Unicorn

[Shenmue654]

((More poetry for RAF. <3 ))

I slip the crummy VHS into the slot

Broken down and old from years of use

I’m four and innocent, or maybe not

But still I’m waiting for the show


The curtains rise! The lights flip on!

The eyes of the little girl are deep murky ponds

The story’s about a unicorn and a magician

And I have heard it before, even when I saw it first

For the tape and the discs and the lips all tell the same tales


The spotlights change position and the crowd stirs

I’m sixteen and my friend merely plays at kindness

Or maybe that’s the lie so that the pain didn’t hurt

The story I  remember and I  use  its words

The cruel refrain of the villain’s song

Chosen for a part of my own story


I come home to measured screams and broken sobs

I watch like suffering is a spectator sport

I throw out my platitudes to them both

I can feel the lie in it, and it makes me sick

I do not dream of unicorns that night.



The characters are all different in this act

There’s Haggard, and a castle, and a tiger walks in

I’m nineteen and I’ve found it at last

My long-awaited journey down memory lane

I slip the disc into the slot and exit Life, stage right


Newer meaning comes into it now

The weight of a tired, bitter woman

I can look back upon myself

Through the Time I can see clearly

Or perhaps Time obscured it

I see in these frames my own regret


This curtain falls, but the  play goes on.


We hold our favorite tales near and dear

As they become stronger, never weaker

Although the story remains the same

Our own  grows ever deeper.

[redtailedsaffa]

Aww... I loved this one. So many fairy-tale feels. :') You should make a poetry thread and compile everything into it.

[Shenmue654]

Interestingly, the line about Haggard and the castle and tiger....the "tiger" is not from the story, but from my life. That's the funny thing about fairy tales, and about fiction in general--- the fantastical and the real blend together. You draw from real life to write your fiction, and what you did with your fiction informs how you interpret your real life.

In a Roleplay, my character fights a creep in the snow who was based upon a real-life sociopathic ex-boyfriend that I loved at the time. Later on this character ends up using cards and reading minds as his powers. I have a falling-out with my ex,  but I eventually run into another person who acts like the still-remaining caricature of him. This person happens to use cards and "read minds." Our relationship is identical not to the relationship I once had with my ex, but instead to the relationship the two characters had.

The snake eats its own tail a lot, in my life.