Young Writers Society

December writing


1st December 15

Koselig

My mother used to count the days down with spices, 13th was ginger, 15th was cinnamon, 11th was clove but the first spice was a nameless one.
On those days my mother would dust the shelves clear of their cobweb memories, and puff out the secrets between floorboards until her cheeks are red like the hollies on the windowsill
Then she’d dip a brush into the nameless spice and spread it across the house, and it smells like the warm afternoon sun on a lazy spring day, it tastes like a favourite childhood dish stored in the attics of your mind.
You see the sunlight filter through the fading black strands of her hair like freshly peeled willows. And you feel a strange, unknown ache in your heart. Maybe elves are constructing unknown waterways in the canals of your arteries, and you’re scared.
Of course you’d be, and it’s alright. Just hold tight to the patchwork sails, you’ve stitched them with concentrated moonlight afterall.

~

the two of you sit, with the bucket of nameless spice between you and your mother holds your hand in hers and you feel the calluses formed by the sands of time. You rub them between your fingertips and feel the million grooves sinking in like meteorites into your swampy heart.
‘not all days are beautiful’ your mum tells you tracing hidden pathways up your arm, ‘there are days when the sunlight burns too brightly for your eyes’
you hide in the cocoon of her embrace, cheek against the steady rhythm of her heart. A steady spiral, in the ocean of amorphous waves
‘there will be days when your legs buckle into crumbs and crows feast upon the entrails of your thoughts, but it’s alright to be afraid’
it’s only natural because not all days are good, and not all days are bad

You knew when you woke, with the sky pressing down on your eyelids. Turning them into brittle sails billowing in the vicious wind, your limbs hang loose on their hinges, singed and tattered. Splinters have embedded themselves in the soft part of your wrist, proclaiming their innocence with raised heads. But you still have to rise out of bed because that is just the way things were.

You swallow a pinch of cayenne on the way down and feel molten lava coat your body in something worse than sin, but at least you can see now. There’s a half-broken candle on the table, its wax sang out to you in jingles darker than hell and you wonder why you got up at all.

Because you can no longer forget what needs to be forgotten.

That stocking was the sorryest stocking you’ve seen. Its colours had faded to that of a bruised heart and its flailing stitches spoke of husks of hopes and the downfall of men.

Your spine shudders and shakes in protest, but it had to be done. Sooner or later.

So you pick up the needle and the thread and pick it up in your hands. A sigh leaves your lips in the shape of a lighter cloud. The touch was a familiar one, and the memories flood your mind like lifts the boat of your spirit up.

The first was a book containing words to be inscribed into your soul. Second were the subtle fulfilment of a half-leaked wish. Third came the ring enveloped by the secrets of time and you slowly realize you should have trusted yourself on those stormy seas; for there are unknown fortresses planted in the depths of your sleeping mind.

the sun broke into discs when I emptied my cup next to yours the morning after Christmas, we watched the eggnog swirl down the sink like the remanets of a bad dream. Slowly, hesitantly. Your nose twitches (involuntarily) because the smell of whiskey was laced with traces of things better left unsaid.

I took one of the sun’s disc in my hands and held it between us, “we’re the reindeers dancing on the moon” I told you and smeared my handprint across your ribcage, we watch the sun beam drip like honey onto your half-bleached bones and smiled, if only for a moment.

You pressed your heart against my chest (the only part of my body that had hallow bones) and thread the old tinsel your found in the basement dated p.b 8991. Its silver and gold nestled against the smoothened curves of my bones, and you watch my heart turn into a chandelier and smiled, if only for a moment.

but we both know we can’t play saviours forever; because the truth is that we’re all broken discs of a larger whole, that nothing will ever be quite whole because that in itself was a form of imperfection (because how could something without footholds be discovered?)

but it’s ok to dream, for just a moment because they’re the fuel that propels us forward


*øyeblikk - a moment, credit to @Birkhoff for providing me with this word*

on the fourth day of christmas, she woke when her heart outside her chest
and the dull pain of fallen stitches pulsating gently in the post-morning light