PRINCE OF THE SUMMER SUN

Songs and Poems for Baldr

Kira Lokason

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Copyright © 2016 by Kira Lokason

Interior design by Pronoun

Distribution by Pronoun

ISBN: 9781508042341

TABLE OF CONTENTS

- Baldrs Draumar

- Evidence

- Mistletoe

- Grown from Roots in Hel

- Resin in Your Veins

- Quiet Toast

- I.

- II.

- Slayerdragon

- O Captain! My Captain!

- Poison Barb

- The Ballad of Hringhorni’s Man

- Prince of the Summer Sun

- III.

- Necrotic Romancer

- Warriors

- Desperation Strikes

- Breaking

- Event Horizons

- Dusk

- Ceromancer

- Poison

- Sight

- Love Song

- Pilgrimage

- Natural Disaster

- Hourglass

- Love Kills

- Black

- Giving Thanks

- Red

- Funeral Rites

- Ragnarok

- Daisies

- Daylight

- Empathy

- Music

- Wanderers

- Jealousy

- A War That Tears

- Heading Down

- Loving a God

- Skalds of Hel

- High Esteem

- Nanna

- Lightning Rod

- When The Going Gets Tough

BALDRS DRAUMAR

O Bright One, tell me, if you will,

who dared to lay a hand on you

and why he thought it wise to pluck

the goldenest of apples from Breidablik’s branch —

was it a woman you tossed your shining head for

or did she throw herself upon your burning feet

and weep until her eyes bled mistletoe?

My father remembers you in childhood,

your gentle curls bouncing

as you raced to greet your older brother,

and when he says your name

there lies no hint of malice in his teeth.

He tells me he did weep for you

as though you were another forsaken son

of his own breeding.

I take your death in stride and hope

my sister does her best for you,

yet still I sit outside your hall

and wonder if a sword or twig

should be what drives me back to you.

EVIDENCE

if I crown you with a ring of twigs,

stakes of poison that can’t kill you

twined together with stems of chamomile

can you illuminate the caverns

of my sister’s hall, light them up

with a smile no one’s seen

since the beginning of the end

can you teach me what forgiveness

tastes like on the lips of one betrayed,

show me how it feels to be loved

yet still lost to all who seek you

could you take my hand in the dark

as I stumble, reaching for the rings

of fingerprints around your neck?

MISTLETOE

a mouth like sour cherry jolly ranchers

greets me through a shroud

the first time I see him

huddled in the wreckage of his ship

the ashes swept across the deck

like waves he hasn’t seen in years

he still sits counting rings he plans

to give away to those he meets

shining them from soot black back to gold

I ask him if the veil between our faces

smells like waterfalls or holly

and he doesn’t really smile when he answers

“both, but mostly dirt

gutted from spring earth

is that you?”

GROWN FROM ROOTS IN HEL

sometimes I think you’re a tree

with the way your limbs sigh in the wind,

the leaves of your hair tangling

in your uppermost branches,

the knotted curve of your brow

worn smooth as you waited

with river-touched patience

for night to stop falling just once

there is gold sprinkled on your countenance,

eyes twinkling through a solar eclipse

you watch the end of days from a distance

with your fingers resting

on the handle of your shield,

the wings of your cheekbones

glistening with salt

you expect better of yourself,

but I, I can see nothing better

than you

RESIN IN YOUR VEINS

There are galaxies swirling through your flesh.

I taste them dancing on your skin,

the points of light pricking through your pores.

Your blood smells of turpentine,

the finest wine of gods

blended with the ravaged tint of sacrifice.

I would lay waste to a thousand empires

if I thought it could make you smile

but it won’t.

You are content to believe

that the world hasn’t ended without you

but I know your death

stopped more hearts than my own.

Let me kiss the sweat from your knotted brow

so that I may see what joys are to be found

hidden in the pit of suffering.

