Features

Dost thou know who made thee? 

‘I do’ 

She stepped down from the dark, silvery heavens, 

Giving unto me life, and staying a while.

Warmth radiated from her bosom;

Her skin full of life, 

Brought light down to earth to fill its fields, 

With color. 

Long years we had,

Yet not enough,

together.

When I was young, younger than before, 

I reached for her; 

Spreading wide my narrow hands,

to grab her own.

A squeeze for a squeeze.

The ceremony of innocence is drowned. 

It clawed its way out of the earth.

When it comes, the landscape listens

That thing that crawls quietly into the corner, 

Waiting, watching with hungry eyes. 

Wretched thing.

Poor thing.

Its foul stench permeates the room. 

Bound in bed,

Waking up to read a little, and draft long letters, 

Was all she could do to ignore,

That pitiful thing that sat close by,

with bated breath. 

Upon her final night she was surrounded,

By children who did not specially want it to happen, 

And she could not rise to meet them.

Her hair, once as rich as the earth she stepped down in, 

Now shone like starlight.

She lay her hair like a book that is too important to read now 

Upon my own. 

The whole moon,

Reflected,

Showed sorrow in her eyes.

Roses, she had brought to earth,

But no such roses I see now in her cheeks;

Nothing but the dull grey glow of the stars beneath her skin, 

As the hollows of her face grow deeper. 

So beautifully, did her gaunt face shine, 

Struck by the first rays of sun.

She lay beside me in the dawn,

Fading with the growing light of day: 

‘In a little while,

I’ll be gone,

Let the winds of dawn that blow, 

Softly round your dreaming head, 

Carry you to me once again’ 

My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze, 

Upon the face,

of death. 

The darkest night of the year,

On the longest day,

Fate grasped her in its clutches and fled

Yet its stench remained;

A touch of cold in the [summer] night.

So cold, I was,

From the inside out, I felt nothing but the hollow, 

She had carved upon my breast. 

When the stars threw down their spears

And reclaimed her as their own,

I turned aside and bowed my head and wept. 

Slowly,

they faded from the sky. 

Years slipped by,

Like the passing of a field mouse, 

Through tall grass.

Yet, how ardently I loved thee,

A time soon will come,

When I will have remembered you, 

For longer than I have known you. 

It took so long to realize,

I can still hear her last goodbyes.

When I glance up at the sky, a voice whispers; 

Something shimmers, something is hushed up. 

You are not here anymore,

But there,

Among the listless twinkling eyes. 

All night a bright and solitary star, 

Speaks to me,

Softly. 

Tayo van Beever is an animator and illustrator based in NYC. As a 3rd year Animation student at the School of Visual Arts, he has created 2 short films. More of his work can be found at his website: https://tvanbeever.wixsite.com/tayovanbeever.