By Sydney Rhaine
“The Gift” © Fe Ilya (https://www.flickr.com/photos/renneville/3654246855/)
the hound and the doe
(he clutched her hands
too tight and too long
chalk and rain in his voice
and his eyes full up of almost)
bird boned boy
his mouth splits trying to find the right words
and he opens up his throat
to tear his true meaning from it
she is honey against his fingers
who fights and claws at stone walls
and something so maybe it burns
his home is dark
with open windows
and drawn curtains
and a damp sense of fate
he holds flame too close to his face
just to see the light
just to have a chance of keeping it
he has white stones scattered
across his room
and they make him feel
something like relief
for a moment when he wakes
but at night
when he returns
they only instill a bitter shame
and the weight of his own
hopelessness
in the back of his throat
she enters his home so eagerly
she picks up one of the white stones
from the floor of his room
and says that this is what she loves
in him
she hangs new blossoms
around his neck
her mouth turns him to gold
her hands are beacons of hope
and the closest thing to the sun
he has ever seen
he tries to keep her
like one of his stones
and feels the echoes of loss
in the pores of her skin
he touches her
most of the time with hesitation
he feels his own unworthiness
in every
brush of contact
he fights
his frenzied fits of greed
desperation
for everything she means
when their eyes meet
she sees him
looking beyond her
she holds his face in her hands
and wonders if he really
knows her
faux
her crown is made of tin foil
her fingers hang delicately
over the side of her cardboard throne
there are paper knights
ready to die for her
ready to give their paper lives
her pale lips part and words form
but no sound
leaves her throat
the cloth necklace she wears
chokes the breath from her
the kingdom she commands
is at war with the ones
of flesh and blood
she can’t stand
her knees were made bent
her body was meant to sit and stay
they bring her back her paper knights
torn to shreds
they place them in her lap
she sheds no tears
porcelain cannot mourn
the paper families
come to collect
their slain paper sons
it is all for the greater good
their sacrifice has made a difference
this is what the paper families hear
(she can feel roses in her veins
sometimes she thinks they know
she was made with traitor eyes
she cannot blink before them)
Sydney Rhaine is a sixteen-year-old aspiring author from nowhere in particular. She has a book of free form poetry currently in the works.
