yuki
          companion piece to rakuen

‘it melts, see?’ he is covered in snow,
‘i knew you were human under there.’

*

it is not unlike a flower, you see,
it blooms in the cracks
of the clouded twilight floor,
fertile for breeding obsidian seeds of misery,
sown by the alabaster hands of emptiness.

the flower will be claret, much like chiselled lips
i once kissed with passion twice as vivid.
its prickly petals will descend in your hair
and crown you with thorns of luminescent ice.

i will watch it wither in woeful reverie.
until it is bound by the frozen fingers of regret and grief,
until i am no more than a carved creature of crystal stone
among the lonely mountains of abysmal eternity.

i will be a myth, forsaken by the living
with only claret-stained snow to prove that

i can bleed.

*

he is the bright flame of a dream-scented candle.
eyes are drawn to his finely-boned features and night-painted hair.
his smile could fuel a thousand moons
with light not stolen from the sun.

i am too drunk,
it brims over the edges of my mind like a goblet
of wine in the hands of intoxicated poetry.
my mind is swollen with similes and metaphors and prose
to offer him like gifts to a deity of warm earth and spilt light
but it would do him no justice,
for his indescribable beauty eludes even the ink of my pen.

instead i only offer him bitten-off contempt laced insincerely in my smile
and the indifferent winter of my homeland held deeply in my gaze.
but his fierce fire is unyielding to the bitterest winds of my icy nature,
yet... he does not burn my thin, unhealed skin.
he is a skin-warming balm for scarred wounds
that have been concealed for far too long.

and he frightens me.

i fear his incandescent hands of warm tea and simple chocolates
and that wondrous leg twining with mine beneath a table,
locking tightly as though i would pull away,
even if i recovered from the sticky aftertaste of shock.

i fear his dreamy-scented skin and the gentleness
in his candlelit eyes when he thinks i’m not looking.
he is fairness, encompassing joy, and knowing of love.
i want reach out and touch his soul with my own,
to offer what took me so long to rebuild:

a heart shrouded in ice.

but i remember a different fire
and stay away.

*

‘why are you here?’ it is my voice. a broken knife scraping
over the delicate skin of a frostbitten ear.

his voice is not a mirror to reflect synthetic sunlight
into my ice-laden tomb.
it is a guitar played by the hands
of comfort and unspoken disquiet,

‘because i choose to be.’

the rising sun is caught below the horizon
and i am only bleak night.
it is not only his mouth,
but his sunburnt eyes of golden hue.
they are unguarded stars
to fill the soulless heavens above me.

‘i can love you,
if you would only let me.’

his kiss is like snow, only softer, it grows warm
in my mouth.
and for a fleeting moment,
i am reminded of forgotten poetry.

[ japanese ] yuki

[ lit. trans. ] snow