echo A star streaks the eastern reaches of the universe
Across gulfs of empty darkness, silent planets, gas giants
It died a million years ago
Tonight it shines brighter than anything else in the night
Across empty plains, sleeping meadows, dusty window sills
Gazing to darkened skies, fields gauzed with a listless, dusky haze
And everything’s still
The lovers stay entangled in the fields, their backs still fresh with mud
Close, the warmth of their sides pressed together, the rawness of their breath
Tender like an open wound
They had loved as they had never loved before, for the first time, and they were quiet
They had risked it all, to be there, the world was collapsing on them
They knew the consequences if they were caught, they’d be dead by morning
Lost in the spinning darkness, with everything still and quiet, a sudden blade of light
Pierces the night
He watched it go by, suddenly breathless, he had been praying in that very moment
Praying to his God, his faith, the universe
Send him a sign, a song, a star
Anything, anything at all, just say it was going to be fine
He wasn’t going to die, he would meet his lover tomorrow, and the day after
They’d be free to love as deeply and humanly as possible, in shadows, secret
In the fields at night, in quiet groves, amidst still forests
Wherever it may be, he did not care, he welcomed even the depths of hell
Anything at all, just for the world to not pry his lover away
He had never found love as deep as theirs, and he’s convinced he would spend his life
Never relishing a kiss like his ever again, his kingdom for the exact brush of those lips
The tears stained his flushed cheeks, maybe somewhere out there resided
A place in the world where they could simply be, as simple as
Coffee in the morning, or as unassuming as a shared gaze
The morning came, and mornings after
He never met his lover again
Yet the hope remained, amidst the grass, the breeze
The wind, it howled, it carried their laughter
To another time, another place, somewhere safe
However fleeting it may have been, the earth remembers,
It carries their tears, the salt of it flowing to its roots
The earth remembers, a sunny day in swaying fields
The curve of their smiles, the freedom of their breaths
Taking flight like doves into the tilting blue, kisses they would never take back.
A young labourer hauling the weight of the world, anguished beneath the gaping maw
The starless void hanging over him, a sentence worse than starvation or death
Hopeless, his heart excavated, as they had that hole in the sand earlier
Where the great statue of his king would be erected, he could see it standing looming over him
Bigger than the night sky, silent and imperious
He heard their screams from the pits, their feverous, endless worshipping
Ozymandias, King of Kings!
Resting beneath the jaded glow of the moon, the skin on his back thinly stretched
The cries ring out across the lifeless dunes, the only form of life that roars within
As the moon crested over the sandswept pinnacle, a flash suddenly catches his eye
A thin trail of light, cutting across the empty night
The only light visible for miles, he stops mid-gait and stares
A stillness ran through him, like the quiet before the dawn explodes into a morning
When fire consumes the world like a wildfire, when daylight envelops the sky
When the Sun settles on his skin like powdered gold, when he feels the ocean swell
Within him, an ocean of life, spurring like a dove
The young man, under his lips, recites a prayer
But not to his king or his country, no, to freedom
Freedom to no longer live under chains, or sneering lips, or gilded thrones
He recites his prayer till it joins the feverous chorus, into the windless night
The morning came after, the kingdom awoke to a new day
Mutters of rebellion and mutiny stench the air, exchanged under hushed breathes
Rumours swirling like the smoke in opium parlours
Filling the gossip in debauched dens
Eddying like the wine in the drunkards into a possibility, spurred to a call
The God who calls himself, Ozymandias, King of Kings
Was simply a man draped in gold and silks, a false prophet
With a mouth full of rot and unanswerable crimes, his hands wrapped
Around the neck of a dead lamb, its life wrangled under a feverish choir
The kingdom’s eyes opened slowly, with each passing dawn
The veneer slipping with each quiet exchange
The embers fanned into a flame by every nightfall, every secret meeting
At the heart of it all, a tired young man, his back stretched thin
Draped in a loose cloak, ducking into alleys
Bringing the pieces together, slowly, painstakingly
With every calculated move, every loose strand of the plan shaved, every gambit made
The people moving in shadows, silhouettes in the night, a trail of cloth in corners
Trails of gaslights hovering, incorporeal, beneath the statue they had moulded
With shaking fists and gleaming brows, a river of blood taking root in the earth
A vague hope forming beneath the shadow of that cold stone sneer
The darkness it casted over their kingdom, the lies it stood so precariously on
In a shroud of smoke, the coals stoked, the kindling simmering into
A primordial blaze, with an ashen visage, snarling teeth and a beating heart
As vast as the black expanse of night, whose hand enveloped the capital in mere hours
Leaving the statue of their God, his epoch gaze, staring into bloodied skies
The bones of his empire crumbling, dissolving into the sand
The grains which composed its pillars, turning into silt
The cries of his followers, hollowing down lifeless corridors
Upon his golden throne, a splatter of blood
Ozymandias, King of Kings!
