By Keira Clements

 

Artwork By Lana Newman

 

I hang off a cliff edge.

If someone had been here 

when the world ended,

they might have scooped me 

into their arms and intertwined 

our hands like swans in dance.

 

I dangle, a spider on a thread,

over all the words I wish I had said.

Reason insists it’s too late to turn back

when face to face with apocalypse.

I have no more strings to unwind,

so I must settle on this lonely life.

 

Piano notes spell out my fall

draped in cobwebs and dirt.

I’ve never learned how to read music.

I only know the sound,

the rich and mystifying qualia

of structured noise upon my ears.

Impassioned playing, it’s like

watching a fire blaze inside a cage.

So is the joy and misfortune of

living, caught ever in the crossfire.

My destiny now is unknown.

 

The sun went cold today.

Fenrir snuffed out the radiant music

of the universe in an instant.

He latched his teeth onto the sun,

smearing spit across its surface.

Filthy saliva wormed its way

to the core and put out our

world’s eternal flame.

 

Now for all the sky is dark.

I blink my eyes to empty sight.

A blackout soul on a dollstring,

nothing more than an ornament

to decorate our walls.

What a way I should lose myself,

hardly a crescendo.

 

All this time I suspect I was

a solemn wick deep in melody,

cause when the music stopped

my body knew it was wrong.

Here I faltered as people do

when pitted against themselves.

It was this that in the darkness,

I discovered through fragments.

 

Now I’ve got a pair of scissors

nestled between my palms.

I hover here, intimidated by

the hundred ways I can use them.

But even for a hundred means, 

there lies a single end.

So though I know what must be done,

I hesitate. 

 

It is only as my soul slips

into the shade that I yearn for 

a sudden light before my tomb.

Better to compose my own end

than to be folded into darkness

for eternity.

 

Discordant notes.

We hit the climax now.

I snip the thread above and

plummet deep into the sea.

Ocean tides consume me,

bones and meat.

 

Beating.

The heart, warm and vibrant.

Filled with music.

Fenrir has yet to devour it.

 

If I am cursed to be on this earth,

then I am blessed to be myself.

The singing soul is mine

and mine to keep.