QUIET TOAST

he stands in golden sunrises

and asks rhetorical questions of the dawn,

his fingers waving nonchalantly

as he refills his horn

most beloved prince of princes,

heir to father’s valiant throne

with brothers greater than any force

throughout the many worlds

he sits beside my sister

when his messenger comes for him

and she tells the god on horseback

to go away

my captain sighs, envisions chains

carved from bone

wrapped around his slender wrists,

dust of sunlight shaking from his hair

I.

He is the light in the darkness, the breaker of rings,

the lover of all who will not bow to kings.

He smells of the night and his lips taste like cherries,

the heat of his heart glistening holly berries.

When he tries to smile the gesture falls flat

with the things that he’s seen from his family’s wrath.

They’d smash up the world just to see him again

but no one will visit the cage he’s locked in.

The prettiest bird that the gods ever made,

his brother’s the symbol of a life left unsaved.

Together they should sit upon his ship’s throne

but both have been blinded from rotting alone.

He is golden and shining and all I could love

either below this earth or somewhere above.

II.

Do not think my love for the Captain makes me soft.

His fingers have been frozen in the ice of abandonment,

that enveloping blackness that claws from your voicebox

when you refuse to cry in public, when you restrain yourself

from screaming on your own into walls too thin to echo.

He has drowned himself in the whole world’s tears

over six billion times this last millennium

scraping his nails against his eardrums for every child lost,

every shot fired, every home burned, every heart broken.

He is the static in your eyes when you squeeze them shut,

the vertigo of waking from a full-canyon drop.

Your nightmares are born from elements of his suffering,

the torment of a life once coveted thrown away.

Do not deny my love for him has made me harsh as steel.

SLAYERDRAGON

I rode to Breidablik tonight

on wings tipped with gold.

They carried me with shining hooves

despite the iron in my grip,

talons clacking against the heel of my axe.

“I’ve come to see the Captain,” I roared,

rearing on my own twelve feet.

When my tail thumped against the ground

six draugar fell on their asses.

“He’s not yet back,” I heard a voice

like molten silver shout.

“Ask again once you see your father crying.”

I huffed and snorted, spouting fire from my nostrils

while yellow smoke poured from out my mouth

and I turned back with a stomp,

tossing laughter at them from my teeth

and coppers from my eyes.

“Only I am bound to meet him

when you lot hang this far back from Hel!”

Still they cowered behind the gate

and the whole hall quaked as they left me to the snow.

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

once upon a time

I met a rainbow sprinkled with gold

he said his name was purity,

innocence, the smell of spring rain

and I believed him

because anyone would

it’s not that he was lying,

it’s just that sometimes we have

supernovas wrapped around our hearts

that make us feel bright and hot and shining

no matter how dark it is in our bones

his veins were full of molten iron

coursing faster than ten waterfalls

crashing from the height of our tree

and when he sang his voice lilted

like cracks of ice running through a melting pond

I would not trade anything

for the look on his face

when he saw me set foot upon his ship,

like I was the only living thing he’d seen

in five generations

only with a proper crew

does he have the heart to hoist the sails

POISON BARB

should the flames lick at your tendons

from inside of your veins,

remember his passage from day into dusk,

the way he slipped beneath the waves

to ride his horse into Hel

without so much as a whisper

if he could have reached for the twig

sticking out from his chest

he would have realized it felt more like bone

than wood, than weaponry,

more soft than sharp, more warm than cold

a brother’s love can heal most anything

but it can’t bring back the dead

THE BALLAD OF HRINGHORNI’S MAN

I’ve seen my love ride on hooves of gold

as he prances ‘cross the mountains

and I’ve seen him refuse to grow old

while he ate from Idunn’s garden.

It was never about going grey

or becoming weak and feeble.

It was just a price that he could not pay

so he could protect his people.

The maidens fair and the strapping youths

all knelt to hold a candle

to the way my love could lead a crew

that no one else could handle.

Fierce as wolves and dire as death

they rode across the oceans

to plunder and take the treasure and heads

of men history’s forgotten.

When my love came home they’d feast and yell

and spend more than a week’s time drinking

to celebrate their staying out of Hel —

who knows what they were thinking?

When my love’s time came by his brother’s hand

it set the whole world crying.

