“DIVIDED PATHS UNITE” by Philippe Fernandez

Let it be known, I don’t care what they say.

They call me the beauty to your beast, but we both know that isn’t true.They see a monster, a personification of the horrendous, and they must know something. For they see you through the eyes of adults, and I am but a child. But I know that if you thirst than I must feed you, and if you’re wounded I must bind you. They have taught me—for better or for worse—that a monster’s heart is still a one, black and broken and all.

I don’t think I’ll see you often. Our paths are very different, and reaching out above the abyss of this cliff is dangerous—you know we both might fall. Horrendous as you are, sly as is your look, and your smile being full of death threats, I think I will stay on my side, here with my brother’s red toy cart, here with my mother’s outgrown brown shoes. I am at once afraid of and in love with you, and perhaps you’ll realize why.

You will reach out your gnarled withered hands, you will smile your smooth shark-tooth smile, and you will make your poisonous ivy-green eyes glitter. I will flee, and you won’t follow, but one thing I’ll leave behind to remember you by. Please don’t eat it.

Keep this moment in your head, my monster, and maybe your heart. Don’t fall off the cliff, and I hope you water the plant.

~Angreek87