The Sand Castle
Not a usual thing for me, putting feelings down onto paper instead of ideas. Sorry if its a little blue, but I am a bit homesick, and healing a bit at a time.
Here I stand on a parapet alone looking over the waves. I roar into the wind, and each time my heart waits to hear a voice answer in return. I look out at the Waves and roar at them, but like time, they continue despite my wishes. I roar at the sky wishing when I look back down, things would be what they were. I roar, and the ground beneath my talons shivers with my fury, but like the sand my castle is made of, I sit here, dreaming of when I was something greater.
I tread the halls of my castle warden, prisoner, and exile all in one,. I look at my talons, proud, sharp, deadly. I flex my fistful of knives knowing there is nothing they can flay to fix this. I curl up in the Hall, where many a night I talked to my friends, family, and lovers alike. Now, the cold hearth is mirrored by my heart.
My nest is empty, mirrored by the hole in my heart left by those who warmed it, or I thiers in return. I smell deeply, wondering if by pretending I can still smell the love shared here, that the connections I feel, that their time has not yet passed. I remember my Mother, whom for better or worse, I take after, her manic days of running away from her depression mirrored by my own.
I lay in my nest, my trophies around me, meaningless symbols for anyone save myself. An eggshell here, or a stone from a river, or an empty bottle of milk. I shiver as my heart aches knowing the truth of deep friendship, that one exchanges a part of one's soul for a piece in return. I know part of My own Child yet lives within me. That thought brings tears to my eyes as their soul cries out to be reunited with its source, just like mine longs for the pieces I've given away too.
My eyes overflow, knowing that being older just means you lose more, not that you get any better at dealing with loss. I sigh, a tear running down my muzzle, falling into the sands of time, and I watch it clump together, forming something more solid than before. Now that sand is part of the castle I live in, a vast fortress built from my tears and time. And I hope that someday I can fly away from here, to be who I wanted to be. To escape my Mother's fate, and once again, dance among the stars, with those I love.
I stand on the parapet of the castle I built of time and tears, home to a peculiar dragon who flies on wings of love, who hoards not gold, or jewels, but memories and feelings. I stand, roaring out into the night, not because of the pain of loss, but delivering the last message of the castle's prisoner. One that someday, I can be forgiven, and loved again, my scales shining as I dance in the cave of lights whose lights yet illuminate my heart. The last tear is for myself, wettening the sand between my talons, as I roar out into the night, alone, right where I chose to be so I could wall off my grief, so like my mother.
I look back, the walls are done, my heart the prisoner of this fortress, untouchable, unfeeling, safe from being hurt again. Yet my heart stabs me with its weapons of hope, trying to break free. Reminding me that there is still time to love, to find happiness. My wings twitch on my back, reminders of a love given to me once. I sigh as the waves below remind me that time only goes forwards, despite what my heart would have me believe, and so I walk back into my castle, back into what is comfortable and safe as my heart calls me traitor, and coward. I smile and tell it that it built these walls, and it should have been more careful, about who to love, and why as I lay down in an empty nest, in a cold room, in a sand castle built with tears and the sands of time.