Past Tense Glitter-Dust
What Used To Be
It used to be a fairy. It's gossamer wings twinkling with silver from the night skies and gold from sunray-rivulets that had seeped deep into the fabric.
It used to be sparkling and glittering. Dancing.
It used to dance.
Twirls, steps, turns. Footsteps piling up in labyrinth patterns, wings flutter-flutter-fluttering in shades of the rainbow. A little whirl of vortex light and color. Flickers of worlds beyond concrete skies and dulled patchworks of asphalt.
But this world is no place for a fairy.
Tiny pearl-white bones snapped in twenty splinters of jarring pain, fragile ribcage cracked into a mess of curled ruby-glossed sticks cutting rosy flesh and ripping up lungs into glistening slices, skull crushed to a sludgy mass held together by porcelain skin.
Quite. Still. Time ticking on without it, moving us ever into the future turning present tense.
An aquarelle painting of violence, it fell to the ground. Wings torn, limbs twisted.
It used to be a fairy. It used to be a swirl of facetted light and twaddle steps, wings leaving streaks behind in the air that made perfect nonsense.
But all that’s left now is fading glitter-dust sprinkled in my palm. And it falls and wears off just like a fainting memory. Gradually it disappears.
Until there’s nothing left.
It used to be sparkling and glittering. Dancing.
It used to dance.
Twirls, steps, turns. Footsteps piling up in labyrinth patterns, wings flutter-flutter-fluttering in shades of the rainbow. A little whirl of vortex light and color. Flickers of worlds beyond concrete skies and dulled patchworks of asphalt.
But this world is no place for a fairy.
Tiny pearl-white bones snapped in twenty splinters of jarring pain, fragile ribcage cracked into a mess of curled ruby-glossed sticks cutting rosy flesh and ripping up lungs into glistening slices, skull crushed to a sludgy mass held together by porcelain skin.
Quite. Still. Time ticking on without it, moving us ever into the future turning present tense.
An aquarelle painting of violence, it fell to the ground. Wings torn, limbs twisted.
It used to be a fairy. It used to be a swirl of facetted light and twaddle steps, wings leaving streaks behind in the air that made perfect nonsense.
But all that’s left now is fading glitter-dust sprinkled in my palm. And it falls and wears off just like a fainting memory. Gradually it disappears.
Until there’s nothing left.