The people shouted, as they hacked into the stone
Once shaped so finely by chisel, now wrangled by its makers
With tools coarse and savage, as the spell they were under
Ozymandias, King of Kings!
As he crumbled, a titan succumbing to the night
The embers adrift in the wind, laying kisses upon his shattered visage
As smouldering snowflakes, they lie there undisturbed
TIll morning came, and many mornings after
Until an aeon is over, and all that’s left is a pile of charred stone
Brutalised with the marks of a calamity untold, the story of its people lost
Lying untouched, cusped in the heart of an open desert
Its empire had vanished into silt, with all that remains
A cracked sneer, commanding an empty sky
An imperial gaze, surveying its graveyard
A barren gulf, a lone star reigning the night.
Waves welter and claw through blackened shores untouched to time
Sweeping range of hills and sea cast under draperies of nightfall
Vistas of inhospitable darkness cusped upon the edge of the world
A note punctures the silence, like ink blotching the night
A haunting lull emerging from the waves
A lighthouse sitting by the edge of the primordial sea
Notes of sweetness drifting from its spire
The tune of a lullaby falling from her mouth
She sits, cradling a child in her arms
The two nestled in its light, gazes intertwined
“Mama, tell me more stories please.”
So she did, so the world turned a little more in the darkness
The bitter ocean breeze settled on their necks, the waves howled outside
“Was the ocean always this scary?”
“Not always. It was always calmer when papa was here.”
“So did papa control the ocean?”
“No, he talked to it.”
“Like me! It always sings happy songs to me, like papa did.
I can hear it, clearly in the daytime
but tonight, it seems…angry.”
She holds him tighter, as if sensing the winds would rip them apart
“Don’t be angry. Why is it angry, mama?”
She heard the waves crash upon the rocks, a clarion call
“Because no one can hear it scream.”
The boy shrinks into his mother’s arms, frightened
“Don’t be afraid, Louis. Everything will pass,
Like the storm, we are all helpless to life’s currents.
We can only hold on and brave it.”
She catches a glimpse of light through the window
A star traversing across waves, through time, cresting dark swells of blue
Flaring brilliantly in the dark, for a moment, revealing a night brighter than day
The young boy still seated on her lap, followed her gaze
“Look at that, isn’t it beautiful?
People from ancient cultures, long ago, used to tell stories of the stars
How they were sent from heaven, how they were the dying breaths of lost worlds
People, even back then, wished upon stars
They had their own hopes, dreams, fears they could tell no other
Look, they’re all just stories now, but the world will remember us
Even when you and I are bones in the earth, a piece of us will remain
On unseen lips, our names scattered as the leaves in fall
Or the brilliant rivulets that flow in spring
How I wish you could understand what I mean, Louis
To put your wish upon a star, let it soften your hurt
And let it carry your prayer somewhere safe
Understand that the universe is big enough for your grief
Escape into its embrace, open as the sky, let it hold your sadness for you
You are but one person, a brief flower, in this big lonely world.
And we were never made to carry a hurt so deep.”
The child smiled, reaching for his mother’s cheek
“What’s your wish, Louis?”
He smiled,
To see you again, mama.
