s why she is compelled to move forward when it asks, even if her physical instincts protest madly inside of her. That’s why she smiles back at its fiery gaze with the cold blue of her own, the corners crinkling, even.
The monstrous thing that had been her woman regards her with love. It is a terrible love that she can feel will break her and rebuild her. It will rend her ribs apart and burrow deep into the meaty center of her soul. But aren’t the greatest loves made of such pain? She has followed Kangaroo to the ends of the earth, and perhaps the beginnings, too – as the stardust spins around their heads. So what if she falls apart and her atoms join the rest of the universe, building and living in another in the future?
Zosma steps forward onto the blanket of stars and doesn’t look back.
The pale woman spends countless days, months, years, millennia, wrapped up in Kangaroo’s teachings and the wide space around her. It is sometimes hard. Some of the lessons are dark and horrible. She quakes with her newfound knowledge of pain and precision. Her scarred skin is delicately flayed one day and sewn back together. Her body is a chalkboard onto which the most wretched words are writ. But it is also wonderful, too. Because the red-eyed thing puts her back together, everytime. She builds her better, even. She draws pleasure out like building waves upon the shore. And these times, Zosma thinks she will break and she welcomes it. The bright light that explodes behind her hooded gaze is like the birth of a galaxy, raw and real and decimating. She learns to love to destroy if only to make more, feel more.
One time, the thing tells her to stay quiet and wait. She tells her that her baby sister is so close that she can taste her in the air. Z stills the excited breaths stirring in her lungs because she is dead. The little girl had died in a field of poppies, her blood indistinguishable from the bobbing heads of the flowers in the prairie breeze. <i> “Remember, Cecilia?”</i> <b>“I remember,”</b> she tells the red-eyed thing. Because she does. She remembers, with tears hot and staining her cheeks, how He had ran her down. She remembers how he had struck her, over and over and over until she was like pulp. <i><b>“Good. Never forget the rage. Never forget the pain.”</b></i> It is the hardest lesson. She sees an apparition of the filly (and whether or not it’s actually her or conjured by the demon, she doesn’t know or care) and she remembers. And vows never to forget.
Time is endless and meaningless, but it passes until she has to go.
Zosma doesn’t want to. <b>“Please,”</b> she echoes the angel. But Kangaroo doesn’t hear or heed. She waves her clawed hand like she is nothing, like their time together is now over and she is being dismissed. But the pale woman feels it, too. She is ready, as painful as it is (as its been). A harsh red glow starts and it feels like the embodiment of her love; she lingers in it. Until it doesn’t. The pain pulls her apart and she finally breaks. This time, there is nothing pleasurable about it. The flesh pulls from her bones and she screams. It changes her, strips her, makes her <i>more</i>.
She wakes with spent breath between her lips.
She is alone on the Mountain. So very alone. So very <i>different</i>.
The stars feel so far away.