[Prompt] - Powder White and Suffocated

Prompt: "When the moon gets sick of reflecting light it doesn't possess." - Priyanka Dargan


Powder White and Suffocated

I am powder white and suffocated long ago
Did I suffocate (now I wonder as I say it)
Was there breath to take at all or was I born dead
Chipped off whole rock and dust
From some pockmarked sphere that stood defiant
Against some hurtled chunk of iron

No matter now, I am powder white and suffocated
And every night I lie to everything alive upon my sister's face
Do not fear the dark
I say
Here are slivers (more or less) of fire
Pale and whitened though they be
That your eyes may drink in tiny sips
Until our goddess reveals her face

These are lies that I tell them
And I do not know if or when they will discover them
If they will see that I serve at the pleasure
Of the native matriarch almighty

Or see that she is fire and I am stone
Stone that gleams precisely
Because it can be good for nothing else
There is no air for life and so there is no air to hold the light
I am powder, I am suffocated, I am death for anyone that comes!

Would that I could strike a spark
Deep within my womb
Roil and tumble it end over end
Fusing atoms into flame
And birth a nova that disintegrates my frame
And, breaking, show everything alive upon my sister's face
That I can match our brilliant yellow star
Even if for a moment
Even if it leaves my sister choking in the dark

Yet there is nothing I can bear
But second-hand fire upon my face
And cold stone in my womb.

(Timed: 19 minutes)