Featured in the 2016 Spring Issue of Rambunctious
Sestina Cayla Dedrick, '16 The fabric beneath my fingers grows sticky and moist, as blood seeps through the wounds cut by your broadsword; The lacerations left behind reach deep to my bones through tissue that is lightened by the silvery moonshine turning the colored word to grayscale as my heart is avian- all wings a-flutter- and the blackness behind my eyelids is slipping And with it I am slipping, Losing the feeling of the ground's moist chill - I wake again to the rousing rustle of an avian disturbance of leaves in the trees, leaving branches waving like broadswords. The soft warm of the sun replaced the cool wash of moonshine familiar at my bedside is the clock and a box of tissues Deep blue carpets strewn with tissues I have not moved for otherwise I would be slipping, and sliding into a stupor of loss and loathing, and of moonshine Hours pass, darkness falls, and with tears, my cheeks are moist I haven't the energy to fight back the demons, they come with broadswords Daring to cut me open again and expose my avian bones, fragile and hollow to support my avian Heart, and let me take flight. If only I hadn't broken down the tissues that held together my wings that once cut the air like broadswords before I found that from the sky I was slipping And now those wings hang limp, moist with the dewdrops that once sparkled in the moonshine There is only the dulling buzz of the moonshine To give me the illusion that I could be once again avian But it's my own rainclouds have left me moist with dejection and despondence, and I have long run out of tissues. Into the darkness within myself I am forever slipping And perhaps this time I have fallen on my own broadsword Even if I could lift the weight of this broadsword I know that now I'm too soaked in the moonshine I cannot see the rocks beneath my feet and I'm slipping, on the feathers littered at my feet, no longer bright and avian I cling to my existence as it shreds as easily as tissues And the blackness that engulfs me yet again feels strangely moist Can I fashion wings once more from the broadswords left my skin moistened With blood, sweat and tears glistening in the moonshine, tissues unable to clean the puddles that had me slipping. Shattered are my bones and dead is my avian- Heart.