FOREWORD

FOREWORD

They will end my life one length of a sentence from now. Or maybe a three-part Grecian poem longer—if the blazes had coursed through the wood of the courtroom’s ceiling as planned and melted the door with the walls shut.

I believe the little reader in your head living beyond one sentence old can tell you much of how that turned out. And the voices will too, swarms of high-pitched ringing to shatter the glass for escape routes. Seems like even in death I am kept to myself, having only everything burning around me. So take a seat, loitering jury, perhaps you can bear witness and peel your eyes wider than the fur padding on the duke’s burning throne. Indulge in the revelries of the creeping heat and the last words of a widowed man for none here is left but the broken chandeliers, and you, to judge my crimes against humanity. I’ve always lived my life on edge, bearing the cross of marking my time when I could easily just cast it away. I was waiting for perfection you see, as much as I was waiting for the apocalypse to destroy everything I would have done. My existence was doomed by a paradox I created, and it did me no better than to hide in things that made the world stagnant. But please, don’t be too hard on me, I am only a man with no godly key to the doors he locked himself in.

Still, my fate wouldn’t be something you’d imagine to rust on a pillory, who could begin to foresee that, on a man who had never even felt a bead of sweat in his neck or have the sun reach his back. For I had everything: manors, vineyards, and the finest of steeds, all because I was born. And I acted as if I’d been damned by the Earth with all the gold put on silver platters when many would cross volcanoes for a life I was gifted. I testify still—that by keeping me alive long enough to see the ending is a curse. And such blessings made it all possible. But to have witnessed the beginning is heaven on Earth. Even if I had to fight an apocalypse, even if it meant disturbing a meteor shower to come a thousand years late, I would have rewinded the cosmos and time to have met a stablemaster not too taller than six feet. I would have taken his hand with me and ran breath-takingly to the woods where everything is quiet. Lived in a hut where no gunshots can startle the unbridled horses, and no suffocating suit and wig to chain a nobleman upright—only an endless stream of river we can bask in.

But alas, no beginning search for no resolution. And sooner as treasured things begin, sooner do they end.

So what does one do in the end times? Where everything is torn apart by the things you can see shattering loudly, and more harshly so by things you can’t even touch. Where no human alive can make sense of this inevitable enigma. Or even look at it straight in the eye. For my case, the revelation is the chaotic collection of my blissful ignorance, so I ignored the signs. Of the off-beat cricket I hear in the dark, of the contorting faces from the distance I hope was not someone I know. Of the whispers that fade into the candle smoke as I enter a room. These were the least of worries for someone having the world handed to him. But I knew only so much of what would not happen to me, that I knew so little of what would happen to him. And for this, I hope that you would look past the chains on my knees and know that the bruises kiss the ground for anyone but you, to forgive me. As I didn’t know so much of the world after all, I didn’t know that some didn’t bat an eye for the gloves that touched, but for the robes I donned. And didn’t know that dozens more called the end times a witch, a discord in the natural order more mortifying than the trees they ashed to the sky or the crimes they buried behind their yard. Perhaps, I waited too long for our redemption, caved in the comfort of our paradise deep that it blinded me to how much the power of nobles can bend themselves away from harm. I was too ignorant to think a humanly power can easily save the world from the disasters I invited in. So when the pitchforks came and took the only semblance of meaning in my life, they left me in a hell bleaker than they would’ve taken me too. Why forsake me? When my blood bleeds red as much as my world did. I hoped to have controlled our fate in folly. But all my human hands can ever control is the torch sticks beside the barrels, and the mixture to make wine flammable. So I turned myself in as witch—that they treat me with the dignity of what they see me. That I’ll spell the end of this world as they expect of me. So you should know that time waits for no one. No apocalypse safe from any man, but know that there truly was utopia to be found, and the only crime I admit to was not finding it sooner. But truly, I am only a tired soul from yet just another circle of ash. So flutter away passerby witness, and find a new set of broken matchsticks to dread about.

I’d imagine they’ll bring you more than enough fire to burn your worries about the dark spots on the ground. Hopefully.

Ryan A. Rodriguez

POETRY

they stole the light from the sea, the bones from the soil, the flare from your existence.

sooner, the last human will have wept. so treasure what’s within your embrace, remember all that has gone,

for what remains of the ash might lead the path to resurrection.

wings of agony written by Aurora visual by Janna M. Remus

my body, squeezes into itself before letting go, hoping that it would propel me further towards cotton-like clouds.

but my woes were in vain, as a shadow hovered above the unbridled sky, blocking my scales from reflecting the jewels i carried along my skin.

my wings— iridescent scales reaching for home, flapped one last time, grasp slipping from the wind. it did not whisk me to the clouds, but buried me deep within cotton gloves, as if it’s destiny to share the fate of those that bear the same skin to meet their extinction.

our wings. the very reason why the world adores us —why we are chased to our demise.

every time it flutters, the air embracing it is able to change the fate of those across the universe’s edge, yet it has failed to change those who bear it.

our bodies.

displayed behind a glass sky clear as blue ceilings i once soared. a metal pin fills the hole our hearts once occupied.