a litany of ruminations

vicious

(above-my photo edit, my photography. below-words pieces together by none other than me.)

I.

"can I tell you a secret?" the little girl whispers in your ear, eyes alight with sunlight, honeyed golden brown and chestnut hair drawn in springy pigtails, pale pink dress, fabric painted the color of rose dust and snow melting on bare branches, barely yet on the cusp of spring.

you comply with amusement alight in your eyes, going along with her childish whims, nostalgia at what you had once been--a child.

she leans in---close---words warm with exhaled breath, trickling--

"the stars are vicious,"

a whisper

a thought

soft, dreamlike

"that I know,"

cold and distant and brighter than snow

"so very far away,"

impossible to reach--

"so very cold yet burning so hot,"

"and brighter than you know."

you watch, you wonder, as she saunters and fades back into the crowd, the soft scuffing of white flats against the asphalt the last you hear of her, and the last you will ever hear of her ever again.

..

II.

warning-

not for the sensitive reader, with a touch-a smattering-of morbidity.

sometimes, you really have to wonder what it is like to taste the very stars on the tip of your tongue,

to dissolve in your very mouth without the need to chew, instead--

you imagine, if you swallowed the

stars,

they'd burn through the paper-thin skin of your throat,

so very

fragile,

a supernova in your skin, a dying burning white-hot light.

you'd inhale,

thinking of

sweet sugar

but instead

smoke would suffocate your lungs,

stealing your very breath,

so very bright

you close your eyes.