I.

[She tilts the glass of liquor to her lips.]

 

Here’s to:

nightmares. The first time I opened my eyes to life

I opened them not in diurnal daydreams

But on quaking earth beneath rotting walls,

because somehow, my mind had destroyed my life already.

The first memories of the beating heart

Were of the failing one.

 

Here’s to:

loneliness. I saw -

A tower in the tides of time did stand.

However proud the spire rose with

Blocks and walls that gleamed like silver steel,

the weather slid its tongue

across its body, forced the unyielding stones

to yield, to bend, and break.

It happened once before in my childhood

and then, little by little, continued on in life, so

 

Here’s to:

perseverance. And giving up,

on little objectives, to big dreams, hopes, plans - fears- all alike

and to being so toxic that I never failed

to turn all good experiences into forgotten ones and bad ones into

life, mixed with hatred and pain and annoyance and tears

and the insistence of all those emotions to continue arriving

 

Here’s to:

isolation. The gain and glory of good times notwithstanding,

I took the saws all people handed to me and

Severed the bonds between me and everyone, leaving the strings

ingrained in my flesh pulsing and gushing and staining

with red-hot blood burning at the most base of my wants and fears,

but I patched myself up, by tying the sobbing strings back around myself

(I almost choked myself), and

 

Here’s to:

being a warrior. Forging a sweet sacrificial blade from the screams of my mother,

the nothingness of my friendships, the broken skin of my stomach,

the liquid strangeness that streamed when the surface was slashed,

the salvation it brought. The honor in death,

the glory of winning a war meant to be lost,

destined to be lost, lest

I gave my life leading the frontal charge to enemies.

To war

I will go.

 

II.

[The absinthe slips past her tongue.]

 

In the thunders of horse’s hooves raining upon the haggard earth

I fell; my breaths clattered and my bones rattled like

Shuddering gasps of spasming wings beside me,

Blazing and sputtering in the film of fog surrounding me:

the dust and blood and gore of those who’d fallen first

 

And a mist curled about my toes and fingers and crawled

Slowly up my prickling skin

And in the sloughing fog I touched the mist but felt no body.

Feebly and freely - I watched the weary windings of the white -

The procession passes by and over me, questioning, threatening:

‘Who is she? What is she?

To where does she go?

From where does she come?

She is not one of us - she is not one of us.’

The fog creeps at the edges of my skin and picks itself up

And moves off mystically and contemplatively.

‘But I want to be.’

My voice trembles and tries to be heard

In the heart of the harrowing air,

And there is stillness,

Afore the sloughing fog the mist touched I and felt my body.

 

The fog creeps at the edges of my skin and

Sinks in and stys, and it sleeps

And I lay there.

But when it wakes it wakes with not a quiver

But a roar.

Not a whimper

But a bang.

 

The blood of those lost

Quakes within and rises fiercely;

The air and skin flash and spark

In frayed, sharp clashes; I

Twitch and rise in shrieks and spurts

Of blood and bursting vigor,

Vying for a chance to chase away

The weakness within.

The fog trembles at the surface of my thoughts and

Trickles and tickles and tinkers,

And I sit up.

 

The wings ripple and tentatively

Stretch out beyond their shadowy veil,

Shimmering like the blood of ichor

Coats the soiled feathers.

I embrace the mist brushing upon my body

And look up to the fluttering flight awaiting me

Is this the way the world begins?

 

III.

[Her fingers tremble at the taste.]

 

“Here’s to…”

My fingers swivel around the glass

Like anxious eaglets eagerly expecting feeding;

The wine swishes within the glass

Like wings of hawks soaring and crying

In the freedom that they have.

 

“... The nights in which,

The black has cascaded to a dusky dawn

Of greys and sleepy dew drops,

And the stars have winked their last twinkles

To bid you farewell till the oncoming eventide,

And the birds have woken and told you

Musically and melodically you are up far too early,

Or up far too long,

And the cars on the highway have cleared their throats

And their whispering, lilting notes hum on the roads

Just beyond these dwellings.

The nights in which,

These sounds serenade you as you finally close your tablet

And fall to bed, tired, with mind is buzzing all the same,

With words of hours prior flickering through the mind’s eye,

And visuals of the visceral characters still calling and cackling,

Beckoning for you to return to their side,

To ignore the bright calls of alleged waking

In less than an hour’s time.

 

The nights in which,

The smile of a lover’s lingers in your mind and brings

A smile to lips of your own,

And the remnant of the warmth of a cellular phone

Gently thrums through your memory and ignites

Sweet sentiments like the light of the LED screen

In the gaze of memories.

The nights in which,

The comforting specter of the pattering rain

Falls and salutes the sleepy senses of the rester,

Joining the company of the imagined lover

An imagined, real, lover

And the caress of the covers above yours

Is not unlike a caring embrace of his arms.

The nights in which,

One slips aside a world and its adventures

By setting a novel on the nightstand;

When the darkness flooding after light

Flees the turned-off lamp is not frightening

But fantasy, leaving the closed eyes

And imagined gaze to create a world

Of her own, in dreams both waking

And sleeping

In stories of both heroic failure

Or bittersweet victory,

Or the perfect party of people and achievements.

 

The nights in which

I rest tiredly and aware of the trials to arrive

When the time comes to rise tomorrow;

But the torpor and the torsion

Does not affect the sweet sopor and the sleep

And though the mind should worry,

It needs not worry…

And so it does not,

And the world always spins on.

‘The universe seems neither benign

Nor hostile,

Merely indifferent.’

 

Here’s to

Those nights, and surely,

Hopefully,

many more of similar nature.”

 

Though she refrains from drinking more,

She does not set the glass down.