I didn’t believe in luck until I was 18. A math teacher’s daughter, I lived my life based on hard work and probability. Everything was a numbers game and I calculated my life to the decimal points.

Going to college threw all of my carefully constructed numbers out the window. I still counted everything, but the numbers no longer fit into the carefully constructed box of logic I had built my life around.

17 new friends, 3 jobs, 36 classes, 4 funerals, 1 roommate, 2 boyfriends, 2 break-ups, and a million memories.

I couldn’t call it anything other than luck.

I am a rock,

Cold as a winter's dawn,

As hard as a love gone astray.

I am a rock...

No words will move me,

There is no music to my song,

I remain here

Unmoved by time and space.

Heavens cry their silent tears,

Eroding my edges,

Carving a history

That I have sought to deny.

I was once a rock,

Today I am a stone.

Young lovers pick me up,

I skim once, twice, three times

Along the water,

A silent promise only I heard.

I sink to the lake's bottom,

Weight down by all our yesterdays,

A stone never remembered.

Years ago by

And I have become a grain of sand,

So small as to not matter,

So large as to blind one's soul

Of the dreams they thought to share.

Washed ashore by the wave of time,

I become abandoned to the whims

Of the wind and faith.

Time moved on as we know it would,

And I have become a part of the soil,

Where Lilies bloom and dreams are born

And now I can't recall

Those days when I was stone,

For I have become part of a living world.

I feel the rain wash over me.

Somehow I am now aware

That even a stone has a history,

That even when I never cried

The passing of time

Would reveal my tears.

I was once a rock,

Until the gods cried for me.

I was a stone

Until the lovers made a silent wish.

I was a grain of sand

Until I was called to be part

Of the cycle of life.

Lately

I'm finding faith

Between

Questions

And

Self-laced intentions,

Like a dot to dot

Painting insanity

Or something else.

So I interrogate

My eyes

And why they bend

And spin

Light as they do.

Is anything real?

So I will follow

my greed

Into the foundation

Of everything

I will never know,

And create night

With eyelids and hope.

And I will see her

As more than

An outline,

When I can trace

nothing

But darknes,

Peeling like scars

From from the center

Of me.

I peak back out

At the dawn.

And i wish I

I could see everything

Like this.

And follow the greed.

The truth is,

Being wrong

Is fucking

Beautiful.

Because she looks good

In both outfits.

If only I could

Also

See

Myself.

Dapper as fuck

In my confusion.

Maybe truth

Would never

Drop beneath the horizon.

But when it comes

To her,

You always squint

At the fucking sun.

As twilight fades to darkness,

And the moon begins to glow,

I start to ponder the sure things

That I'm not so sure of anymore.

My questions send me wandering

The catacombs of my cluttered mind.

I again obsess over the wastefulness,

Of the gifts I've long held confined.

The crickets chirping in the bushes,

And the frogs singing in the trees,

Don't have the effect I was hoping,

My heart feels blackened with disease.

The firelight feeds this frenzy.

Paranoia creeps in the back door.

The fiends troll in the shadows...

I know exactly what they have in store.

As my inner demons rise again,

Tearing holes throughout my core,

My mental panic increases the manic

And I collapse on the forest floor.

They fill me with false promises,

Prophesize a future of blood and gore.

Ears deluged with the horrific screams,

Possible victims my heart can't ignore.

The agony forces my eyes open,

I'm stunned by the calm stars above.

If only through their emotional absence,

My tormented soul could be absolved.

My body contorts and spasms,

As the fiends power is restored,

The flood of my own wretchedness

Is almost more than I can endure.

They torture me with awful rhythms,

My nerve endings played as cords.

An agonizing internal orchestra

Practiced by unsympathetic hordes.

Again the darkness threatens to take me,

And steal the little that is still pure.

But the hounds of hell can bring no pain

My own mind hasn't brought before.

This realization is my reinforcement.

I recognize the horror from which I came.

I now see where I should be going,

And question if I am still to blame.

I don the face of the card man,

Removing the reads they so enjoy,

My mental monsters don't miss a beat,

Still seeking, and hoping to destroy.

I feel a power I've never known,

A pin prick of something more,

I am in control of my own destiny,

I don't answer to the demons anymore.

Their gleeful howls echo in my mind,

The wolves have captured their prey?

With instinct and razors they converge.

But this time, it is I, that they will obey.

From the broken bones and ashes,

The once fragile boy now purged.

Scars have become his armor,

A man ready to face his scourge.

