"Pandora Hearts


Me."
This is what I carved with a ghost-sharp knife into the bones of a skeleton tree.
This is what I sing to the tune of the night, an arctic sonata in the skeleton key.

Pandora puts her secrets in a heart-shaped box, leaves it closed, but never locked.
Inside are books and books and books on how to cope and cast lusting looks.

Pandora's heart

speaks.
This is what I hear with my ear to the ground and my fingers plugging all the leaks:
This is what it says with razorwire sounds, pink ribbon prizes impressed on both cheeks:

"Somewhere in here is Hope, boy.
It is not all accidents on icy roads.
Someday, boy,
the snow will stop."

And in my dreams, it did, it did,
it warmed for days and days on end,
the waters thawed, the blizzards hid,
until the wind blows white again.

And in my dreams, we died, we died,
peered into the void and fell inside,
the shadows coughed, the angels lied,
and it only mattered that we tried.

For in this coil it snows, it snows,
and always has and always slows
the heavy eyes, the long agos,
the ghost-sharp knives, the lives that froze.