Immortal

Freshly born, you are unaware of the long spool of life that is given to you
How a hundred years is but a day to you and your ageless form
You laugh and play with your kind, spending a golden childhood in the safety of ignorance
Life is sweeter when you know nothing, drunken on the dregs of storks and gods and magic

You have to pass a test, the elders of the higher realms command you, pointing below
To rule this realm you must understand its sorrows, they say in voices of jewels

Stepping onto Earth is like stepping into a residual puddle with no shoes
You wrinkle your nose as the fumes of mortality seize your nostrils and tickle your eyes
 But you are most aware of the spinning of the stars, the whirl of the planets above you
They dance so fast, these ethereal plates you used to skip stones with as a child

Life moves like usual, life is but an extension of your time in the golden bubble
But it's like a roar of noise, a cacophony of laughs and screams and cries of delight all at once
A cocktail of emotion that you are not legal for

People greet you in awe, admiring the high carven bones of your cheek, the searing light in your eyes
They can never amount to you, you preen to yourself as they touch your face and hold your hand

You glimmer like a star, fallen from the dustless plane of the above, and you will never be like them

Their lives are simple and plain in contrast to the slow dreamlike pace of the golden bubble
They move with a rapidity that bemuses you, they rush through emotions at a dizzying speed
It's like everything is slow and fast and wild, like everything is but a single frame
And they are all scrambling to reach their pose before the shutter ca-clicks with finality

It's fascinating, you say to the golden bubble, and they chuckle with a keen light in their smiles

Foul things prowl down here, wyrms and maws and rattling things, but they can never amount to you
You learn to crack them, to pour them out like a goblet of ambroisa, and you triumph

But you also lose

Death is a mantle of crow feathers around your neck, deeply black and softer than clouds
You hold it close and breathe in the sour scent of earth, the bitter vestiges of a briefer than brief life
A gift, the bearer says, looking at you with soft eyes and hopeful smile
You blush and stammer, and they laugh, touching your face, with reverence

You are to stay on Earth for but a few thousand years in their kind; it'll be a brief excursion
But with the feather bearer, you feel like a lifetime has passed






Love is but an infinite present, they say to you one day, tangled in your limbs
Let's enjoy it while we can, they say as you suddenly wake up from your golden dream
And they are so concerned as you sob into that feather mantle of death

A noose now, and not a scarf


I don't want to live like this, you scream at the golden above, stamping your feet
You dirty your feet, your hands, your face
Weeping the tears and raging through the emotions of the human
So quick and so rapidly unforgiving




Serve your time, the elders say, and the golden bubble pops like a burst balloon and you fall to your knees

You glimmer like a star, fallen from the dustless plane of the above, and you will never be like them, they tell you

And you watch as the death's mantle tightens around your lover's neck and strangles them as slowly as it takes for you to blink

And again the planets whirl in their endless unforgiving orbit above you, cold and quiet

And you learn what it is to be ageless
what it is to be

immortal.