Nostalgia: Dryad.

3/27/08

The girl crawls between boulders covered in wet moss,
Shoving her feet into the cool dirt,
Rooting herself tightly under the surface.
Ivy with thick flat emerald leaves tangles around her legs,
Creeping between her thighs like a lover.

An owl questions her,
Gazing through her with his giant new moon eyes,
His head twisting with extra vertebrae hidden behind a mess of feathers.
So she watches an orange fish swim beneath a loose net of exposed roots,
A small brown snake slithering into a crack underground between her ankles.

The boy sits at her feet,
Hair wild like a lion,
Thick dark honey curls against his forehead.
When are you going to tell me your stories, he asks,
His voice echoing the ripples in the water,
Running his hands over her bruised hips like her ivy lover.

Her body was a seed, she told you.
She covered herself in mud in November,
Hid beneath leaves all winter waiting.
The sky began to weep in spring,
Making the air smell wet,
Heavy warm drops kissing her face,
Washing away dried cracking dirt,
Her body looking like a budding Chrysanthemum.

At night she clung to ash colored trees,
Holding her small body with their huge fingers.
They told her about the wolves who traveled alone,
Hunted instead of hunting,
Their ears low,
Exposing sharp wet teeth,
Flowers that became people,
they danced in the morning,
Covered with dew,
Apparitions of lost wet eyed girls,
Their thin white gowns covering dirty feet.

Summer brought her boys who threw stones and mud at her,
Holding her down because she wouldn’t fuck them,
The hot silver pavement burning against her back.
The girls with bodies made of glass,
Bones showing like sillhouettes in their hips
whispered about her small breasts and messy hair,
Their mouths full of plastic daisies.
A man put his hand between her legs,
Told her that she was beautiful through the glaze of drugs,
Only to pretend that he forgot he said it later.
She felt like a rotting flower,
Like she would become brown and dry,
Only to wilt after being trampled by the monsters,
But it was a woman with hollow cheeks and a thin face,
Magic in her eyes kept her alive.

She forgot how to sleep,
But Night came through her window,
Her eyes covered in stars,
Warm damp skin the color of untouched ocean.
She brought him in a dream,
The boy with constellations in his chest,
The voiceless papier mache birds in trees made from her bones,
Starving red girls wearing masks,
Looking like little wild foxes in a thin prison of forest.

Your heart is like a terrible car accident, she said,
Pressing her hand to his chest.
i can see the painful twisted metal,
Taste the cuts from peices of broken glass,
The smell of gasoline dripping onto the pavement.
You’re still alive,
i can feel the pulse in your lips.
There are sounds stuck in your lungs,
i can feel them sometimes,
Like they are rivers,
Like they are the heartbeat echoing in my veins.

We count the ghosts in my bed,
Their fingers running through my hair,
Cold blue lips on my shoulders,
Digging their nails into my back.
Their voices are hollow and sick like poison,
Whispering into my neck,
Convulsing like death in my arms.

i am the earth;
The trees and mountains and oceans and rivers, she whispers,
Her voice made from honeysuckle.
And you are the sky;
the heat from the sun and wind that kisses my hair.
You carry the sounds of the birds and waves inside your body.
i can see it in our eyes.

Then why do you doubt so much, he asks her,
His teeth like the skyline behind his lips.

In the morning the boy leaves the girl,
The smell of him clinging to the sheets,
His heartbeat like vertigo in her ears.