There are echoes of heavy things out in the ether;
I hear them calling for me when
My blood runs thick from the call of poppies.
They try to drag me down into the depths
Where the messages are garbled, broken scriptures
Written with broken hands, the letters wavering
Before my eyes, straining through
saltwater.
Everything tastes like tears.
There’s a beast out there with the name Mara
Inscribed upon its skin in twenty thousand languages
Screaming my name into bottles of bourbon
And it wants my blood upon its gaping maw
that skinny jaw
But the more I fight, the more I surrender
My God, everything is so beautiful down here,
I say, into the cold deep,
And every fiber of my being, except one,
Wants to give up,
Give in.
It’s that one wilted fiber in me, still humming with
Vibrant life, somehow, that keeps me propelling
Up, out, and through the surface
From this place
On somewhere
To the next.
D.H. Lee
(via Kevin Dooley)