'What's your moment, then? Was it grand?' your brain asked, still seemingly clueless.

'Do you want to paint magical plants using watercolour with me?' asked the crone.
'NOPE~ I wanna fly~' the Dragon hops—we mean, flies.
'Okay,' she grows older with more wrinkles and silver hair as she turns off the light by the window and moves the whole, what you might call a tripod, that holds the art... Oh, the easel! She's forgotten stuff... She puts the easel into the lovely meadow by herself. She looks back, and there's no trace of the little shapeshifter. She nudges towards the canvas as the rain pours.
Rain of the Soul is pouring, and she's unsurprised.
'Hey, Soul, why is the little creature interested in the others doing similar things but not me? And, most importantly, why do I cry for that silly little thing?'
Soul's not answering while the rain continues to pour in a way that the crone has forgotten that she's once ONE with the Soul.

The crone threw away what the creature had placed by the trash cans because she's deeply hurt, thinking of the eons she had spent planting carrots, harvest them for the Dragon, who had shape-shifted as a rabbit before this.

And there she's looking at how the Dragon praises and spins around the other farms tended by the other invisible farmers who live there. Some invisible farmers come with gifts and gets scared by her face becoming scarier and uglier than the invisible ones. Yes. How is it even possible even when they're invisible? She still says thank you and hides away.

the Dragon's angry when the rotted carrots are not found, and the crone doesn't understand why it reacts so strongly if it doesn't even care.

There is no effective communication between them.

Nobody's willing to forgive another first. The crone hurts deeper when the little thing throws out more of her crops.

They're both insane.

The crone is tired of keeping up with her own heart, so she packs her things in a suitcase and leaves that little hut she's been for eons and eons. She wants to burn it down, but she just cries as she tears all her photographs of her feeling pretty enough. Enough of chasing. Enough of trusting. Enough of being the one who's trying to reach out or fix things.

She has to leave before the complaints outgrow the things they're grateful for. According to her book named The Magic, if that ever happens, the whole world there would collapse.

She runs away freely. Storms and strong wind are being left behind. Towers are collapsing. Death is ending the cycles of the crops she once cared about. All the invisible living creatures are hanging upside down as she passes by. It's raining wherever she goes. She's looking for a calming place to create the arts that only she loves, away from the crowd and all the noises happening in that part of the sky that's polluted.

This time, she's the only one narrating the little story, looking at the rain dropping on her cheeks to feel alive. So alive. The rain cleanses her heart in the middle of a heart-shaped garden once visited by the character we'll see.

She turns into a little wounded child who's cute with beautiful blonde hair wearing a Queen's crown made of magical plants still growing and glowing.

She passes by a river, looks into her reflection, and screams, 'What?!'

She always thinks that the narrators and directors of the story wouldn't include so many insane dramas, but the dramas love all the worlds she's seen and touched.

She sneezes out all the old energies, and the old story begins.

08
[long before you long for a free fall in the rain]

you were still lying on the big rock.
you closed your eyes to seek for answers within yourself
as the rain poured.
you were thinking 'bout the times
long before
you long for a free fall.

you saw the rocks one day.
the rocks have gems hidden in them; you could feel.
and when some rocks were being cracked open accidentally,
you saw the bright, shiny, and sparkling lights reflected.
they're just minerals of colours, but you saw them shine through every inch of your body.

people called the others
by their names.
you called them by the names
you saw
within them.

people looked at what's happening
as if everything that happened just happened.
but you believed that you could change them all.

people saw humans who were
sick, healthy, or to-be-identified.
but you saw blobs of cells differentiating one another
with consciousness
while emitting electromagnetic fields
like magic.

M~A~G~I~C~?
yes, like magic.

witchcraft that you could experiment with
without getting yourself locked up in cages.

wizarding worlds of new creations
that could rewrite the plots of your entire civilisation.

endless of pixie dust from the fairies
who could bring joy, hope and love
in whatever seasons.

people saw rocks.
and you saw the kind of magic on them
reflecting sunshine, rainbow, and a kind of magical force
that drew you in like a
black hole
swirling,
swirling,
swirling...
with an invisible gravitational force.

and you wondered,
if you could ever make 'em see the gems
instead of just rocks as well.
so, you also tried finding
the ones with similar visions as well.
but you had to do something to show the others, right?

so,
you polished up the rocks by the riverbank,
thinking that they were shiny this time.

there were people
who were fascinated by the progress
and joined you sometimes,
but you were on your own most of the time.
you shared the joy with 'em,
and sometimes they did get it.

for the love they received...
for the love you received...
for the love the world received...

