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[magpie-mutters]

Epistula ad Narcissum, primum

To Narcissus,

Are you so caught in your reflection That you cannot see the crumbling foundation The earth shifting beneath your feet, Letting you sink into it like quicksand

Are you so caught in your reflection That you would continue to starve Deprived of true intimate connection Every friendship around you at the core A one way street a spider spinning an unanchored web Unsteady because at any second you’ll drift away in the breeze

Are you aware of how many coddle you How shielded you are Like a toddler people allowing for your damages

Gifting you chance after chance Oh no he can’t control that Oh no he is too simple too helpless We have to shield him for he doesn’t have the strength to stand alone

You are weak.

You think otherwise but rather than look at why you’re untethered - unanchored, you plead to everyone around you to keep you in place - to bolster you.

If you stop your push and pull your cruelty and kindness like ropes binding them to you then throwing them overboard they’ll actually have a chance to look

To see your for the battering ram you are, willfully incapable of creating the fabric of companionship, love, and respect those around you are trying to form. You check their tightly woven threads to others, picking at them until you know you have just one holding them to you - one that you have the power to cut and one that you can marionette them with. Does that manipulation make you feel strong?

Is it lonely, Narcissus, to lack the way you do. To see no true equal but fight to believe you do. Do you ache for what some of us can weave, the thick silk ribbons gently wrapping around ourselves and those around us, beautiful strings of colors warping together into a shared map. Does your fragile web seem gray? Do you tire of your reflection?

Do you take joy in hurting people? Does unraveling other people make your web feel stronger? Do you see how fragile you are, little narcissus? A spiders delicate legs can snap so quickly, a flower can be plucked and its petals so easily crushed underfoot. A shiny toy is so easily snatched. A spider so easily plucked out of its web by a hungry magpie.

Do you fear me little narcissus?

~Magpie

P.S.

To Narcissus’s Pond,

He finds you beautiful because you reflect the most beautiful parts of him. But a pond is teeming with life and beauty of its own. It need not reflect a simple man and a man will keep away everything a pond needs to thrive. It will keep away other creatures and life. It will drive away any other sustenance. He leaves you starving and starves the forest around you. You mean so much to him because of what you give him not who you are. A pond can be wise and ancient and powerful but not when it’s bowing to the whim of such a man. I beg you, flourish little pond.

~Magpie

[magpie-mutters]

prima ad Keres, Nemesis, Eris et Ate a pica

To the Keres, Nemesis, Eris, and Ate, 

I build to a point of destruction and wrath where the only pace would be to claw my skin off my face and tear myself out of this body. 

There comes a point when the scale seems stuck and one itches for a rash decision, the push of fate, the choice of no return 

To teeter on the balance 

And 

      To fall to one side 

I crave recklessness and chaos as if it's the only retribution I’ll know and the only one silence will gift me. I hunger for it with a feeling that gnaws at me with sharp teeth and claws. I keep my nails blunt. 

I feel the urge to burn it all to the ground - all the relationships that ever stung or nipped at my heels. The call of a deep void. But I stand my ground. 

The feral cowed part inside me begs to bless the world around me in ruin. 

Blind. 

Reckless. 

Ruin. 

as if it thinks that will staunch the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. 

I hold those feelings close to me like one holds a wild animal desperate for escape. 

At times I feel like I’m just a body shaped cage carrying a cacophonous flock of birds from room to room, wings ruffling, screeching, beating against the bars, beaks sharp and eyes shining, fighting to get out. 

~Magpie

[magpie-mutters]

Pica Polyhymnia ad Prima Epistola

Polyhymnia, 

I move, jointed, through life - all angles - in a world that feels it should be round. 

It is difficult to dance with the world. They’re hearing a melody I fear I don’t. I’m all elbows and corners, dancing around the ribbons and streamers people are composed of. They hold the fabric so tightly around them in layers that I tried to, too, to dull the corners, round my space. 

But, fabric couldn’t clip my edges, they wore through, frayed edges becoming my streamers. Ribbons couldn’t hide my shape nor make me float midair. 

I can only mime so long before the miming is all I know. I become a facade with nothing holding me up, a hollow. The people around me are brimming with life and joy. It bubbles over the edges of their vessels, spilling out of heavy bottomed jars and curved flasks. A facade can’t hold the liquid, it’s drawn thin trying to mimic a shape it can never snap to. 

I plummet, wings pinioned by the wind. My shape falling isn’t aerodynamic; it's sharp, the wind cutting the corners and ripping edges. My frayed ribbon pulls and pulls on me until suddenly 

It tears away and I keep falling but the streamers and kites never learned to fly, why would I. No one I know could teach me. The dance midair becomes macabre. I’m too frightened for now to open my wings to glide but I will one day.

~Magpie