The Velvet Inbetween I wanted the voices to be normal again Scratching beneath my pillows at night To hear any sound but the sounds a mind can make Vivid words in a drifting mindscape Hardly known to me. My eyes are red From the sleep I’ve lost Tossing and turning and learning My hands just shake One, then both Tremendously, greatly— Then suddenly, not at all. But the world didn’t sleep When I lost that gift. Memory didn’t leave me When it failed to work: And when all couldn’t be seen The dark blood churning I turned to the ever-burning stars. The fabric between those glowing points of light was eternal and far and endless— Spiraling hopes and dreams of worlds I couldn’t know were frozen in light I’d never see reach me They stood and they stood And they never once moved anchorpoints to an entire universe— —yet, somehow, the stars could never hold me. | Elysia Koury 30
Skittering visions of a pounding pulse Hands only belaying every action— every notion— with the moments between the searing terror a nervous void of thought. The things I knew became things unknown, and my Past came to light before I learned it wasn’t all My world narrowed, then cracked and burned a supernovic living thing, barely still held together— And I forgot that I forgot that I ever could have understood every single part of me. The shards examined did me no justice just hurt and stabbed and burned; the fragments showed things I could become if I stayed uncaring and self-reliant Ourself remained important, but Ourself became enlightened. I pulled the threads together, tying even as I cut them I could only weave so much in hand with fingers still barely shaking— but I stopped to take a shuddering breath and looked back up at the stars. The velvet in-between them then had still remained intact, unchanging
