this is your kingdom, this is your crown; a laura pony

[marvel]

marvel

i'll run the risk
of being intimate with brokenness

I remember sleeping for what felt like eons, just waiting, wishing, the idea of my existence becoming more and more tangible with every moment that swept past me. That world, the first one, it crumbled as I grew stronger. Sometimes I felt bad, I felt guilt – though it was not a concept I really understood – that this bright warm place would die so that I might live. But it was impossible to resist the way my skin, if a concept can really have skin, hummed and my ears buzzed with so much offered energy. There was another world waiting for me, and there was new warmth and different bright, and love. Love for me.

I was special, they promised me.

It was a lie though, or a mistake, because when I got to this new place there was no one waiting for me. My eyes opened and the only thing staring back at me was a reflection. Mine. This scrawny girl with dirty brown eyes and skin like a murky blue ocean. I understood immediately why they hadn’t waited to meet me. Why they couldn’t, wouldn’t love me. But that was okay, I didn’t need to be special- I wanted more, I always would, but this would be enough. To be real, to be something more tangible than a thought, more literal than a concept.

A mistake of magic, bred by loneliness and depravity.

So many years later and I am still very much the same. The meadow is the only home I have ever known or needed, the changing crowds the only family I have ever deserved. There was no one special, no one who meant anything more to me than anyone else- except for one, one face that reappeared on the bodies of different strangers in even stranger dreams. I had met him years ago, just in passing, he was black like the night with eyes as sad and orange as a harvest moon. I hadn’t known him, but I think he knew me. I could see it in his face, that dangerous flicker of recognition, like he was seeing a ghost that never should have existed. It might have made sense for me to stop and ask him why, but the guilt in his face, the suspicion left like a stain, it scared me. I never saw him again, and I regret that now, my fear. I regret the loneliness too, just a little.

And now, as I stand at the edge of the water again with only my reflection staring back at me, I realize how very little has changed. My eyes are still plain and brown, maybe a little sadder now and with more secrets sunk like ships at the bottoms. My face is longer too, and more narrow, and my legs seem awkwardly long beneath me. The blue is the same though, murky and dull, framed by black on my legs and face. At the time I had been confident that I looked nothing like him, nothing like the man from meadow all those years ago. But now staring down at a plain, slender creature with sad, lonely eyes and the shadow of uncertainty twisting the curve of my mouth, I’m not so sure.


through this magnifying glass I see a thousand finger prints
on the surfaces of who I am

idk how to first person, pls forgive

[adaline]

I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
I want all that is not mine; I want him but we're not right

 
If anyone knows what it feels like to be broken, it is Adaline.

She feels it in her very marrow—feels it in the way that her lungs constrict painfully with every breath, in the way that her bones press dangerously close to her skin. Her fragility is always simmering just below the surface of her skin so that she is never able to quite forget it. She sees it in the raw pink of her eyes, in the impossibleness of her slender body. She is beautiful, perhaps, but not in a way that most people understand. She is an alien amongst them, and she knows it. She can never forget it.

The only one who has ever been able to understand has been her brother, and she knows in her heart of hearts that she is losing him. She is losing him, and she has no idea how she is going to survive that. Will life even be worth living if she does not have him? She doesn’t have the answer, and so she wanders. She spends her days carefully picking her way through the meadow, careful to skirt outside the throngs of bodies where she may be carelessly jostled. What may be a simple fall for others could be fatal for her.

Though she wants nothing more than companionship, she does not approach any—that is, until she sees the mare standing on the edge of the water. There is something in her expression that seems familiar; something that speaks to the gut-wrenching loneliness that has started to breed in Adaline’s stomach. So the glass mare alters her course and walks up beside her, trusting in the other’s good graces not to bring her any harm. “Adaline,” is all she says as a greeting, her eyes not tearing away from her sad reflection.

 

in the darkness, I will meet my creators
and they will all agree that I'm a suffocator

[marvel]

marvel

i'll run the risk
of being intimate with brokenness

I can hear someone behind me, but I don’t turn to see who. This world is full of feet and faces and too many bodies pressed far too close with too little room left for me to remember how to breathe. I’m sure the feet will keep walking though, they always do, I’m sad and blue and unremarkable in every way and no one ever notices me. But I like it that way, I’m not sure I would know what to do with any attention, not sure if I would know how to shape my lips around words to string sentences together. I’m not sure I would know how to live, how to be alive, how to be just like everyone else.

But the feet stop and suddenly I have to learn.

For a long moment I keep my eyes locked on my own reflection, and it’s hard because I can feel the strange heat of her body next to mine, the gentle whoosh of breath in her chest. But I need this extra moment for myself, need to trace the lines of my dark face and the muddy depths of my plain brown eyes. I need to remind myself of what she’ll see when she looks at me.

But she doesn’t.
I don’t feel her eyes prying secrets from my skin.

I turn slowly, just my face, I don’t think I could’ve moved my feet if I tried, but whatever I was expecting it wasn’t the pale and pink girl standing before me. The weight of my brow furrows and I can feel sympathy prickling uninvited at the backs of my eyes before my shame wipes them clean. Instead I shift just a little so that I’m watching her reflection where it mingles with mine, watching the tatters of her bony wings held aloft and blurred by the ripples rolling across the waters flat surface.

And I’m hoping she didn’t see that flash of sympathy.