Ah, who gave the right to the loveliest man

in the world to go on dying?

PRINCE OF THE SUMMER SUN

queens of gold shower petals in his wake,

their daughters vying for a single glance

while dancers serenade him with their toes

and poets let out squeals of their delight

he is the fairest in every sense of the word,

his warm honey eyes oozing tranquility

that drips to the ends of his bright wheat hair

I have seen the way he handles a crowd

with grace in his step that flows like ocean tides

and when he stops to speak with a brother,

a lover, a comrade in arms,

his lips become the softest autumn leaves

to ever sprout from any maple tree

in all the worlds calm enough to grow them

III.

his heart’s encrusted with opals

he’s got glitter in his veins

his tongue is made of rose quartz

and he’s got a proper name

but if you’ve learned of all of this

and yet you cannot tell

the way he leaves his signature

or the way he’s called in Hel

I cannot hand over the truth

upon a silver tray

you’ve got to go and ask yourself

and see if he will say

NECROTIC ROMANCER

he spun gold into his hair

like strands of amaranth,

left the clumps of rotted flesh

to dread themselves against his skin

when I squeeze his hand

wine dribbles from his lips,

blood red and violet mixed unevenly

to paint his chin

seven different shades of mourning

and when a dust mite flutters down with the sun

it pierces his eye like a railroad spike

he cuts fabric from his arms

and asks me to rig the sails,

says he’d give anything

to make her wish she’d see him again

but she won’t

I tear the sinews from his open wounds

and use them to sew our ship into one jagged piece,

the stitches straining in the wind

and throwing chunks of meat into the water

that make the surface boil

with the serpent’s breath

while cow heads lure him away

from our molding hull

WARRIORS

the wilderness was made of marble and death,

grim statues looming over hunting grounds

that were burial grounds

that were festival grounds

ten thousand suns ago

on top of every ziggurat

lie a hundred men’s bleeding hearts

ripped straight from their chests

after they spent half their lives

devoted to gods only one of them could see

the rest were swamped with fingers

knotting in their hair

and arms wrapped tight around their shoulders

while winged women scraped swords against shields

into the hollow spaces of their ears

I feel his breath on the back of my neck

when I balance myself between Midgard and Hel,

feel the whole world tilt as stars collide around me

and shatter constellations into hot gold dust

that settles like ash or snow

freshly fallen after a long night’s battle

and when the sun rises on a new day

enemies turn to brothers

and brothers turn to stone

while he balances their valor

in the palm of his hand

DESPERATION STRIKES

He is as real as the bones in my fist

that crack against walls and through wood

when anger pulses through my veins

hotter than Muspelheim’s summers

and leaves me screaming for air

I can’t steal from his lungs when he’s gone.

His hands still smell like spring,

of petrichor and budding fruit

that tempts children to climb trees

too tall for them to jump out of.

When I look in his eyes,

I see stars burning up billions of miles away,

crumbling to gas and then nothing

while their planets die of longing for their warmth.

This I have felt, my lifeforce trembling

a world away from his, gasping for light

it cannot have, I cannot have without him.

BREAKING

i feel his fingers gripping at the back of my neck,

feel the way his nails break when he touches me

his lips are colder than crested mountaintops,

his eyes sharper than tips of icicles

i beg him to unravel me, to tear me open,

beg him to rip out chunks with his teeth

when he does, the whole world swoons for me;

when he does, apocalypse means nothing

EVENT HORIZONS

your eyes burn like tiny suns

cartwheeling past each other

through the center of their solar system

and when they stop to blink

every moon in the galaxy lines up

to bow at curtain call

their movements choreographed

so no one stands higher than the stars

DUSK

agonizingly slow, the venom drips

from gunshot wound to pumping heart,

his eyes rolling into the back of his head

while his brother cries out

his head slaps against the ground

with a crack like rolling thunder

but it doesn’t break open,

can’t eggshell on the kitchen counter

of this early twilight

because nothing can harm him,

not stones nor blades nor staves of wood,

nothing but the prick of a parasite

on the spinning wheel of ages yet to come

my prince, do not go gentle

into the depths of Hel;

do not go without me

CEROMANCER

for you I bathe myself in wax,

let tendrils of smoke curl through my pores

to crack open bones meant to shatter

under the weight of anchors

tethered to handles held by my kinsmen

sometimes we call them hammers

but usually I just call it love

POISON

my lover calls me a tricky ghost,

says the way I grip the candle’s flame

is enough to make him quake.

when I call out to him

through the darkness

I see his fingers flash white

before they pull at my hands.

