Paved Bumps on the Holy Roads (preview)

Bronwen Eld

"Barriers of construction beyond sight

Have kept galaxies at peace.

Stars, such as Halley, pass through blissfully

Yet with no contact from stranger clusters.

One star was dim and deflated of faith.

She had Columbus's desire

Of rummaging the unfamiliar.

So, she dove to the Earth

And cloaked her true nature

To blend in like a spider.

She took the railway advice of Journey at midnight.

A stranger settles next to her seat.

Sentence from him metamorphoses

Into combined paragraphs from both.

She feels she is understood

And acknowledges a charm of him

That none at her home has showed her.

They move from the caravan

And reach a desolate area

To exchange trust and passion.

As her faint light shines hours later

And he knows of her home cluster,

She's shot by brightness of a similar light

Revealing him to be a red giant.

Compassion remains, but distance is coerced.

A burning Luma of white and red is born,

But is rolled from Exo to Tropo.

Luma's light and Kent-isolation

Turns friendship hopes

Into stormy seas.

Shoots to skies and sees parents

During prayer and slumber.

Luma realizes one label isn't enough

And more names are welcome.

Sister Say-So claims

That I am a blackhole-to-be

And hopes verbal whips drain my "motives".

The doors to freedom open

After childhood packs its bags.

Luma accepts multiple labels.

Home clusters of both my parents see me

And avoid canes that would drag them on my stage.

As long as I'm the beyond-star,

There's no cave I can't brighten."

That has always been my signature poem and a favorite of mine. Not only has it helped get things off of my chest, but, since it is up for interpretation, no one can suspect what the real story behind the poem is. Anyway, before I get ahead of myself, my name is Bronwen Eld, a name I gave myself to remind myself of my freedom. I'm in a poetry group in my town. The Mauveyonder Metrists. I know. Original, right? Well, to be fair, Mauveyonder has always been said to be the best place to see the sky's change of color and the sunset that is attached to it. Since it's a moderately sized town, there is a good mix between visitors and people who know each other. The Mauveyonder Metrists performed at this small cafe monthly and, since most of cafe was filled with locals and a good amount of them are open-minded, pieces of my poem were understood without a lot of questions or insults. There was an occasional person in the audience that gave a glance of hatred, but I did my best to hide that it struck like a demon's pitchfork. Nonetheless, plenty of the locals, including the poetry group, were well aware that I grew up in the local religious orphanage, possibly due to the religion of the previous generation of my family, that the owner of the orphanage, Sister Abigail, had always been bias in multiple ways, including hate toward LGBT+ advocates (she always tried to justify it by claiming it was her duty in the name of the Lord), that I decide whether or not I feel like a certain gender, and that, allegedly, all I knew of my parents is that no one really approved on them being together.