you know you’re one of them, wearing the guise of human flesh and the lie of a living boy’s smile.
you keep waiting for death to claim the soul he marked as his.
but death wears the guise of a girl with the universe in her eyes and fire in her heart.
and sitting there in the backseat of your old camaro with the stars above you both, you wouldn’t mind if she stole your soul away with an electric kiss.
you kept seeking out the warmth of their touch in the ghosts at the edge of your vision. in art teachers and surrogate mothers and women who never fulfilled their promises of safety and home.
it wasn’t until you were standing on the edge of this fragile crystal world, that you realized that family is found and not forced, and that you need to give warmth first before you can receive it from anyone else.
there’s flowers in your veins and mud underneath your skin. you’re a microcosm of nature, an experimental garden in human form.
there’s witchweed in your soil, deep and foul. it knows you’re this world’s roots and that your thorns can’t reach that far down.
it wants to strip you of your precious nutrients. of your fire and your love and joy.
but the witchweed forgets you’re a perennial child, always reaching for the sun and that the seeds of your utopia are just laying dormant, waiting for your call.
there’s flowers in your veins and mud underneath your skin. you’re a microcosm of nature, an experimental garden in human form.
Okay LOVE love love how this last poem turned out! ^^ this stanza was a great opening, though I thoroughly enjoyed all of it - nature imagery just is amazing and I adored the way you used it here!!
Okay, I was going to quote that EXACT SAME section as @figmoon did and then I clicked the spoiler and saw she already had. But GOSHHHHH - that section is absolutely gorgeous Mage. I love how you're interpreting your theme, and that garden + body imagery is just *chef's kiss*. Excited to read more!
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
@figmoon and @lliyah thank you so much! I'm really proud of how that poem turned out, and I'm especially happy that it resonated with you both even though neither one of you know the character. It means a lot to me!
sitting in the rock garden that sits outside of the science building, we talk about our parallel lines.
we trace waves in the sand and count down the days until we’re finished with research and labs, tutoring and school, and the other monotonies of a college student’s life.
but your constant presence is the foundation that keeps me from being torn down.
i still think about the charm you gave me for my twenty-first birthday.
we sat in the parking lot of a vegan coffee shop and swapped stories about our summer adventures. i worried that i was saying too much like i always do,
but then i opened your gift, a keychain you made for one of my favorite shows and i realized you would always be there, listening.
standing on the edge of the jade chamber, we stare down at the country that lies beyond. if we squint across the horizon, we can see inazuma to the east and mondstadt to the north.
brothers in arms, bonded by spear and sword and bow and catalyst, we explore this foreign world with the elements in our hearts.
even when the sun sets on teyvat, and we journey alone to lands far away, i still cherish the memories we’ve carved into this world.
MAGE! your thread!! all these musings and reflections on companionships and your gratitude for the people- real and fictional- who shaped your life - AHH! it's a theme that I'm enjoying so much! I'm particularly wonderstruck by your recent poems- how you select and elaborate on one particular memory spent with this character and develop everything around it - it makes each of your poems so distictly heartwarming in their own ways! You require no purple prose nor tantalising imagery because the memory you expand on is so very poetic in its own right! My favorite is definitely poem g. !
@Euphory thank you so much!!! I've decided I really like having my poems be snapshots of specific moments. It feels so much easier to write for the reasons you said.