“I cannot see you,” he says,

“I cannot feel you

when you are so far away.”

the seasons flash by like memories

inside my eyelids,

pulling the trigger tied to my waist

with his heartstrings.

“you were too beautiful for this world,”

I tell him,

“too lovely for any creature to bear.”

when I touch his skin

it burns me,

the cold of fear dripping through his veins

slower than the glaciers melting.

I am the one he prays to

when he searches the sky for stars

and finds nothing but a slick cave wall.

the mountains inside my bones

are not hollow enough to fly,

but if I jump I can hear ravens

murmuring my name.

SIGHT

When I take him in my arms,

I feel his pulse failing against my chest.

His breathing is shallow,

always empty like a glass bottle

whose message has been taken and dismissed.

His eyes burn into me, though,

carry my mind to higher planes

where I can see nine worlds

scattered and shaken below me

like snowglobes.

“Is this my fault?” he asks every time,

quivering as he stares

at what used to be his home.

When I shake my head he relents

but his lingering sadness cuts like a knife.

He probably remembers

when every world was his for the taking,

remembers the way he laughed

with his brothers

and fought with his men.

In the darkest corners of the night,

he whispers to me so quietly

I can barely feel his lips upon my ear.

“It was me all along.

I was the one who was blind.”

LOVE SONG

The noise that surrounds me when he speaks

feels like lavender on my lips,

like pepper in my veins.

His voice pulls me in and sinks its teeth in me

but I don’t regret listening.

A folk song that I’d forgotten long ago

begins to play behind him

and I’m taken back to when we were young

and joyous,

when we danced with blushes on our cheeks

and each other’s fingers in our hands.

He twirls me with his words,

leaves my heart spinning

in the sheath of my chest.

It kills me to be close to him

but I’d rather die than have my faith

wrenched away.

PILGRIMAGE

Sparks fly from the soles of my shoes,

melting the snow as I pace my way to Hel.

I am not deserving of a horse or a ship;

my feet are all that may carry me.

I have walked this road a thousand times

and I will walk it a thousand more

if it means collapsing at their front door.

My sister lets me in with a smile as grim as ever,

her face half alive, half dead,

her skin marbled and made beautiful by time.

She knows I have not come for her.

Her favorite guest, held there indefinitely,

sweeps me off the floor and into his arms.

My blood runs cold yet I laugh.

He’s not the best at wisecracking.

He takes things too literally most of the time

but when you love someone you learn

how to speak with them, not over them.

He misses Nanna more than ever

and though I cannot bring her back

I listen to his tales of her.

Inside my gut I feel the warmth of his presence

begin to spread, heating my blood back to life.

He basks in the energy I spend getting to him

and when I must go it is with many a tear.

