Masked - A story of the Night

-Introduction-

Trapped inside steel, rusted cages
A heart and a rainbow
Once full and shining with life
Have been overcome and drowned
In grief, hate and hopelessness
Only they can evoke the other’s revival
And both are so close to fading
Into the void darkness of the night
Neither with the strength
To light the spark of life on their own
For anyone, even themselves

But the nighttime can hold a magic all its own
And if two flints are thrown together
Into a gushing river of silver-gold moonlight
Beneath a midnight blaze of starfire,
Who can stop a spark from being struck?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Knife gripped tight in your shaking hand
Steel glint in a single beam of moonlight
Like a searchlight through the window
Though no one’s looking for you tonight

Only the moon witnesses
The fear in your eyes

Metallic clink to hard tile
as
You cast the blade away

Torn inside, eaten alive
No blood spilled
Can wash this away

Adrenaline rises fast like anger

Burst from the walls that hold you
Throw yourself into the night

Wanting to melt into the
Liquid stars and velvet soot
That engulf you in an
After-twilight cloak

So mystifyingly
Sinister and foreboding
But you know the dusk of obscurity
Is the
Only place you will ever belong

Run

Cracked cement underfoot
Lights blur past
Then turn to shadows

Run faster
Never once stopping until you see it…

A stilled, rust-plated rainbow captured in a shell of
Despondency
Drowned in the time-hardened misery of so many
Rising into the night sky
Sparked with a glitter of shattered glass
It’s only remaining shine

You don’t stop, never pause
Drawn to it for reasons you cannot name,
Do not know

Something in you sparks with dim recognition
This rough, rusted beauty is so like...
So like the things you feel inside
A jewel imprisoned beneath the weight
Of a million jaded nights

Jagged thorns tear at your skin
As you crash through the earthdamp growth
Away from the city lights
To find the steel skeleton choked
With delicate, lethal vines

Your hands meet rungs rough and smooth in the dark
And you don’t hesitate as you climb from
Your living grave
On a rusted ladder slung with
Mingling raindrops and tears
frozen in time like
Spiderweb nets spun of glass

Every pain slices into your palms
Heartache, loss, so much anguish
Cutting deep to your heart to
Intersperse among your own

But you never stop
Never shed a drop of blood or a single tear

Rusted metal riveted with despair
- So much like your own -
Under your hands
The taste of dirty dimes on your tongue
A hard crushing in your chest as if
Your ribs have been rusted over
Like the rainbow you climb

You glimpse the ground so far below
Surrounded by the deadly night
But pounding impulse from inside
Overtakes the fright

Darkness wraps you in its charcoal embrace
But a faint glow shines through the clouds above
Calling to you
Its silent voice gentle but strong

The rail-less ladder shuddering in the wind
A hot, wordless whisper against your skin
Keep you moving upward towards the dim flicker
Up into the misty white

You break through the opal mist
Like a bronze-winged phoenix
Emerging anew from the ashes
To stand atop the towering arch

Endless sky unfurling around
Copper rust and
Snowy-white breaths of fog

Rivulets of moonlight like
Golden-white rose petals
Pool in the deep of your eyes
Dipping into the shallow lagoons
That ghost your chiseled ivory face
And the hollows of your collarbones with strain

A waterfall of liquid orchids,
A cooling summer rain
Cascading down from a
Gushing celestial fountain and
Splashing over your skin like a
Cool and milky poison

Atop the once-magnificent structure
You feel the rush again
Seeing the city skyline so far below
Visible through a surreal mist as the
Clouds thin and part, drifting
To reveal
A postcard image of a place you once knew

Adrenaline

All around you a halo of
Moonlight you could hold
Drink in to soothe
The burning of your soul
Trickling over your skin in the
Only light you’ve ever seen
That doesn’t hurt your eyes

Thrill

It sears sharp and sweet to your bones
The wind whipping your shirt about your
Skeletal frame
Wisps of hair against your
Your upward-tilted face
As if it wants to tell you
You’re still alive

Feel your heartbeat pound in your constricting chest
Let yourself cry and draw a breath
You’re so much less than what you were
Wasted away in the shadows of life
But you’re not gone yet

You’ve become so thin, yet
It’s only a reflection of the
Starvation that is
Deeper inside you, an
Anorexia of the soul

Raise your arms to meet the sharp, steady howl,
Both hands open to feel the powerful surge
Against your palms
Ready to take what it will give

Invincibility rushes over and into you
Possessing, infiltrating, consuming
Stealing your blood, stilling your heart

Crushing every pain
And filling every empty space
With the
Intoxicating
Euphoria of strength

Knowing you will be caught by the wings of infinity
Will not fall back to the doom of the earth
Or collide with the stars
But be surrounded and wrapped in
The everlasting opaque
Until you meld into its coal-dust cape,

You feel yourself weaken to a nameless power
A gravity that will never pull you downward

You can feel the wind’s rough seduction
All around you
Blazing straight through you as if
You are invisible

It’s taunting dare and gentle allurement
To abandon any mortal pain
To let go
And weave yourself into a silverlit eternity…

You succumb

The moment you are broken inside,
Ready to release yourself to the
Powers of the night sky
The structure beneath your feet quakes

Bringing you hard to your knees
As it frees itself from the
Years of the built-up misery
Of so many

Tear-rusted leaves of sorrow and defeat
Layered with shards of glass
And chips of blade
Flaking from the crystal beauty they hide
To swirl and disappear into the black canyons
Of the night below

Leaving you holding tight to the glassy
Shimmering heart
As it comes to life
A kaleidoscope of
Jasmine, Amber, Indigo
Magenta, Jade and Sapphire light

Shedding the burnished hate and
Throwing its colors deep into the sky,
A melting-jewel nova
Of translucent candy-ice

The night air shatters with its brilliance
You think you might also as
Your heartbeat quickens
Your hand flies to shade your eyes from
the piercing blades of vibrant light, an
Electric ripple
Coursing through your veins at the sight

The revival of a single dying soul
The sensation and capture of a near-last breath
Stilled in your throat, imprisoned in your chest
Immortalized

Has awaken this life

The energy-turned-to-starfire
Bursting from your very core
To slice deep through the concrete curse
Glittering like a diamond-hilted, double-edged sword

In the distance below
A clock tolls midnight
Daring
Reassuring
Beckoning
Calling you to flight

Don’t look down

But you no longer feel fear
The sky is waiting, whispering your name
Will cradle you in its
Silken black and gold and
Rainbow-fire wings

And whole, without
Any blood or tears
You steady yourself on the edge
Look down on the world, take a breath
Reach deep into the glowing lights
And jump into the molten sky

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