As usual... I started writing and things got completely out of hand. Here is a window into my brain. A prompt as simple as "behind closed doors" birthed this: the entire premise for my next fantasy novel. Thank you for the inspiration. Of course, it is far too many words for the actual challenge and doesn't really fit the spirit of the thing anymore, anyway. Here she is, hot off the press of my mind. An incredibly rough draft:

The sun dips beneath the shadow of the mountain, illuminating the sky in swathes of amber glow for a moment that seems to stretch into eternity, before snapping abruptly to a close, robbing the world of the glorious certainty of sunlight. I roll my shoulders and pull the curtains closed. Now that it’s brighter in here than it is out there, I feel the need to hide. I don’t want them to see what I’m doing in here. I journey from one room to the next, running my fingertips along every latch and lock in this god-damned house, pulling each shade, encasing myself in the darkness of night. For a moment I stand in the dark, listening to the brush of wind along the cracks at the bottom of the front door, before pulling the chain of the side table lamp and settling myself amongst the cushions. I pull the portal from where I’ve last stashed it. I left it in a rather obvious place, considering the powerful artifact it is. It slides easily from behind the couch pillow and I settle it along my knees. I shoved it back there when an unexpected visitor had dropped by earlier, banging rudely on the door, pulling me out of a suspended state between here and there abruptly, leaving me feeling more than a little torn for the rest of the afternoon as I sat through boring conversations, offering cookies and tea. I loathed every second, but what was I to do? Shut the door in their face and say, ’Sorry, come back later… I’m visiting my dragon right now?” God. If they could only see who I am behind closed doors. In this fucking life I’m a terribly proper little creature. I try to keep a low profile because I know what would happen if anyone ever found out. People would kill for the kind of power I hold now, resting gently on my lap. Hell, I would kill. Maybe that’s the why of it, really. I know I would kill if anyone ever tried to take this from me. It’s my only pathway… to him. “I’ll be there soon,” I whisper, pulling the case open, running my fingers along the brittle leather edge of the cover.

Pinpricks prickle up my forearms and I shiver at the faint echo of power. The smell of freshly laid straw bedding and wet cobblestones wafts from inside the shimmering silver pool on my lap. The portal is small, only allowing one voyager to pass through for the entirety of their lifetime. This portal and I are bound. It calls to me alone. Mine. Perhaps that is why we’ve been able to keep it hidden for so long. It’s been passed down in my family since the dark ages. And two years ago, when the council met, I was finally deemed worthy. I beat out my cousin Elias for the privilege, and he’s bitter about it, but thank God he has no idea what this actually is. He just knows it was grandmother’s most prized possession. If he knew… my fingers twitch at the thought.

I dip my hands into the iridescent glow, allowing silver to slither over my palms and then I plunge myself in, pulled by the gravity of Arvaith, ripped through the bounds of space in a kaleidoscope pathway of meteorite bliss. Everyone always speculates that travel between worlds would be painful, but they’re wrong. This… this is a feeling akin to climax, that boundless building pressure just before release, so powerful it’s almost painful, but at its core, it is raw, unrelenting pleasure. I smile as I am torn from our world, hurdling at breakneck speed for the Arvaithian cobblestones below. I haven’t learned to slow my descent yet, but I know it won’t matter one bit. He’ll catch me. I’m spinning in freefall for a moment, flipping uncontrollably through the clouds, streaks of flame and stardust trailing behind me like a fiery cape. I am an asteroid on a collision course with the city below. I right myself and will power to my fingertips, pushing against the very lifeforce of Arvaith, willing myself to slow, envisioning earth beneath my feet instead of open sky. I slow…or at least I think I slow…a little. I really need to work on this, but that’s a challenge when I have no teacher. Grandmother is the only other Voyager I’ve ever known and it’s not exactly like I can ask her, seeing as how she’s dead. Harsh. The sky seems to ripple below me, streaks of darker blue along the backdrop of watery grey. An earsplitting grin unfurls on my face. I center myself, allowing the stardust and fire to settle back under my skin. Frigid rain pelts my face, freezing on my cheeks for a moment before running in unsettling rivulets back through my unbound hair. Apparently, the weather in Arvaith is shit today. Caelus swerves closer and I feel the soft brush of the feathers of his underbelly along my forearm. The sound of thunder booming in my ears, causes my smile to grow impossibly wider. “I missed you, too,” I whisper, knowing I needn't raise my voice for him to hear, even up here, even at these impossible speeds. This is nothing. Caelus is faster. I flatten my body, perpendicular to the ground, in a maneuver we’ve finally gotten the hang of after a solid six months of practice. I reach my arms wide, aiming for the patch of navy blue scales just at the crest of his shoulders. The scales are darker here, unbleached by the sun from where his rider sits. Me. I laugh into the wind. He glides under me, matching my speed. I reach and grab hold of one of his spine spikes, settling myself in place. Home. I’m home.

