We all fall like stars, one moment of glory along the dark night sky and we soon descend, lost within the moment. Tears blind and hearts break, skin burns and bones snap. We are all broken, until the very end, and only then do we beg to be fixed, to be glued together like some broken china doll. I have fallen many times, and still, still my weary wings hold me up, figuratively speaking of course. As though made of glass, I only splinter yet never quite shatter. I am surprised I am still here, still wandering the world as though some sort of burst star stream, having lost it's cause. And it's course.
And my course finds me here, in the autumn baked earth of Beqanna.
My ash mottled skin shivers as the entangle of autumn leaves whips past me. Worn hooves break the flurry of auburn and mauve, causing a multitude of fallen leaves to sashay by my weary limbs, my scarred frame. Each sinew strains, torn beneath my skin. Bones feel brittle, as though glass that has once been blown, and forgotten, left to deteriorate in the sun and the frost. I feel fragile, I feel broken, and most of all, I feel alone.
As the leaves swirl past me, I wonder, I wonder where they are. I wonder what happened to the woman I called mother, the woman that was, but never will be. I wonder many things, and these wonders feel like lead upon my shoulders as I walk across the leaf littered field, kicking at the oranges and browns, causing them to flitter and fall around me. Lost, and as limp as I feel.
I jog every now and again, young limbs aged by more than years alone, kick at the multitude of leaves. I soon slow back to a meagre amble, looking at the dying trees, the falling leaves and the brilliant little songbirds. Swifts and starlings. The longer I watch them, in their flight, together, the more the loneliness etches and ebbs away at my heart, the longer I disappear into my mind and the longer it takes for me to reappear in flesh and bone. Perhaps one day, I will cease to exist, get lost within the line of the stars, lost within space, the thousand nebulas above. Perhaps heaven awaits, but no, no it is not heaven that will open it's pearly gates to me. I am destined for the fiery depths below. My mother had sold me, broken me, damaged me beyond repair. If there was hate in the world, that overflowed goblets and flutes, it would still not amount to the hate the mare feels for me. Her eyes, they still burn right through my flesh and deep into my soul.
I may have escaped her, and her derogatory gaze, but even in a whole new world, I feel her judgement.
Moth-eaten feathers pick up the autumn debris as I go. Collecting remnants of twig and gorse, of forgotten flowers and decaying leaves. I walk towards the riverbank, where I stand, simply, each limb pulling to a creaky halt. Glass-like teal eyes watch the crystalline waters, watch as the ripples distort my reflection. I am worn, worn down to the bone, to the core. How much longer can this go on? How much longer, can I remain, broken and lost within this world, before someone, someone notices me?
The hope is still there, at my feet in pieces. All I must do is pick it up with my shaking hands.
adelphia
i'll miss you like the stars miss the sun in the morning sky