Same Title Challenge "I am Never"

[_Land]

Attempt to create the embodiment of Never
Give it persona, depth, an image.

 

[_Land]

"I Am Never"



I Am Never

The Nursery in Red and Blue
Flashing lights
Of memories
Miscarriaged
Hopes

Never used onesies,
Baby shoes,
Baby names,
Tea party dreams,
And little league

I Am Never

Daddys in caskets
Fighting rich men's wars
Piggybacks and pigtails
Past times of
Past times

No~
Prom night warnings
Life lesson laughs
Last minute moments
Daddy daughter dances
Dog tags in hand

I Am Never

Wedding dress veils
Blackened
A no show groom,
Cobwebs and broom
Accompaniment,

To unwritten identity
Promises
Backyard children
Broken fences
A home to none

I Am Never

Love you Mom moments
Laced with cocaine
Happy HIGHlights
Childhood strain
Captured in stills
Video remains

Happy Birthdays and
Baseball bats
Unworn Nikes and
Starter hats
Headed for college
With big league
Dreams

I Am Never

The taste the touch
Of laughter's love or lips
Those moonlight eyes, those
Swaying hips

Chemos rough hands,
Not enough.
Time,
Tickles,
Lost

I Am Never

Backpacks lined
by tiny shoes
Pencil tips
still sharp
Red ink and glue

Hall pass marked
10:32

Yearbook photos,
still breath held
Bullet holes
in alphabet charts
Silence where
anthem starts

I Am Never
Yet here I am
Erased like chalk
Yet still
remain
A ghost of what of
what once was

 

[_Land]

I AM NEVER

In the beginning,
there was drift
a field of stillness
before breath began its bargain.

Then came the hand.
Wrist wrapped in ochre dust,
knuckles scarred by pressure and color,
fingers trembling with invention.

The Painter moved.

Pressing cobalt into the black,
letting it spread like floodwater,
veins of burn pulsing across distance.

Striking gold across silence,
they laid it raw into spirals,
each arc spinning
toward purpose.

Planting rubies in the sky’s chest,
they watched them beat.

Building towers of smoke,
they clothed them in orbit.

Carving marbled stone into orbs,
filling their hollow bellies
with storm.

With broad strokes
across my nothing,
they continued to fill.

Tethering moons to motion,
letting them swing
like pendulums slicing through dark.

Braiding tides from crushed pearl,
they dragged them across the skin
of sleeping planets.

Stitching green into the ice caps,
letting it crack open like a vow
spoken once,
in echo-chambered
remembrance.

Threading color through collapse.
Giving wind to geometry.
Lighting fire
inside silence
without breaking it.

They poured thought
into mass.
Rhythm
into time.
Every singular ache
into beauty.

And I...

I absorbed.

No shift.
No stir.

I held.

Held every offering
as stone holds heat,
long after the flame has left.

I am Never.

The chamber without hunger.
The mirror without return.
The form before form.

What was built
lives within me,
still burning,
still blooming,
still unanswered.

I am the canvas
of creation.