Upon her back, a smooth mossy boulder rests
An old turtle shell that has not yet lost its aqua blue hue
or the blooming flowers between its cracks

The skin on her slim legs are the color of jean
her feet are soft and padded, much thicker than could be called delicate
they are like puppies feet
the other girl's feet tumble and toddle over one another
clumsy
but she has mastered their bigness

Around her ankles is a woolen strip
creamy white and fluffy
fair and curly like a spaniel's chest
soft as a cloud's skin

her hair is a lion's mane
I have seen it whip and sting when she is angry
but now its floating round her head
in a golden halo
like sun burned wheat
it curves, dips and dives
rippling down her back
blazing

The best part of her
as she turns her head, I catch a glimpse
her eyes
sad, dark moons
fanned with lashes, curling upwards, brushing the lids
they glitter as she moves

If I were to dive into a bottomless pool of chocolate
that still would not be deep enough
If I slid into a smooth black lake rimmed with obsidian stone
that still would not be liquid enough
If I leapt into a ebony panther's fur
that still would not be dark enough
to match those eyes that melt
and freeze
in turn

If there was a golden goose who laid a golden egg
and if a spider delicate as lace spun around it a thin moon dust thread
then placed it inside the black heart of the cruelest duke of old
and took it out after three hundred years
then that might resemble the two scorching molten drops
that were my lovers eyes

--Lily

I created a girl
From word and lines
From paragraphs.

With characters, I shaped her face
Her long dark hair
Gold eyes
Her strength
And the inevitable weakness
We share.
I learned to love her
As a daughter, for she is mine
From my own hands
From my own heart and head
A product of a story
That needed to be told.

I loved her, and she taught me
Through her own struggles
Her own losses
That it is possible to move forward
After the end of the world
Ice will thaw and spring will follow the winter
Bodies return to the earth and feed the flowers
And love is never lost,
Only tucked away into a small pocket
Somewhere in the mysterious red ***** in our chests
Where it takes shape as another
More bearable appreciation
One that is not all flowers and lore
Or clammy hands and starry eyes.

If she can move on, when beauty seems withered
Than I will follow her steps
Beyond the last page
And walk out of that story
Back into my own
Where you and I will always occupy
A small page some place
A few sentences that had to end
To form a paragraph.

Or a Poem.

This sweet
Tangerine Dream
Seems like it will last beyond
The cadence of our swaying bodies
And the flickering flames.
The line of our forms,
Fluttering through the buttery warmth
Like silver and gold knives.
I sharpen on you
And you draw your edge against mine
And in that moment, we are both so sharp
And eternal,
That seems as though this will never dull,
Our feet will never tire,
And the flames will never pass into ash.

But a dream is just that;
Temporary and as lasting
As the sweet, cloying nectar
Of a tangerine.