She blinked and he was gone
Her lap empty, her fingers laid where his head would’ve been
The silence cut deeper than any knife ever could, the stab crystallised
She felt a wound opening in her chest, as all her silences tumbling out
The wind had took him away, the waves snatched his life, he was smiling
She’d seen it unfold far too many times till the sight of it destroyed her
She recalls it like it was only yesterday
Chained to her tower, watching him wade into the depths, her plea unheard
“Bring his body back, please, please.”
That was the last night she held him in her arms
Now her song falls upon empty beds, as the days drift along mindlessly
Watching the seafoam ebb and swell, humming her love to his ocean grave
The world had stopped turning long ago
When he walked into the ocean
Wanting to hear a happy song.
She stared quietly out the balcony, a single ruinous star in the night
Maybe it was ok to feel this way, she reasoned
He was standing behind her, maybe one day I won’t see him anymore
The universe was big enough to hold his absence,
surely one day it’ll forget her too.
A decrepit shack, fallen from halcyon times
Sits unseen by the edges of a tall misty forest
Trees whose brambles reach outwards, yet to claim another victim
Inside the shack is a man, he rests on a creaky rocking chair
He stares into the dark empty screen of a television, trying to find a reflection
He drifts down collapsed hallways, staring at the graveyard of old family photos
He goes out and wanders the perimeters of his abode, but he can never leave
In his free time, he dreams about his younger days, lush with life and romance
He recalls the time he spent with friends, lovers, the lasts of his once big family
The warmth of company, the quiet joy of living, the slow creep of death
If he could, he would’ve reclaimed every second of it, every inch of life
All the humour, joy, even the fog of melancholia that followed
He would’ve seen countless deaths play out, but he’d also see every birth
The faces that populated his life, all his nieces and nephews, his only daughter
Every conception of life, moments, memories that would haunt him
Reminding him every sunless day, joy was a more potent weapon than grief
Grieving not the passing of time and people, but what was once there
The humanity that bled through empty corners, the histories that tangled their roots
The intangibles that bound people together – blood, violence, love
The intimacy of simply being alive, like wading into a pool of light
He closed his eyes, trying to recall those old sensations
A smile in the morning, a sip of tea, fingers laced through his own
That spur of warmth in his chest, in awe of beauty
The brushes and touch of another human, stumbling in the dark or embracing the light
Even the haze of sunlight that would cloud his vision, reminding him voraciously
He was there, he was breathing, he was alive
It was unendurable, the rhythm of his heart, spluttering like lines of poetry
He had never felt so human
Though he never would be again, as he stands in the sun now and feels nothing
Not a dash of warmth on his cold skin, nor a trace of life in his empty chest
A soulless reminder of the bruised heart that once thumped with so much
Fight and grit, that held on relentlessly despite everything, and refused to let go of life.
How it now laid unmoving, crystallised in the very moment it finally lost the battle
He touched his chest, trying to remember what it felt like
Trying to hear a song
A presence appeared beside him, unseen curtains pulling back
Her complexion dulled like stone, a river of time etched into her face
He tried to hold her hand, but as always they just passed right through
The two drifted to the patio where they stood, staring up
A star tracing the furthest corner of the galaxy, million of light years away
Its fate sealed in some starless abyss, long gone, like they were
Surrounded by a sky full of dead things
But only now does the echo of its celestial journey fill the night, what once was a
Brilliant jewel in the night sky, one that spread light across aeons
That carried the prayers of the living, and the hymns of the dead
That had to shoulder the weight of the world on its shoulder
Or an unspoken wish confined within cages of oppression
Their names will never blossom on another’s lips again, no one will send them letters
No one will lay flowers on their graves, or tend to their herb garden
Their lives left only in pictures and stories, shards of glass
Shimmering in a pool of light, a puddle when the pavements dry
Everyday, through whispers that ran uncaged like wind, a celebration of their lives
The star carrying its journey onwards, appearing just so briefly to remind them
Of hope
With the echoes of their lives scattered like the wind, they would reclaim it all, one by one
He looked at his wife, her face worn with age and an eternal silence
But for the first time since they died, he saw her smiling
Though their fingers never meet, they reached out anyways
Because so long as they can remember, they’ll still try regardless.
Written By: Kay Lynn
Edited By: Merissa