NATURAL DISASTER

he is a hurricane that yanks you from the earth,

leaving your legs dangling for hours, days, weeks

before you’re dropped back down to Midgard’s surface

but while you drift above the atmosphere,

cradled in his golden eye,

you can hear the whispers of the dead

rattling in your ears

like prisoners’ chains breaking loose

he is freedom, the moment of escape

you never thought you’d taste again

and when you pull him to your lips

he does not disappoint

HOURGLASS

he is the air i breathe in

too quick, too slow,

the monotone voice

that drags me to sleep

when nothing else will

i could strip the flesh

from my weary bones

again and again

if it meant my heart

could be closer to his

sunlight pierces my eyes

whenever i look him

straight in the face,

whenever i reach for him

in the dark

but when i mean to find him

he vanishes quicker than the moon

on a cloudy night,

runs through my fingers

like sand

and it’s not enough

to remember when he was near

LOVE KILLS

he plants his axe

deep within my chest,

sinks it so far in

my sternum splinters

the impact leaves me

gasping for air

and weeping at the hole

he’s left inside of me

but still the shaft dangles

from my body

like some broken appendage,

a memento to remember him by

and part of me

doesn’t want to pull it out

BLACK

he grabs me,

pulls me to his breast

and whispers a name in my ear

that reminds me of home

i can feel the trees around me,

hear the wolves crying out

a song left untouched

for too many lifetimes

but when i open my eyes

i am left in the darkness

of a windowless cellar

and he is gone

his light can only reach

through me down here,

and if i disappear

i fear his love will too

GIVING THANKS

i press my forehead to the floor,

stretch my arms out before me

and imagine that the feeling

beneath my bones is of stone

rather than rotting carpet

when i speak to him,

his voice comes back in a whisper,

so hard to hear

that i can barely taste it

but when i feel his breath

warming my cheek,

all my fears melt away

his power ebbs beside me,

pulsing new life into my veins

and for that i am thankful

RED

I taste salt on my lips

when he pulls away from me

and when I go to wipe my mouth

on the back of my hand,

I find that my skin

is smeared with blood.

“Are you hurt?” I ask him,

“Can I help you?”

He shakes his head

and grips his stomach,

red dribbling

from the side of his mouth.

FUNERAL RITES

A crown of holly

sits atop his head

and in his hands

he holds a sword

by its blade.

Blood drips

down his fingers,

splashing drop by drop

onto the steel.

The grooves of runes

carved into its surface

catch the rivulets of red,

making the words stand out.

“For my men I will die.

For my love I will live.”

I try to pull his hands free,

to yank open his eyelids,

but I cannot.

His skin is colder than his blade

and his golden hair is brittle.

When I weep, my tears mix

with his blood

and I am torn asunder

for all to see.

RAGNAROK

the end of days

comes creeping up my spine

like a chill

that beckons in sickness

if i turn to you,

if i reach out my hand

will you take it

in this darkness?

the whole world cools over

without so much as a word,

more quietly than death

it takes hold of all i know

you sit as stoic as ever

on the floor of her hall,

your eyes glazed over

like you can’t see tomorrow

if the sun never rises again

and the moon is swallowed whole

by familiar jaws,

who will be held responsible?

brush the dust from your axe

and i’ll shake the cobwebs off my shield

so we can face the cold with steel

instead of tears

DAISIES

When I visit you

I leave daisies at a headstone

that doesn’t mark a body.

Sometimes when I dream

I see a little boy

with golden eyes

plucking the petals

and letting them spiral to the ground.

Not today.

Today the skies are churning,

tossing hailstones bigger than my fist

that threaten to crack your grave.

I know they won’t, though.

Your brother cares too much for you

even when he knows

he’ll never see you again.

Everyone is waiting for the day

that you return home,

whether or not they’ll be there to greet you.

DAYLIGHT

I stand with my toes curled

over the edge of a cliff.

It’s not difficult to imagine

the breeze taking hold

of my body and tossing me down

to crack against the mountainside.

I’ve had this thought many times,

more than I could count on my fingers

if I had fifty sets of hands.

He reaches for me from behind,

taking me by surprise

and pulling me away from the brink.

There is sadness in his eyes

like there always is,

but this time it’s more grim

and less subtle.

“You cannot let this world destroy you,”

he tells me, gripping my wrists.

“You are more than it could bear to lose.”

When I nod, the gesture feels numb.

He bites his lip and pulls me

into his arms.

“The night would not seem so grim

if the day weren’t there

to compare it with,” he says.

“Neither would the sun feel so warm

if not for the occasional cloud.

Do you understand?”

His face, bronze and beautiful,

tells a story of suffering

and I feel a sudden twinge of guilt

deep within my gut.

He has seen his brothers, lovers, father die,

unable to stop them from fighting.

