by Liana Charles
| Brink Life, stretching its wings in two sunbound arcs from the heart, cuts loose the clear breeze which whips and whirls the world to sing one high note: a dart to crack the crust of childhood’s freeze. Breathe in, and step out, for down below the soft world wakes. Each fresh fingertip yearns to trace the dawn’s joyous shout; Each feathered heart aches to break the last of the past’s dull grip. Embrace the first flight as freedom shines away the haze which muffled the truth. Cry the glory of morning light soaring to bolder days: behold the weightlessness of youth. (On graduating high school, six years ago, over the year before university) Liana Charles ___________________________________ | Scrawl Freedom is the fact that I can look down at this pen and this ink and this scrawl and think ‘yes I will let someone read this I will let someone think it is good it is true’ it is walking down my street at dusk and feeling my shoulders lift with purpose and strangers saying ‘oh you look so much like your mother’ and saying ‘yes I am my mother’s daughter’ with my father smiling at us and myself in the mirror as someone I would like to meet and at the end of school they said I was ‘nice’ and at the end of university they say I am ‘quirky’ and this difference is the soul I have carved like in the story I read once where each soul is a shape with a symbol inside and my shape is a circle and my symbol is a heart as twee as that is for I will put people first and I will not apologise and I will put myself first and I will not apologise and this is the end of the page but I will write myself into the earth my skin the sky forever (On graduating university, almost drunk, 2:45am) Liana Charles |