‘Adaline.’ She says and I’m struck by how even a name can feel fragile, like I might mangle it with the roughness of my unpracticed tongue. So I don’t repeat it, I vow never to try. “Marvel.” I say, swallowing with the effort of using muscles long since forgotten. My lips struggle a little, and my tongue feels like cotton in mouth, so it’s all I offer. I want to tell her that I’m not, though. Not a Marvel. But instead I turn back to our reflections, drawn to where her pale and pink blends with the mottled blue of my reflection, wondering why there are hummingbirds in my heart.


through this magnifying glass I see a thousand finger prints
on the surfaces of who I am

[adaline]

I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
I want all that is not mine; I want him but we're not right

The problem with Adaline is she is so easily hurt by the things that she loves—and she loves so freely. She was born into a family that was both enamored by and destroyed by love. They gave their hearts, buried their souls into the bones of each passing stranger, and yet they gladly walked into the ocean when love came to call. They did not fight against the tide that pulled them into the sinking, swirling sediment of the passing storm—they simply reared back, took a breath, and leaned into it. So when she glances and sees the bruises of her half-sisters eyes, all she can do is lean into the fray once more.

“Marvel,” she murmurs in her breathy voice, even the syllables of her tongue wispy and soon forgotten on the breeze that winds and wraps between them. Tilting her head back, she considers the wide expanse of sky that blankets the pair of them. For a moment, perhaps two, she remains silent. She simply concentrates on the fluttering of breath from her lungs, the delicacy of motion so vital to her existence and yet so forgotten by most.

(She could never forget though. Such life-giving acts were precious to her.)

Finally, she brings her slender, alien head back down, slanting it toward the roan mare by her side. “I suppose that you are.” It was not meant to be a spun-sugar lie or falsehood—it was simply how Adaline saw the world and always would. Taking the smallest of steps (or, the largest of movements, depending on your perspective), she comes to Marvel’s side and leans against it. With an exhale, she drops her cheek to the mare’s shoulder and closes her eyes, resting against her side. Her papery skin prickles with the touch, her nerves alive with the sensation, and she just concentrates on the stolen warmth.

“I am sorry,” she whispers, but the truth is she is not sorry at all for the intrusion.
“I can leave if you want,” although she has no desire to part from the mare.

in the darkness, I will meet my creators
and they will all agree that I'm a suffocator

[marvel]

marvel

i'll run the risk
of being intimate with brokenness

Marvel.

There are shivers racing across the mottled blue valleys of my quivering skin. Two hundred and five bones reduced to little more than dust and ash in the wake of that wing-brush soft voice. Time unravels like a night sky, each memory a star twinkling like a hole in the ceiling of my impossibly small world. Some memories have gone, disappeared like shooting stars, and there are others still that I cannot reach no matter how hard I try. But in the ones I still have, the memories that are still mine, no one has ever said my name before. I am sure of this.

“Say it again.” I whisper and I am tripping over the words, turning in time to fall over the edges of her bottomless pink eyes. It is just a name, just a word with a meaning that I am too small to fit into, and I don’t know why it suddenly feels like there are pinprick holes in my lungs and I cannot catch my breath. “Please.” I say again in a voice as brittle and fragile as that traitorous heart thumping in my chest.

And then-

“I am not.” I say, and obligation sits like a pressure in my chest, an impossible pain that I cannot ignore. I am not a marvel, not marvelous. There is nothing wondrous about me, nothing inspiring about the place I come from – a forgotten orphan, plain and unloved. It feels important that she understands this, important because I will not survive the wedge of disappoint that will fall between us when she learns the truth.

But then she is stepping closer, closer, closer, and it takes three tries to swallow the uncertainty caught in my throat. There are two hundred and five bones pressed against my side and I am terrified of breaking every single one of them. She feels so fragile against my skin, like a dandelion puff crashed against the rocks. “Are you cold?” I whisper because I am too afraid to breathe with her face pressed against my shoulder, because I cannot understand why she would ever want to touch me.

And when her voice comes next tickling my ears like sunshine after a long, dark winter, I realize I do not need to know why. I only need to know that the sudden pain in my chest at the possibility of Adaline leaving is the worst pain I have known in my lonely life. “That is not what I want.” I tell her quietly in a voice that catches just a little when my dark eyes sink back into the reflection of her curled against my side.

This is what I want, Adaline.


through this magnifying glass I see a thousand finger prints
on the surfaces of who I am

[adaline]

I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
I want all that is not mine; I want him but we're not right

She is not sure why her heart is stuttering in her chest, why this simple touch is so profoundly important, but she knows that it is—in the same way that she knows the moon will rise and the sun will set and she will still be impossibly alive when she should be dead. So she doesn’t leave from her, even when she says that she will, and she feels relief flood through her when she says that she doesn’t want to. “Good,” she breathes softly out, resting her weight against the other mare, feeling supported and comforted.

“Marvel,” she repeats the name, will always repeat it if she requests, and glances upward, catching the bruised gaze of her companion. “Marvel,” again, and she closes her eyes, mouth tilting in the corners with clear, unadulterated pleasure. The name was sweet on her tongue, soft and precious, and she held it close, tucking it into the most private parts of her heart where she could perhaps look upon it later in fondness.

(Adaline loved—easily, fiercely, completely—but she did not expect love to last.)

“Can I ask you a question?” she whispers, lifting her head to exhale into Marvel’s mane, wondering at the way that the inky colors of it danced from the gentle prompting. She did not expect such gentleness from the other, but she hopes that she can find honesty too—and then she has to wonder if perhaps that is too much to ask. Was it too much to hope for kindness and truthfulness from the same heart? She did not know. Most she met in the meadow were clear in their derision, their disgust. Marvel was an anomaly.

Adaline does not wait for the response, instead letting her words tumble over themselves, naked in their hopefulness and vulnerability. “Do you think it is impossible for the broken to be loved?” She sighs, daring to touch her mouth to the mare’s neck and letting it linger for a moment too long. “I hope not.”

in the darkness, I will meet my creators
and they will all agree that I'm a suffocator