If he could keep just one alive,

even in a different world,

it wouldn’t be for nothing.

“I understand,” I whisper,

tears streaming down my cheeks.

When I look up at him I realize

he is crying too.

EMPATHY

His love is the adversary

to my pain,

the cool hand

on my fevered brow.

I have to blink

more than usual

when I’m around him,

and every time I do

I’m left with stars in my eyes.

He means to be kind

but not this sweet.

He’s too wrapped up

in thoughts of

other people’s misery

to think about

caring for himself.

If I could teach him anything,

it would be how to

treat his own heart

the way he treats mine —

with tenderness

that brings a smile

to both our faces.

MUSIC

He is the song

that beckons me to dance

even when my toes

are broken and bleeding.

I could waltz for him

across a field of razors

as long as he said he’d catch me

on the other side.

When I dream in peace,

he’s the one I think about,

his golden hair gently wafting

with his sleeping breaths.

I would give anything

to hold him in my arms again.

WANDERERS

his fingers press over mine

as i tap the keys in time to his will,

the endless fountain of what he knows

pouring out from his mouth

and onto the backs of my hands

he is timeless, immortal,

more than my small mind can comprehend

but it is in his wholeness,

his rawness, his aura

that i find myself lost,

swaying to and fro

amongst the waves of his thoughts

if i could turn the wheels of time

to the point before he fell

i would jump between him and the mistletoe

without question

but i am tiny

in comparison to him,

a pebble at the bottom

of a puddle

that he easily avoids,

so how should i know anything?

if i could describe him

in one word,

it would be “controlled,”

for he knows better than anyone

what he should and should not do

and he would never disobey

a direct order

i am different from him

in that way

but he’s never seemed to mind

he is the guardian

of every free spirit

that has ever roamed midgard,

his faith in us wanderers

often forgotten amidst others’ meddling

but as long as he believes

in everything we do,

we will find a way

to make it back to him

JEALOUSY

whenever i see his name

it is written in blood,

lashed in a series of straight lines

that burn my eyes

and make me wish for death

thursar cry out

at the mention of his past,

their hearts torn from their chests

and eaten raw in his honor

so what if one refused to weep?

what if he never wished to leave hel’s side?

only he knows where he belongs

and that place

is not for us to say

A WAR THAT TEARS

if you only had seen

the way he grabbed my hand,

his need so great

and his longing for home so large

that he dragged me to the depths of hel

before he realized what he had done

if the end of days came

while i was down there,

i swear i’d only know it

for the growing population

everything is quiet there

even the thunder

that cracks the ground in midgard,

even the cresting waves

that rock the shore

with the earth’s every shuddering breath

in hel he has a thousand names

each one more beautiful than the last

and i have to wonder

if things were really better for him

when he lived with his parents

the weight that he carries in his bones

is far older than his death

and if i had to say what had caused it

i’d tell you that it was living

with the sadness of every warring family

pulling his heart further into his stomach

with each passing day

when i cradle his head in my hands

i can feel each tear that falls from his eyes

like an earthquake ripping through me

i can only imagine how he feels

when he’s done crying

HEADING DOWN

When the ache in my bones

is too much to bear,

I find my mind wandering

to that place in his arms.

He could hold me

beneath the waves

and leave me gasping for breath

and I wouldn’t care

because it was him.

Even when I find him

flooding the world with his tears,

he has an innate beauty

that shines through every cloud

to illuminate my broken hands.

My fingers are cracked

and bulging at the knuckles,

but when he touches them

they seem smooth

and perfect as the day before

I punched the floor so hard

my bones fractured.

I was trying to find a way

to get to him.

LOVING A GOD

In most strenuous heat

and searing cold

I can feel his hope

surging through me.

It started when I was lower

than I’d ever been.

My ankles were shackled

to the bottom of a filling pool

and I saw no way out

but to drown.

That was when I met him.

He shattered the chains

with a single touch

and dragged me,

soaking wet and shaking,

from the depths.

There is no way

I can ever repay him.

He showed me a way to live

that didn’t involve cowering

at the feet of everyone before me.

