CASCADING RAMBLES
by Ella Wen
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the same damn narrative

There are people dying.
Not dying, but DYING.
They are dying deaths that creep in cloaked dismay
They are dying deaths that keep silent under swept floorboards
They are dying deaths that bleed and bleed and bleed
They are dying deaths that 
shatter 
nations.

Gunshots are muffled by crystal clear piano solos
Played on the lovely ivory keys of our world.
No black notes but white,
Major white chords and tunes,
And with that,
They are drowned out.
Melodies that chant that the world is okay,
Serenading generations into a sleepless lullaby.
“Sleep it away”, is the prescription of the new.

But when those chords, those concertos, those melodious facades of apologies 
fade away
You’ll be able to hear the sirens, the stories, the shattered glass
That they keep sweeping under the carpets.
You’ll be able to hear things that go unseen, that go untold
You’ll be able to hear things that people don’t want you to hear.

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i say something along the lines of stay

Grabbing your wrist feels like I’m holding on to the edge of the last page of the universe
And beneath me you are swaying,
So elegantly ready to fall.

I know. I know the world you come from
Is unkind, soulless, and evil
It suffocates dreams, it brews hatred, and it is the embodiment of pain I 
know.

I know that it is full of little paper girls
Made of snippets from prized salon magazines
Glued, stamped, pressed together

I know there are creatures lurking there that steal
And take and touch and salivate over what is not theirs.

I know that your people have the same flowers blooming inside of them
And yet fight and favor only certain hues of certain petals.

I see your world’s darkness under your eyes
And I hear your world’s anguish in your words

But how,
How can you throw yourself into a cosmos of unknown simply
Because you despise the known?
How do you know that this world, this hellhole is all there is?
Because even when we are all seemingly slamming our own caskets shut
How do you know, you’re done?

You don’t. You don’t.

You’re here, you’re alive, you’re living, you’re breathing, 
you are existing and experiencing 
absorbing every amount of stardust there is
And you have so much more to do.

And before you argue, your world is still beautiful.
It has sticky crayons, scarlet quilts, steaming chamomile tea, cream colored bicycles, foggy windowed trains, faded cinema tickets, mini cacti, inky doodles, pancakes.
Little humans falling in love by the beachside, toes digging into the quartz granules, holding hands, holding each other, all under the universe 
that is you. You.

You are more than a shell of a body, you are magic.
A painting, a gallery, a mosaic masterpiece.
You are not shattered, you are a constellation of diamonds.
You are a macramé of starwork.

Don’t you remember?

Lift yourself to believe in the warm promise of tomorrow
Stitch up your body and brokenness
With blue watery threads
To smile one more day, just one more, okay?

Because there’s something in you 
and in this world 
that I see
And I see it, I promise you I see it.

All I want now, 
Is for you to see it too.


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