2004-08-22

Cotton-swirled clouds become stained with opium

There are demons wandering about these stark fields, with the black-feathered wings of crows, and the dry cackles of hyenas. They collect shattered hopes, like trinkets, in velvet satchels carried around their thin waists. With the rising of the sun through the water-colored dawn, they become angels, and fool the rest of us. These vile creatures feed on blind agony and our seemingly endless desperation. Through mirrors, they watch us sob in the arms of our late nights, and curl up in our seas of entangled blankets--with pleasure, they watch our fingernails dig into our scalps as we push memories and the purest of regret out of our heads.

With footsteps echoing on cobblestone streets, with bare feet trampling in the cool waters of a stream, with groggy eyes awaking from a mid-summer�s dream, I have met them all too often. Angelic faces reaching out their hands to take me swimming within cotton-swirled clouds. They promise sweet kisses after the rain, and warm hands during the winter; they whisper words with fragile truths under the gleaming moonlight, and they pretend to know this soul well enough, so as to sketch it on rice paper.

But whispers become echoes that break, rice paper becomes stained with age, sweet kisses turn sour with the scorching sun, and warm hands turn cold. Cotton-swirl clouds, which are pure with innocence, become stained with opium; and endless fields of flowers and dancing skies, become gray moors under a deadened-silver paste.

These angels turn into demons, and I see that their fangs drip with arsenic, sinking into this warm flesh.

The last one has just left, but I fear there are more to come.

aeka at 12:10 a.m.