She was the seagull who became the Phoenix,
-Sir Winston Lear
And all who beheld her beauty were glad to have seen it.
From the melancholic mind sprout the machinations that were better off when undefined. I charted a course for the barren sea and in that voyage my new found visage came to form. I left behind everything beautiful I held inside to fade into the shifting colours with that sadly setting sun. The darkness drew me forth to toil among the frothy warring waves. Long sailed I with no light to guide my way—for I had killed my heart, which was my compass.
Adrift alone through the arctic dark I stood; a blinded lookout with no soul to spy. An unearthly vessel approached alongside, garbed in bleak blackness, its sails darker than the night. Charon called and I heeded his hail. The waves abated as I took his hand and stepped forth into that melancholy flood. We sailed together in pensive poise, until I could remember no other colour than the surrounding black.
The days coalesced as we sailed along; two lone bodies not fit for any form of partnership. As I reflected on a memory I had often visited I spied a raven circling above. Her obsidian feathers gleamed in the surrounding gloom. Our eyes found each other’s as she dove down to greet me. Landing on the bowsprit I took her in. Obsidian shifting into onyx, the blackness that she bore shifted and transfixed me, brightening the nothing that had encompassed me.
Lost in her eyes something burgeoned forth from deep within. She cawed and darted to my shoulder as clouds convened in the iridescent sky. My perilous neighbor stood unmoved, fading as the glinting colours of the newly rising sun shot forth to push back the nothingness. My eyes went white as the light swallowed me up.
I awoke washed up on shore, greeted by the gentle lapping of the waves as they caressed the stoic earth. I heard her before I spotted her and spied her farther down the beach, leading me to my washed up craft. Inside I found all the beauty I had left behind, long forgotten and abandoned, but fresh as the day I had left them. Deep within the pile shined my heart, beating in slow rhythmic fashion I held it in my hands and felt all the world again.
You gave me back all that I did once lose,
This heart of mine I freely give to you.