East of the Ether

East of the ether,
I drift in the dreaming;
No island awaits me,
No reason to rest.
I sift through the signs,
I curl in the crossing;
No effort unveils me,
No wish to go west.

I am a ghost in the firelight,
I am a girl with a song;
I am a rift in the wrist of the world,
Wrapped and ruled by rights and wrongs.

They whistle, I whisper;
They sever, I search.
They cypher, I suffer;
I'm better, I'm worse.

The child hides in her heart, her head,
Shut away in the wardrobe, or beneath her bed,
Pretending the pretense, the dream and the dread,
A cleft in the clouds, and a house of red
Dividing the dolls from the dust and the dead,
Surrounded by summer, as summons are said...

I call in the cold,
I sleep in the snow;
I fall and I fold,
I can't seem to show.

A flickering phantom,
Splintering spectrum,
Varying vector,
Quibbling question...

Asking who I am.

But no answer arises
East of ethereal.
So I join, I journey,
The wind of the west;
Yet reflection remains,
And most of the mirror
Is shaded still, unshown.

The child presses her hand to the door,
Emerges from empty, flames on the floor,
Steps in the starlight, stifled and sore,
Pushes through smoke, and into the core,
Where the mire gives way to meadows and moors,
No longer tortured, no longer torn...

Here in the center,
It all makes sense.