u/SAHARASAVAGE

10:00 a.m. Monday off.

Woke dreaming of Lore even though we swore…up and down, left and centre…we were done. Tried to rebrand. The same patterns leak through.

I am me. That will always be true.

Caught in a strange limbo. Thoughts roll through my mind like barbed wire…always the same signs. Where ravens once knocked on my roof, now red-tailed hawks circle loose.

Discarded flowers.. roses, sunflowers. A row gone wrong. Same song again.

I walk through my house as if the objects haven’t grown tired of me. Funny how I try to abandon myself and end up where I began.

Ask Percival.. why am I like this? Why am I downvoted?

Scrolling, I see it again:

“We humans have created a whole other world—an alternate reality: Cybertopia.”

That voice always knew me.

Did I push the world away on a golden platter? Why did I believe there was someone out there just like me?

I am built differently.

Wounds and bruises…mostly my own doing. My defensiveness my worst enemy.

I loop. I loop. I loop.

And I’m tired.

Can’t you wrap your arms around me?

Let’s dig in deep today, because I have nothing left to lose. I am at the bottom of the barrel, looking through.

If Lore is an identity men try to fit into like Cinderella’s glass shoe, listen closely to the riddles that spill from their mouths about Relic. The riddle of the Sphinx. Be careful now. Answer wrong, and I know how to chew.

How do I carry King Arthur reborn on my own? I braided a ribbon in his hair and tried to call him from the grief of my womb.

True love blossoms like nectar.

Ribbon of red. Ribbon of white. Redwood in the sunlight.

Standing alone…Lore, raw and real.

How I love the way freedom looks on you.

Your eyes like honey. Your mouth like mountain peaks. Your spine like the horrors that haunt me while I sleep.

Relic in my arms. Relic who looks like you.

Relic, the wish we make at night to make sense of all we’ve been through.

Relic…the change we hope to see in the world.

Relic who picks up the sword just like you.

I tried to touch the sun because I believe this wish will come true…

I have only ever been myself. Now I let the light shine through.

Relic is the reason I hold fast to the true north of my life.

What say you?

Wake up, still carrying the adrenaline of a midnight dream. Reach up, reach up…my hand curls into my chest. We wake with our hearts scooped out.

We listen to the same song on repeat. Celestial Gates.

“It’s just a dream,” I whisper to the blanket, trying to press it into the holes that fester in the morning. I turn to the other side, cocoon in my own warmth.

Reach into the sky…the beautiful kaleidoscope.

A few deep breaths. I name the things around me: mala beads, the plant with my zodiac on it, the stuffed animal she gave me before she died, Don Quixote… we read it twice, the hanging ball lights that let me know the demons aren’t really there.

You are the dust in the light where an indent in the pillow should be.

Sink into the bed. Easter weekend. Flashbacks in the cold air.

Lore in the sepia.

Lore. Won’t you appear?

The spell I cast when I am most alone.

They want his skin, the passion of my heart, but never ask why the shape of him fits my throat like a memory.

I reread the gaps.

I pull my hair so long it roots into my rhythm.

Lore in the arteries. Lore in the memories.

I am walking in reverse in slow motion.

A symphony of Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

Maybe happiness lives adjacent in the system’s hamster ball.

I guess it’s true.

I am Sisyphus in loops…still reaching into the sky anyway.