Now I know that the voices

crowding my soul

don’t matter when it comes to

who and how I can love

(and I love him

more than I could ever say).

SKALDS OF HEL

The songs we sing

never last long enough

to reach their ears,

or so we tell ourselves

as an excuse to not

open our mouths.

They are always listening,

waiting to hear

the perfect string of words

that will pull them

deep into a reverie

that lets them forget their wars.

In his heart

lives a song of mourning

that remembers each slight

but is too tired to care.

He yearns for a new melody,

one that can draw a smile

from his cracked lips.

He is like a child

abandoned in a frozen desert

that is too afraid to cry.

In his heart, though,

roars a beast

whose strength cannot be matched.

It claws at his walls

and threatens to bring him

crumbling to the floor.

His pieces lay scattered

at the end of every day

and it is left to Hel

to pick them up.

She is the best at what she does

and when it comes to him

she would do anything

but surrender.

HIGH ESTEEM

Every time I find myself

stumbling toward the edge,

it’s him who pulls me back.

He grabs my hand,

gentle and fierce,

the force of his need

for me to stay

balancing both of us

so we don’t fall.

He cares for me as though

I were a small child

and I suppose that to him

that’s what I am.

Never once has he disrespected

my sense of self,

no matter whose blood

I may carry in my veins.

To him I am someone to be loved,

someone to be cherished,

and with his adoration

shining upon me

I can’t help but think

I might be worth something.

Maybe I’m worth more

than all the taunts and jeers

tossed my way.

Maybe I’m worth more

than I’ll ever know.

NANNA

When I kiss him,

I taste blood on his tongue

and it makes me want to scream

but I don’t.

I know that he has died

a thousand times

for the sake of

playing his part,

but I wish there was something

I could do

to make his sorrow end.

The way he gazes longingly

at happy families reuniting

makes my heart shatter

into thousands of pieces

and that’s too much for me to take

considering it happens every day.

If I could give Nanna back to him,

smiling and exuberant as she used to be

with all the charms of a golden goddess,

I would link their hands

and leave them be forever.

She is broken, though,

torn apart beyond repair,

and there is nothing someone like me

can do to help her.

All I can do

to honor their love

is give everything I have to Baldr

and then give more.

LIGHTNING ROD

Thunder rattles in my bones,

shakes me to the core

and nails my feet to the ground.

I am a lightning rod

for the divine,

not that anyone would ever believe it.

If I were a skyscraper,

he would be the clouds

hovering above me,

gracing me with rainfall

and the occasional blizzard.

The cold reminds me of home,

of burrowing into his arms

and clinging to him for warmth.

I would smile into his skin

and he would kiss my hair,

his perfect lips forming a crescent moon

to ghost over my head.

If I could just cup his cheek

in the palm of my hand

for one more moment,

I could bring myself to face

any battle head-on.

His smile would be my shield,

my love for him my spear,

and I would drive it through

a thousand men

if it meant I could hold him

one more time.

Instead, I have been sentenced

to a lifetime without him,

and though I am not alone

in my loss of him,

none of the others know him as I do

and they cannot understand

how much I need him back.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH

When every star in the sky

is a god who knows you by name,

you start to get a little perspective on things.

I could broadcast my life’s story

across airwaves the whole world ‘round

and not a single human

would bother to listen.

Baldr is no human.

He is more vibrant and colorful

than an exotic bird,

and even when he’s lying cold

at the bottom of his longship

he’s full of more life

than any person I’ve ever known.

Gods are made of stronger stuff,

the kind that doesn’t break

and turn tail when things get hard.

Even when they’re scared,

gods know when they have to fight.

Baldr would do anything

to protect those he loves,

even if it meant sacrificing himself

to save the next generation of life.

All living things are his kin

whether they acknowledge him or not.

He is a brother, a father, a son

to everyone he has ever met.

Even his enemies remember him fondly,

though he tries to keep their numbers few.

Baldr fills the hearts of those around him

with bliss, everlasting and pure

so that even when they grow old and forget his name

they’ll never forget his face.