Fantasy Re:Verse (Closed)

[Kerenza]

* * *
icon by Andei

​

The room around Anastasia was a sterile white, but it was made palatable by multiple colorful posters on the walls all around her. The desks were arranged in a circle, with others pushed to the side. It was one of those classrooms with one of those teachers.

She walked up to the bookshelf filled with books and pulled out the little notebook she had spent so much time staring at that day. She pulled out a pen and tried out her hand.

Not a diary
But a book of secrets
Rolls of truths
Tucked into lies
Every word
So perfectly chosen
And yet I
Chosen by none at all
Every word
So perfectly chosen
But I.

 

[Andei]

Alone, unchosen;
No room left in these five lines
for you, little word.
How excited you make me
with the thought of my next verse!​

 

[Kerenza]

I hadn't expected
An answer
A second chance
At being heard
After so long
Drifting, coffinless
In the death of my word

 

[Andei]

Words - dying unheard -
of coffins and of drifting
yet live not unseen.
Silence, though a quiet grave,
well-suits a lively reading.​

 

[Kerenza]

Lively readings
Require a bit of a voice
And I can't even imagine
Whether or not your ears are curved

Do you read me in voice aloud,
In a quiet grave?
Do you read me in your head,
In snatches between class?

Or do you read me in the pit of your stomach,
Where your breakfast rests
And words churn
Before ever leaving your mouth?

 

[Andei]

Though words are spoken
between breakfast, class and graves,
your words are read here
in the quiet of the day
by the voices in my head.​

 

[Kerenza]

As if days
Are anything but quiet
My thoughts
Sometimes crashing against my skull
And sometimes just itching at the bone
Beneath my harline
Always gets drowned out
Sometimes violently
By the rush of feet
As class ends

 

[Andei]

Crashing thoughts drowned by
those feet rushing violently
until they reach home;
Are they, too, chasing quiet -
your thoughts and the feet outside?​

 

[Kerenza]

I like the quiet of books
Of written adventure
Of poems in hand-me-down notebooks
Are you chasing quiet?
Do you read
Till your eyes bleed tired?
I want to know you:
I think our lives may be the same.

 

[Andei]

A frog looking up
at a small puddle of sky;
What does the heart seek:
the oceans of sky beyond
or a content moment, here?​

 

[Kerenza]

I hope for a content future
My head not mixed up
In pillars of salt
And leftover take-out
They say college is hard
And I agree
Sandpaper on my bones

 

[Andei]

A pillar of salt
dried out in face of hardship
if shared with others
is ground from pillars to grains
that flavours life - yours and mine.​

 

[Kerenza]

You certainly do flavor my life
But I don't taste salt
It's something I can't quite recognize
The way I felt
When my friend's show me their vacation pictures
Exotic, Exciting
Yet something I may never
Experience for myself

 

[Andei]

The freshly-steamed rice
from my next door neighbour's house
always smells so good;
but my sister's burnt cooking
is a treasure just for me.​

 

[Kerenza]

Sister you speak of
I have one of my own
Pretty and popular
But not everything I want to be

I rather think she has coffee for brains
All energy,
But not even creamer,
No substance

 

[Andei]

The taste of coffee
is often bitter, I find,
if not given time;
Will times spent with your sister
sweeten if shared with a friend?​

 

[Kerenza]

Sweeten is so subjective
I drink my coffee
Three sugars,
Two scoops of creamer
From one of the larger spoons
And yet, often,
On Saturdays,
When I have time to enjoy the coffee,
It's not sweet enough

 

[Andei]

Three sugars with cream
makes for a sweet drink indeed!
Yet a bitterness
lingers and sits heavily
in your words and on my heart.​

 

[Kerenza]

Bitterness
Is something I've tried to move past
But it is tiny balls
I'm my hollow bones
Rattling around
Inside

 

[Andei]

I hear faint rattling
behind a fog of pained words
I cannot pierce through.
I wonder what this fog seeks -
to be watched, or be lifted?​

 

[Kerenza]

I don't like being
The center of attention
But sometimes
When people look at me
Out of the corner of
Bloodshot eyes
I feel seen

 

[Andei]

Hunt they wild tigers
or are wild tigers hunting?
Man, beast; Both are seen.
Both are feared and both do fear;
Round and round! Then who fears first?​

 

[Kerenza]

I guess I just know fear
I don't know who,
Or what it comes from,
All I know is that I know fear

 

[Andei]

Grey clouds, crops below;
A farmer hears rain coming
for his wheat and rice.
He knows fear for his doomed fields
but delight for his paddies.​