stars

we built a ladder of ivory and ice and leaned it against an ocean-blue mountain and plucked a single glittering diamond from the ebony skies.

we could not resist—it was so beautiful.

you called it the north star.

“Why? Why would you take everything from us?”

the dreams of a sailor on a roaring ocean blue, an oaken knitting needle weaving skies of silver and sails of quartz and stretching his taut and weeping heart between the other needle as it made lovely dreams and memories: a smile and brown eyes, a hut and roof of golden reeds near salty crashing waves.

the tale of two bears running swift across a sky of ink, threads stretched thin between their aching hearts; the tale of a lady who laughed tears of apple seeds, so hard and sharp and bitter.

do you know the story?

“It doesn’t matter now, does it? I had a grandmother, and I knew she told me stories—stories which you took. How would I remember?”

your stories sang of smiles beneath a rainbowed sky; laughter in sunlit meadows where lavender breathed perfume.

i heard the warmth of your roaring fireplace, i saw the crackles and the sparks, the tradition of your cocoa, so sweet and so velvet, steam bearing forth little feathers of snow, and they were translucent in the cold—so cold, so cold, so cold your cheeks turned a lovely cherry red.

i saw the leap in your eyes, yellow words tumbling in your head, and the boxes of color beneath that pine-green tree: red and green and white and blue. i felt the thoughts that sparkled in your brain—your squirming, eager curiosity, bound only by the rules from a snow-white, wrinkled woman which floated, silent, through the air.

how could we not?

“I—”

that memory you have, it tasted of citrus, bright and sweet and tart on the tongue, and also of honey, warm mellowy syrup in a pool of sepia, little green leaves on its seafloor - porcelain. i saw callused hands - familiar - bearing that porcelain onto a plane of wood, beside your patterned blankets, heard the burning in your eyes and the mallets in your head and the warmth rising from your heart, into your throat, into words: the words a woman tells her lover under starry skies.

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. Sure, he gave me tea, slept on my bed, kissed me—but afterwards, I only saw him as a stranger. What justice is this? You took everything we had. You, of anyone, should remember. Why are you telling me the stories I used to have? Why?”

your lives, they were so beautiful. like stars.

“Were. So you know what happened after.”

… yes.

“You tell me, then. What is it like now? Now that you’ve sucked dry our emotions, our stories—everything that made us human. Are you full yet? Or are you still feeding? Like leeches?”

… leeches. like lychees, like leeches, so sweet and so plump, so red and so saccharine in crystalline water, glassy staircase fields, a hand on woven-reed baskets which brimmed of snowy grains—

“No. Not another one. I don’t need to hear it.”

but we took those, too. the thorns, the tears, the flinching. do you want them?

“...”

they hurt. they hurt, as a spear tipped red from a river of blood; those dim, heavy hours of dark, early morning with a mound and mounds of growing papers, the monotone drone of a scratching pen, but they are delicious, lovely in a way—an acquired taste, you might say, or each to their own.

salty tears of farewell, glimmering like stars, soft lingering kiss on ruby-red lips, a sprinkling of sugar on a delectable thought, a purple flower fondant on an ivory-white cake: “i love you”, hands and laughter and soft skin in a world where they both thought the stars would never fade.

where the stars then faded into inky skies, and as time turned to sand: went a star, came a kiss, went a star, came a night, when murmurs of roses fell fluttering through the air.

“I’ve decided. The pain and the joy. I will have it all.”

but they are so beautiful. they filled me: a glass of air to only half the glittering glass, a waterfall so bright to my thirsty empty heart, sparkles of color in a cold and empty world.

“Would you look! Stop focusing on yourself, for once. Look—look at the world I live in now. Look. And tell me: are our lives still worth living?”

sing a song, take a look—

acrid, acrid smoke. flavor fades to paper, rough and vaguely bitter. cars rumbling. waiting. files shuffling, crinkling. roses without color, jokes without laughter, a night without stars.

it could be beautiful. it could be replenished.

… perhaps.

but look, there are no more tears here in your lovely little world. no more rose-colored stripes on barren, trembling skin. no more tears in white beeping boxes, on snowy beds, no more tears and tearing hearts.

harmony, is it not?

“Suffering is what it is. I don’t care that they feel fine, it’s that they wouldn’t feel fine if only you’d let them. Why are you even here? Why can’t you just go away? Where were you, before all this?”

i saw a black void, i heard determined silence, that static buzz, i felt the still air, so stale and so unmoving, i saw a pure white, fields of space and tasteless nothing, that buzzing silence, air unmoving.

“Where did you come from? I mean—who… are you?”

i am not that, nor this, nor this.

only ever to listen, to hear and to smell, to seize chords from the air which run crimson from your heart, from that silver which you pluck, that gold which you blow, that diamond which you kiss.

“What do you mean?”

they slip from me now: old aching sighs and drizzles of honey, wishes of stars and a record replayed, over and over, over and over, over and over.

stars.

forgotten stars. stories.

leave me: memories of your people, stars searing my eyes: too dark, too bright, too loose, too tight…

“Because they’re not your stories.”

so quiet.

“They’re ours.”

they fell into oceans, those tales of leaping bears, that tapestry of love, these citrus-sweet bursts of pale. fading. joy.

“Somewhere else. A better place. Maybe then, you can find those things that make life worth living.”

crinkling eyes. white teeth. a whisper. lips. starry skies. crackling flames. a guitar.

i forget. those people with wrinkles, white hair. they’re called...?

“Grandma. But that’s not so relevant now, is it, now that you’re forgetting? Go amongst your own people, your own world. Surely there’ll be someone out there waiting for you, where you can weave a story for yourself.”

we, said i, but it is not so true. it is only i, i and the memories i hold dear, the memories of your people, and the little stars in their hearts, the stars that they carry and with it shower light: stories of love, of laughter and tears, of failure and love and passion and pain—the things i never had, that i never will have.

“But it was never right. To take that from us.”

i am sorry.

i could not resist. it was so beautiful.

“Yes. Yes, it was. You always knew that, didn’t you? But it’s not the same, isn’t it, knowing it’s not yours. I’m sorry. For that, I am sorry.”

“sorry”: whispers, shrinking hearts, a world turned wobbly with scraps of blue, seeds so hard and sharp against a tender cheek—that fruit, it was called…?

“Apple… it was an apple.”

do you know the story now?

can you tell it to me?

“Oh… oh! My grandma and I—we were looking out the window at night, and she was telling me a story about the Little Bear… thank you. Thank you! Thank you!”

the ladder turned to shards of ivory and ice, and from ebony skies fell a single glittering diamond, landing among you, among your beautiful people, and you called it the north star.