Cut him.
And he will bleed not blood, but constellations.
Northern lights that fire across the sky and dance and blow.
Like the ocean?
No, cant be, because it does not drag him under, but lifts him up, up, up.
Tears trickle like a steady drip of water in a cave long forgotten, as an angry gash in his knee thrashes in colors of bright red. “Dad, dad,” a little boy aches. “You found it, James,” comes the voice of a father to a son. “The birthplace of northern lights,” he says, hushed. (It must be some great secret, is the only thing a little boy can think.) “From the tears of comets and the wounds of stars,” he says. James wants to say I am no comet. James wants to say I am no star. But innocence shrouds his mind and he believe he could be anything if just his father told him he was. And his dad tucks him inside a dream, one about how the sky flowed red, not with blood, but light.
Light.
A dull glow opens up before him, and James blinks bright blue eyes against it, but it does not go away.
Blink.
Blink.
So entranced (moth to the flame? No, it is one firefly to another, simple) that he does not notice a fog gather at her feet. Maybe he would have stopped. (No, he wouldn't have.) “Did you trap a star in there?” He moves towards her too quickly, and had he been anyone else—who else could he be but James?— it may have looked far less innocent. “You ever gonna let it out?”
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
image by Gary Bendig
@[neuna]