The Nevers

Something changed your never that day.

I'll never let things get out of hand.
I'm never going to sink that low.
Never will I ever set a foot there.
I can never bring myself to ignore something like this.
I'll never get that angry.

You wished it had only been your grand nevers, but when you took the carefully measured steps that day, with a little too much concentration on how far apart they should be from each other, how upright your back needed to be in order to implicate a serious but not unhealthy posture, how you were best to pace your breathing to allow you to go steady like that for hours; on that day you knew that even the most mundane nevers like the ice cream flavours you would have had never tried or the shoe colour you would have had never worn were also taken away from you.

With hair still a little wet from having taken a thorough shower, make up a little too much for you, shirt tucked into pants a tad unrealistically evenly, and mismatching earrings, you summoned the courage you had never had before that day and walked into a world that had stripped you off of all your nevers, where anything could become of you and where you could become anything.

Something of you was sealed away forever.

Between Us

 

 

We both know where the Gateway was supposed to take you,
The daisies said it all for both you and me.
There was no need for a note with so many of them
No need for words, only a taste of the white petals.

You were Accepted, little Schwarzinger, but only ever accepted
Not enough to keep you away from temptation
Not enough to silence the yearning.

Where no Gateway led you to Dresden,
There was only one choice left,
Become the daisies, with the scent of memories, with the taste of chagrin.

All you had to do was to rip every coloured band from your dress but the yellow, sit, and eat too many flowers.

 

 This was prompted by an improvised arc on a Play by Post RPG in the Wheel of Time universe. My partner came up with the Accepted (a young girl) who had vanished through a magical gateway opened to a field of daisies, and I just could not resist.