I scratch Caelus in his favorite spot, right between where his wings meet and he slows, ceasing wing beats and gliding to a gentle pace. We soar above the city, circling twice before Caelus seems to change his mind and continues on a straight path for the mountains to the east. “Hey!” I call, “I need to get my stuff at the stables.” The only reply I receive is a growl so low I merely feel it in my legs instead of hearing it. Dread builds between my shoulder blades at the sensation. “Okay. I guess we’ll talk first, then,” I sigh as if I actually have any say in the matter. He’s a freaking dragon. We land on a plateau just above the foothills. Caelus and I learned not to journey to the upper peaks after an unfortunate encounter with a Rogue on the slope of Illsgath last month. I shiver at the memory of the untamed dragon, teeth snapping and sulfurous fire singeing the hairs on my arms as I’d clung to the ledge she’d so kindly shoved me off with the whip of her tail. Thank the heavens for Caelus, who’d flown under me as my fingers had slipped, catching me awkwardly along a wing. I’d rolled into place and we’d flown for the stables faster than ever before with the echoes of the Rogue’s screams chilling me to the core. I think she may have been guarding a nest. There is still so much to learn.

Caelus rolls his shoulders in a gesture I’ve come to know as, “Get off of me right now, or I will roll over on you.” I oblige. I hop off in one smooth movement, landing on the ground in a silent crouch near his forefoot. World-hopping isn’t the only power that comes with being a Voyager. I’ve been unusually coordinated since my first journey. I think it had something to do with where I’d landed. I hadn’t known how to navigate then and I’d crashed through the atmosphere of Ortus and landed in a bone-crushing heap at the base of the largest tree I’ve ever seen. I’d lain there for what felt like an eternity twitching my broken fingers and trying to breathe around the shards of bone poking my lungs. It couldn’t have been more than seconds (I would have died otherwise, duh), before my wrecked fingers met with the bark of the nearest root, protruding from the ground. And then the tree had spoken to me… Something Caelus hasn’t even managed to do yet. “We are Mana,” a voice deeper than the core of the Earth whispered, “We have been waiting since the birth of the universe for your voyage. We have foretold your coming in the tides of time. We have written you into the fabric of worlds untold. Go forth. Walk, Elethea. You are made new.” I’d opened my eyes and found myself healed. No. More than healed. New. I swear I grew taller, which was impossible, of course, since I’m 25 and haven’t grown so much as a millimeter since seventh grade. My hair was longer, too, brushing along the curve of my spine in auburn tendrils when it’d barely reached my shoulders before. I felt…amazing. I swear my skin glowed. And then the power had coursed, beating like a pulse beneath my skin, screaming in wave after wave of pain, filling me, splitting me, shaping me into something other. Something new and wonderful and terrible and… wrong. Something was all wrong. It felt like a chunk of me had been ripped out, gone forever from this universe, shredded from the soul of me. Then the fucking tree had laughed; a sound akin to the screaming of a dying animal, “Go, Elethea. You must mend. You will find the missing piece in a world unknown. He will catch you when you fall. When the fabric of the universe grumbles it’s discontent and your hope is dead. You will meet him in the sky. Find him, Elethea, before they find you.” And with that incredibly cryptic bit of advice, they’d shoved me back through the hole in space and time. I’d found myself sprawled on the couch, with the portal case upended on the floor, silvertine shreds oozing onto the rug. I’d scooped it back in and slammed it shut, locking it into the safe grandmother had kept it in and ignoring it for a month, too afraid to venture back in.

The clicking of Caelus’ impatient talon on stone is enough to bring me back to the present moment. I clear my throat and meet the shrewd gaze of his huge blue eyes. He narrows them into menacing slits. God. He is beautiful. Caelus is small, for a dragon. The crest of his shoulder a mere four feet above my head. His long body curls in serpentine impatience, tail draping down the side of the plateau. He is the color of the bluest sky, scales sun-bleached everywhere on his back, except where I sit. Along his underside, he is a hue darker blue, until scales thicken on his chest and sprawl into a cascade of pure white feathers along his underbelly. His talons are curved, more than two feet in length and glimmer keratin silver, matching the spiny protrusions down the length of his back. His leathery wings span the distance of the rockface, coming to points with more keratin spikes at the ends. Bursts of white feathers litter the upper edge of his wings, fading into an expanse of blue that unfurls as he flaps at me in irritation. He looks like an angry cloud. God. He is beautiful, I think again. He grumbles, low in his throat and gestures with a wing at the darkening sky, barely missing my head. “Hey!” I chastise, “You did that on purpose!” A purr that I’ve come to know as Caelus’ laugh vibrates the ground before cutting off abruptly. He swings his head back and glares again. My shoulders slump. “I know.” I venture forward and he lowers his head so I can place my hand on his forehead, “I am so sorry I’m late.” Another grumble. “I had…visitors.” He growls. I rest my head against his for a long minute. It feels like I can almost hear his thoughts like this, but out of all the ‘gifts’ that damn tree gave me, it didn’t give me the ability to truly speak with my dragon. I run my hand along the curl of his horns, “Forgive me?” Quiet stretches. The only sound is the steady thump of Caelus’ heart and the patter of rain pooling around us. I shiver and Caelus sighs. He gently bumps me with his head. I’m forgiven. I vault onto his back and we take to the sky, wings beating and then soaring once more to the stables of Arvaith. To war.

