Quicksilver Concrete

She is transparent.
Vague outlines embrace the clouds where her head should be and rock, oceanlike, to a lullaby of clanking chains and splitting continents.

He is color.
Fiery scarlet pride and the warmth of a smoldering hearth in the dead of winter.
Cool turquoise calculation, deep royal sentiment, radiation from white-hot galaxies overflowing with every shade and temper of ardor.

He is everything and she is nucleic or central or critically isolated,
and he fills her every crevice and pore like quicksilver concrete in the cracks where the light was spilling out and sputtering into nothing.

Now it spills into him,
and all is well.

Hold your breath.

A blackness shrouds the path ahead,
are we to advance? Are we to continue,
blind? We dare not turn back.
And do we have a choice?

The earth beneath our feet is brittle,
it groans and cracks, even as we stand,
stagnate. It will not hold.
There is no alternative.

We may totter cautiously forward,
or crawl if we must. But we will go,
regardless. Into the black.
Into a petrifying unknown.


No turning back now.

Hold your breath.

This is it.

Forget-Me-Nots

Mechanical joints and cast-iron bones
tick forward like the hands of my pocket watch,
little forget-me-nots in a vase on the counter,
their petals beginning to wither and fall.

"Forget me,"  cries one, "forget me." Its voice
so familiar, yet I can't seem to place it.
"Forget me not," another sighs, sounding
quite as if it has forgotten me already.

They both fall, though. They dance -
briefly - around each other, a simple waltz.
They let go, they drift apart, they die alone.
I regret their loss, but what can I do?

Petals fall.
Flowers die.
Forget-me-nots are forgotten.
And the machine ticks on.

I do.

I do believe in fairies.
I do, I do.

And all you have to do, my dear
is say that you do, too.