It's just that,
you were way too obsessed with it.
In ways that were just like a two-bladed sword.

the others saw how long it could take.
how much energy would be gone.
and so, without right or wrong,
you stayed doing this alone.
until you didn't.
until you still let the others team up with you,
but you didn't feel like sharing the same way you did anymore
because you started questioning things.
things that happened again and again.

things like this that you thought you could fail your way through,
but your heart still went missing along the way.
things... things like this.

you polished up the rocks by the riverbank,
again,
like you always did.

then they got dirty with obvious scratches the next day.
You polished 'em again,
like you always did.

they got greater cracks,
and you lost count of time
this time.
you did it again,
filling up the cracks,
like you always did.

they were broken into pieces,
falling apart, and you can't tell exactly why just yet.
you did it again, sticking them back
with golden paint
as if you could use Kintsugi for anything.

just when you told yourself to be patient
and let them there to dry...
they were not seen anymore.

they got stolen.
all gone.
you stood right there, dumbfounded.

what?

stolen?

how, even?

No complains, you told yourself.
Supressed emotions, you forced yourself.
Hide the dark shadows, you punished yourself.

Never expecting 'em
to grow deeper and bigger
when we ignore the signals of the pain to be released.

'just do whatever it takes and whatever you have to, okay?'
you thought that it was the best way of comforting yourself.

you went through mountains after mountains.
seas after seas.
snow after snow.
storms after storms.
apocalypses after apocalypses.

sometimes, you got distracted.

but eventually, you got back on track.

eons later,
you sort of started to forget
how the rocks even looked when you first saw 'em.

their vivid images when you first touched them started to fade away
as you were so caught up with the process of fighting monsters
along the way.

you were so tired that you also got distracted again and again,
not even knowing what was next.

you were shape shifting everywhere into anything
to find where you belonged,
forgetting that you made yourself heartless
for this journey from the start of everything at all.

you stopped when you found out that
the one who could fit in as anything
was never belonging to anything at all.

you were a living paradox.

you forgot.
you forgot your calling.
you forgot how determined you were when you first started out.

all the rain washed away your confidence
but they also washed away your problems.
all the people were calling you names
you didn't belong.

you forgot.
people gave you labels
that you even accepted
when you knew weren't yours,
so that you could 'fit in'
or, more accurately,
'fit out'.

you forgot.
all the 'urgent things'
piled up on top of the stack
of your moments and memories
when you first touched the rock
with a heart full of love.

back then when you still had a heart.

an unhurt heart.

but one day
you suddenly saw a rock.
you saw the exact same rock
that you first saw
when it was eons ago.

'how could it be?'
you whispered.

people measured time in ways that were measured
but that moment of the rock broke through space, time, and reality.
it drew you back to
that exact moment
you saw the first rock in your life
like never before.

your tears dropped on your shattered Soul.

you got a heartache like never before.

you asked yourself how, why, and when did you become like this?
all for the other shiny things?
or, for your fearful self for something you doubted so much in life?
or, strings tied by the excuses along with guilt and shame?
or, the whole world full of dust that covered the magic you once saw?

everybody else was fading,
they were fading and fading,
and, could you be staying, still?

'do something already,
please,'
you were telling yourself,
as if you knew
exactly what to do for the magical world,
and yet,
you sat right there, looking at the narrator in the sky,
asking for help
when the narrator was deeply wounded herself.

Other poems here.

'you closed your eyes to seek for answers within yourself
as the rain poured.'

with gratitude
& love,
૮ℓเσɳα Chee Pui Khei 徐𣳽琪,
creating mental health tech at toplove.tech,
gathering resources at mentalhealthengineering.com public squad