(AI art used for the attached image)

The sound of the drums

Echoed in the air

My body moved toward

The sound of the drums

Out of many, one

Chosen to be a

Sacrifice to the

Out of many, gods

Adrenaline rushed

Forth like a flood

The other time my

Adrenaline failed me

This time I will try

To save the young baby

From dancing with death

This time I will not fail

Out of the others

This one is most painful

Because that child

Their holding captive—

~Is mine-

O, come on feet

Don’t falter now

Help me make it

To save my little one!

#Epluribusunum ©️ 13.01.2023

Like Orpheus, I curse myself by looking back

arms outstretched, watching her fall

again, there are so many again’s

fall and get back up again

fall in love again

fall out of love again

fall, it’s fall again

and fall is when I fell out of your favor

no, it was the fall before that fall

or maybe springtime, even, sometimes

the leaves don’t have to change colors for everything to rot

we decay every day, more

again, death and rebirth

wrapped in her arms

precious, wearing white

the color of bones

reborn from the earth

they rise from their graves

shine like pearls, clutch them

beads fall like tears

she falls back, outstretched arms

ghostly, wispy white, and fading

like misty time and all feelings of innocence

restlessness it festers even for them

the dead, we grieve for them

not them, no, we wear rose-colored glass to the funeral

and make the black fabric look like heavenly hopefulness

there is no eulogy for the tree that becomes the coffin

It was a massive chunk of stone, and a tiny chisel.

He easily could have looked up at it and despaired. He probably should have!

“Why try… why bother?” Most would ask.

Was it that he saw something beautiful inside the stone?

Or was it that he saw something beautiful inside himself?

Or was it because he wanted you to see something beautiful in mankind?

He was a quiet man. We can only surmise in where his faith laid.

But there is no doubt that his first his blow was struck with faith.

I once was

The loneliest boy,

Dust bowl swept hair,

And skewed eye slant,

Patchwork quilt,

Masquerading as pants.

My manic musings,

On diary sleeves,

Like teenage tattoos,

On battered loose leaf.

Still nobody, really,

Took notice of me.

I once was,

17,

My locust hum,

Of blistered feet,

Fast legs to nowhere,

And no one to meet.

Once, I dreamed I’d steal

The ice cream van,

And serenade

The neighborhood,

With distorted strains

Of

‘Fanfare For The Common Man’.

But I lost the nerve,

In haywire verve,

And was told in a panic,

That my brain was manic,

When I was 17.

The adroitly quack doctors,

Rolled out the white carpet

For me,

Parading my crazy

Of dry subtle wit,

In between fires

Of

electroshock fits.

They hazed me on a cocktail,

Of Thorazine and Coca Cola,

While I could barely breathe.

Hey daddy,

Why is everyone

Looking at me?

But that was me,

At 17,

Building a wall,

No one could see.

I’ll never forget,

The window there,

Dirty from tears,

Framed in despair.

I waved to my father,

And he waved backwards,

Head bowed like a lilac in an impromptu rain storm,

Crying for me

As the caged up windowsill,

Bartered for my sanity

At 17.

I’d write

What I called ‘poetry’,

But Dr. Macbeth,

Ruled it lunacy,

At 17,

Foiled and failed.

’Ramparts and rages,

Decaying in stages,

Shall rebound it’s fervor,

While forever we sleep.

Ramparts and rages,

On ink mottled pages,

Shall renounce the message,

Encrypted we keep.’

I wrote all those words,

To set myself free,

From the prison of self,

At 17.

But I was barely a cog,

In the meantime machine.

Yet in the most winsome way,

People were looking at me,

This girl named Karen

And this doctor named Steve.

A few months later,

They said I was well.

So I sauntered a bit,

For show and for tell.

But I knew that I

Would carry the weight,

Of irony’s cunning

Turn of defeat.

I never did track,

That Ice cream van down,

But often I wished

It still was around.

I’d hook up cassettes

And ride ’til the dawn,

To shuttered up houses,

Asleep in the sun.

There are days

I don't connect

With myself

Not

In the

Questioning my existence

Vein

Because

That's different

And normal

But

In the

Am I

Being true

To myself

Way

Which is smaller

And less

Significant

But bigger

And

More poignant

Yet

The answer

Is in the question

Because

I asked

Who Erm I?

Instead

Of

Who

Am

I