It is true darkness that congregated in the corners of my room that night
And I could not recognize it, only knowing its cousin
Who hovers by streetlights and candles

Deep down, I've always known that the fae dance across my face and talk about me as I fell asleep
I knew what this was, though I did not know enough to fear the messenger
I knew this was a summons
A summons to the moonlight world that shadows the world we know and love

Suddenly, we are far beyond my bedroom
Traipsing through an electric, thorn-filled jungle
My stomach begs loudly of hunger, but it barely registers
With the amount of static sounding in the air
We walk on pathways stripped from the northern lights, pinks and greens, without solid footing
Magnetized forward faster and faster
To destiny

My feet bleed and the true darkness closes behind me, devouring the evidence of my red-stained path

A mist that I had never noticed dissipates
And I see the mushrooms
They glow ghost-white, towering tall as trees
Standing sentinel in a circle, the guardians of such laughter and music as you could never describe-
The music!
It is shattering crystal, raging rivers, and the death song of birds all at once
The darkness pushes me into the circle, and I whirl and twirl to its sound
The erratic beat taking over my heart ryhthm
I throb with its energy, my hands begin emitting their own glow
And the fae begin to take more form around me, in silvers and golds

The music screeches and my heart skips a beat
The circle begins to rumble
Mortal girl comes the echo
My skin feels the kiss of acid rain
You should not have come here
This place is not for the likes of you
A fae with a wreath of thorns adorning its head steps forward
Darkness burning in the sockets where once there may have been eyes

I cannot speak, its stare melting my lips into my face
You have seen too much, you have danced with us
Tell me why I should not hold you here
I look away, desperately trying to gather my thoughts and my voice
The fae would not care about my family, my friends
It would not care about my dreams
The true darkness caresses my hair and I hear its sharp laughter

"I-" I begin

The laughter cuts away, the static dies and my voice hangs in the vaccuum
"I was brought here, by you I presume"
I dare to look the dark fae in the eyes
"I was a dreamer enough to follow"
"You wish to challenge us humans, your endless source of amusement"
"Our torture is your game"
The fae concedes with a thoughtful nod
"But there is no greater torture than to know this place and never come back" I finish
The fae chuckles, as I bite my lip

Clever mortal it mocks
Indeed, go home. I banish you from my lands
May you suffer it adds with a smile

And I am cold
I fall from my bed in a tangle of blankets
In my ear, I hear the wriggling of music
It never quite goes away
The darkness smirks at me from the corners
And I cry softly
For who has ever willingly given up on the fae?
But I hear my sister waking up and I start to smile, despite my sacrifice
For how very few have met the fae and lived?

Astral architecture hangs on the balance of my once fragile mind, now unbound and open to the potential of the Penrose Stairs that I climb. Infinity, I thought, was an innate idea man was not meant to understand, because if the universe is in fact infinite, into what does it expand?

Standing at the precipice of epiphany, teetering at the very cusp of clarity, it came to me in a monumental moment of sibylline singularity:

It expands into itself.

The thought was too profound to perceive, too ravenous to be satiated. Could this be at long last, the answer for which I have waited?

I realized that consciousness operates under a similar uniformity: the brain won't outgrow the head, but the mind will outgrow the body, and our echoes will radiate across the endlessness of existence, for all our forgotten frequencies are oblivious to the concept of distance.

We are all limitless beneath the veil of this perceived reality,
but only there are we human, and only then are we free.

as the rush comes
on the dance floor
it envelopes me
beats rising up my spine
and we are all one pulsating
             beautiful body moving          
                           losing inhibition
              as we spin and writhe
           expressing ourselves
        to that vibration
embraced and surrounded
by the flickering
          tangible sparks
                light we can almost catch
                        in our fingers and mouths
                   eyes like stars
or closed in our
       own private mantras
entranced by rhythm
minds in haze
untouched auras
in colors a-blaze
scintillating in the dark

moved by our own
inner cadence,
we are all bonded
through
        electric notes
downbeats alive
in quickening liquid metal
We inhale that invisible
sense of smoky escape
no thinking needed
but soul's center awake

So
rescue me
at  least for the night
wrap me in bliss
just bring it on
          an accent of sound
                  as the dam bursts
          in spiritual ******
        of musical flow
as we re-connect
to ourselves
in angelic dark
               glow

The man at the studio doesn't like us

we aren't pretty as the teens
not dazzling like the newly weds
our faces are pretty grim
smiles are once a river
foreheads dry riverbeds
eyes hold no commotion
but he does it for money
and winds up quick.

We walk to the river
where under the grey February sky
she plays with our reflections
babbling and breaking us
into unreadable pieces.

We both read our scripts,
but we're not on the same page.
You and I are just actors
who treat life as the stage.

We rehearse our lines,
but they're not what we mean,
for once lets break character
and call cut on this scene.

We could steal the show
if we rewrite the play
and end the charade
of this macabre matinee.

We've reached the finale,
there's no encore after all.
This is our shot,
our last curtain call.