The Autumn Queen No. 7 – The First Time

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

This is #7 of The Autumn Queen.  To start at the beginning, go here.  

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The moon had gone dark the first time he crept into the bartizan. He had clear eyes then, unruined. Even in the black he could see her, where she sat at her loom, weaving stories to life. She worked from memory and when the silver light came, when the thread of light from the waxing crescent finally showed, he could make out the picture she had shut herself away to make.

“Majesty,” he called her, and he wept to see the beauty she created.

They laid together as though they’d known one another always, and rejoiced to find one another as tender and as delicate and as strong as the other needed.

He left her in the dark, left her in the silverblueblack of night, without a single promise spoken, but they both knew he would be back.

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Within

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

There is this in
within me,
where I have tattooed
black stars.
They are where the in
within me
reaches out to come out,
where I am feather and hollow bone.
Where I am not
as sturdy as I look,
but where I am delicate
and fragile,
a piece of overblown glass.
My wings are not made
for an eagle,
but instead, a butterfly,
and you snap them
every time
you curl your hands around me,
every time you try
to make me yours,
even if
I want you to.

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Hemmed In

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

She stumbled along, hands outstretched, fingertips clinging to the sides of the alleyway, scraping, the rough brick stinging. Her whole body ached, and she couldn’t remember where she was going, or why she was going there. Everything was blurry, and she could taste copper. She knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that something awful had happened, that something beyond horrific had occurred, and now she was merely scattered, the surface of her rippled by whatever had struck, a large stone tossed carelessly into a pond.

“Are we there?” she asked, but there wasn’t any answer. Blood ran from her lips, and she spat, gagging. “Are we there yet?” she pleaded, breath hitching, caught on cracked ribs. “It was a long fucking way to fall,” she rasped. “I think we broke something.”

When she reached the end of the alleyway, she turned around and around in circles, looking, searching, straining to see something in the distance, but she was hemmed in on three sides, and the fourth was simply the way she’d came, and that was as much of a wall as bricks could ever be.

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In Keeping

Posted on October 25, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

By the eight faces of the midnight moon,
by her ninth face which is blood,
and her holy reach, which is unto the depths,
I conjure thee.

I give thee the gift of sight, which is fire,
and I give thee also the gift of breath, which is wind,
and I give thee also the gift of form, which is stone,
and I give thee also the gift of blood, which is water.

I bind thee to myself, and I myself am bound to thee.
I bind thee to myself, and I myself am bound to thee.
I bind thee to myself, and I myself am bound to thee.
Thrice have I spake it, thus it is true.

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New Moon

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

When the moon calls us,
when it gets under our skin
and behind our eyes,
all I can think of
is its bright face,
the sweet high bliss of it
screamsinging inside me,
buried somewhere
so far below
it is in the knot of me
that was tied
when I was first begun,
before there ever was a me,
when I was nothing more than howling
beneath the dark
of someone else’s new moon.

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