Awarded Gold Key — December 2018 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards
There is a gate sewn into the lining of the sky.
Those who find a way to fall upwards —
into the terror of the unknown,
into the vivid depths of infinity —
are the souls fit for another reality.
If you have ever looked into the rain,
traced the horizon with rosy fingertips,
wrapped yourself in the vastness of the cosmos —
you have glimpsed the landscape
constructed from dream shards, memory wisps,
and myriads of unfolding galaxies.
Stars are meant to be doubled
in eyes that glint from the furthest reaches of night,
not swallowed up by seas of static.
Somewhere amongst the intricately embroidered meteorites
and colorful splashes of supernovas, there is a crawl-space
just large enough to fit a child’s curiosity.
There, planets swing suspended by scarlet thread,
swept into the gravity of the observed,
yet the bittersweet taste of risk scorches quick tongues into silence
upon the sight of admission price.
To enter, you must offer a small jar crammed with Somethings:
tiny brass keys, apologies, the smell of freshly-washed laundry,
thoughts slipped beneath floorboards, smooth seashells,
fragments of summer laughter.
Their absence will unfasten the knot your chest
and strip your fate bare as you traverse infinity.
Take caution, for fear will corrupt the blood of the doubtful,
leaving hundreds stranded in the endless reaches
of black.
Let your fingers search the seams of the sunset —
the gate will unravel for the dull-eyed, the hopeful,
the abandoned, the dimmed.
At night, the Earth is a spinning weight with no intention
of sparing the bodies flung beneath it.
For centuries, escape has been chained beneath conformity —
but as extinguished sparks multiply in the gutters of the masked,
stars extract their small forms from the ruins of corruption.
The sky has no forgiveness for the cruel.
Swaths of Nothing will wrap and smother pride;
hunger overtaking nebulas in their craving for the taste of
human desire.
And for those who have not yet tasted an empty atmosphere,
they will learn to suffocate.
Comments