Endings

In the horror of the hour

the clock tower chimes a note of dread

as stars and moon and sweet desire

are swept away into the fire

of the living and the dead

for those of us who watch and see

ghost flowers piled high, in palest snow

with frozen breath, we tend the pyre

for endings come and go

The fragile pane of memory

the dangling button at your sleeve

soon to be lost forever

the careless echoes

the sad goodbye

the moment missed

the day you cried

Shadows flee and clouds conspire

to break us from the life we knew

your hand was curled around a leaf

with sorrow waiting underneath

the blackest of taboos

drift silently in opium haze

Is that really all that’s left of you?

There was a moment when I knew

The sirens cleaved the world in two

time dissolved —a public wake

questions that will have to wait

answers you can never make

no second chance, or tethered hour

nowhere to run

or place to cower

This is the end

the goodbye we fear

the black tide rising

the broken year

the winter seed on hardened ground

the moment when we’re lost, not found

the waving hand above the waves

the helpless feeling when we cave

our longing for the one betrayed

and buried in a shallow grave

Everything you were to me

the day, the night, the morning sighs

the whys, the ifs, the sorry lies

the puzzle of your broken mouth

the crypt you tried to call a house

the white wrapped burial at sea

the corpse bride you brought back to me

It all unravels like the hours

falling, sinking, ticking, tossed

a raft, on which you’re finally lost

ahead, a light breaks through the loam

voices urge us to come home

but no matter how hard I try to bend

there’s no way back

from the end

© amy eyrie 2012

Image by h.koppdelaney

Endings

L-O-O-K

Some memories are like mile markers on the road.

I remember the moment distinctly. Sitting at my desk as my teacher ran her finger under four white letters. Until that moment, the letters were separate and unremarkable. Each had a sound of course. We’d even learned an alphabet song to memorize the letters. We’d traced the shapes again and again, repeating each consonant and vowel. But now, as my first grade teacher spoke aloud, my world shook to its very core.

L-O-O-K, she said­, tapping the L, two O’s and the K with her chalk. Look.

The familiar word I’d heard a thousand times had a form, a way to be communicated on the blackboard or on paper. The mangle of markings that filled the books in my father’s library were suddenly accessible, it was only a matter of time.

I was about to learn to read.

The word look still haunts me. It was a portent, a command. Be a watcher. See the world as it is. Look deeper, past the tricks and illusions, past the lies and distortions. Look and see the truth of things. After that, I loved writing and I loved writers. Writers were the masters of this new world. They knew the rules and could create something out of nothing. Writers could conjure the needed words to bend perception, to create worlds.

Even though the class started with Dick and Jane, I was impatient. All those books stacked around the house and filling the attic, I wanted to see the words for myself. I started with Dr. Seuss and drove my parents crazy reading The Cat in the Hat aloud. Each word was a revelation, a gateway to a thousand objects and thoughts. I grew an appetite for reading and my eyes sought out the words on signs, advertisements, cereal boxes, magazines and the dense topography of books.

As I got older, I came across shocking revelations.

I remember reading a newspaper article of what I now know was the murder of Sharon Tate. The killers chased their victims into the yard. The police found words written in blood on the walls. The raw power of words was clear. Words could cut you, damage you or even destroy you. The bloody word “Pig” on the wall of the crime scene stabbed me deeply and irrevocably. Part of my innocence died the day I read that word.

Maybe because people are a mystery, unknowable—I looked harder. My Dad was a voracious reader. The attic was filled with science fiction and pulp novels mixed together with the classics. I read about monsters and heroes, Martians, plagues, artificial realities, kings and pawns, telepathy and possession. Each book held a piece of the puzzle; good vs evil, power, humility, self-sacrifice, betrayal, desire, loss, triumph and the meaning of love. These were the secrets of adulthood, filtered through the prism of a thousand minds. And as my appetite for the written word grew, everything became clear.

Writers were magicians of words and I wanted to be one. I wanted to spend my life learning how the trick was done.

So here I am, committed in every sense to being a writer, to the magic of creation.  Like every writer I spend a lot of time in secret worlds and other dimensions where my characters and stories live.  Now and then that first word comes back to me, that seed of wonder that started it all.

Look.

 

Illustration by: Calamity Meg

L-O-O-K

Scribblings, writings, musings

Scribblings, writings, musings

Delectable delicacies for your mental palate

Lovely lashing of cherry picked pronouns

Minty fresh dollops of creamy connotations

Vichyssoises of various verbs

Sweet spoonfuls of nouns to nibble upon

With only a sprinkle of ambiguity

And for desert

Alluring alliterations

Meaningful metaphors

With a dash of chocolate verisimilitude

And a heady apéritif of flaming myth

Bon appetite

Scribblings, writings, musings