A Teacup Full of Stories

I want to write of a city of ships where the streets are half-rotted planks suspended above the deep blue abyss, where ropes form this place’s trees and no-one knows how to swim because the depth of the sea seeps into your bones, a dull aching moan that pulls you under before you can think to try.

I want to write about nature sprites on train lines who cast seeds into the gaps between the bricks of red-worn bridges, whose green skin revels in their nakedness, their hair like buttercups and the dirt beneath their fingernails rich with nutrients, prying open buds with their fingers and waiting until the city will one day be their own.

I want to write about a woman with constellations on her skin, galaxies in her eyes that cry tears of moonlight, with skin the colour of the places between the stars and hair that gravity can never touch, with lips like starlight and jewellery made of fire.

I want to write of rivers that run through arches with silver water that reflects the lights made by nothing human, cracked stone riverbed and tree roots that weave a carpet over the river bank, a soft cascade of light that heals all but never lets them go.

I want to write about the woman who makes the passages between realities, sliding her blade to make a door which half-opens in the foggy air of night and spills out sunlight from a place that only she has seen, the very rocks bending to her will to allow her to slip away to where she can never be found, her, the keeper of the doorways, much sought after, for she holds the keys to possibility, keys that she will never give up.

I want to write about a man who holds smoke in his arms as one last embrace with the one that he has lost, her hair swirling around him as she clings back tighter because she does not want to go, and both of them understanding that a moment is always temporary, and sooner than they wish she will melt away, so they make their eternity together in their numbered seconds, him knowing that once she has gone all he will see will be shades of grey and smoke and dust.

I want to write about a child who reads stories to the swamp creatures, who let her sit on their knees as they sit quietly and listen to her halting speech in a voice she rarely uses in what others call the real world; the defenders of the forest lay down their spears and bow to her, for she is the only one to come and go as she pleases, book tucked under arm as the trees give way to lead her to the fearsome beast who will listen to her for as long as she needs.

I want to write of a tree with blood-red leaves that stretches its head above the forest, guardian and sentinel of a land untouched by technology, where the fae still come and go as they please and people have been known to disappear, returning a hundred years later no older and with tales that no-one believes; there are special places where they put this people and maintain the façade that all is well in what they quaintly call ‘their’ world.

I want to write about how cats perceive the rain; about how children see the world in seven more colours than adults can imagine; about how butterflies can fracture time with a beat of their wings; about cities that float above the land; about mushrooms taller than trees; of forest replacing oceans; of oceans in the sky and clouds where the lakes once were; of men falling in love and women who never leave their dreams; of the monsters found in swimming pools and under beds and behind curtains; of the fae that inhabit skate parks and slums;  of how islands are the backs of sea creatures and how life is a person with golden skin known only for broken promises; about ships that are dragons in disguise, with sails for wings and glowing with fire from within; about a man who summons wolves with six eyes with symbols and a staff longer than he is tall, and how that wolf bows to him though it could destroy him with a single breath; about the monsters that inhabit sunlight; about the friendly fae that live in darkness; about drowning and living and dying more than once.

I want to write all of this and more; but, somehow, I never seem to be able to find the words.