cordelia

05

19 september 2009 

you know how someone once said that people fall in love with someone like they fall alseep- slowly, and the all at once?

i don't believe that.

i fell in love with cordelia evans quicker than a slight intake of breath and if there was such a thing as to love more than "all at once" than i did that. i loved her because here was someone hiding so much sadness and pain and misery and only did so because she despised the fact that she might hurt others. as if hurting herself didn't matter.

her self-destructiveness drew me to her, as all i wanted was her to see she didn't need to do such things like hide behind the streaks of sunlight that made her hair or carefully avoid and fly by other people, making sure her rotting wings weren't dirtying them, despite their godly white glow.

and, today, i found more qualities that made my heart ache at the thought of finally speaking to her, to finally say how much i loved her, and finally, finally, take away her pain.

see, today, in english, we all had to present a poem of some sort to the class and then tell why we enjoyed it most.

the majority of the people gave half-assed performances, speaking in monotone, their eyes glazed over from the boredom overtaking their minds. they also read the stupidest of poems, the most well known and the most common, the ones that they could easily score points for by simplying stating some bullshit fact they read off of wikipedia.

i had read sonnet 127 by good ol' shakespeare, one of the more uncommon of the few. i had always loved the sonnet about shakespeare's dark lady, whose beauty, i felt, rivaled that of cordelia's. sometimes, when i read through them, i felt like i could i write one based upon cordelia, but i knew no words could ever visualize her.

by the time i had finished, she had come up, standing before the group of students, amber eyes blazing- ravishing and addicting- and stood with confidence ablazing, like a defiant fallen angel, demanding some sort of redemption. others looked away, fearing the "monster" cordelia was, but i refused for i knew she never could have been such a thing.

her voice, the soft breeze across the ocean on a fair, rising morning, spoke fluently, quietly, demanding, "i've chosen to read the sonnet ozymandias by percy shelley because of the poet's meaning behind his words, that nothing can stay immortal forever:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

it was silent after that and only the teacher gave her hand. the others, silent as midnight, avoided her gaze as she only nodded and strode back into her seat. she sat one up from me to the left and all i could do was stare and wonder:

no matter what would happen, there will never be a day when one will forget cordelia, the eternal flame. for she was a fire that i was drawn to that rumored to leave burns and, unsurprisingly, not even gods, immortals themselves, forgot such things.