Dear Tom: Of Dawn and Twilight
(still in form of a poem)
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Dear Tom,
Each time the sun rises anew I feel
relief and happiness – sweet
as chocolate and thick as cream – swamp
over my tired eyes and my limp body. Dawn
saves me from the quiet tremoring evils
hiding in the night, slights of shining fire
plucking my soul to safety.
I wake in the morning, content with stillness
as the rising sun remakes me, and after a few
moments of simply lazing I stretch
out my fingers and toes, feeling oddly,
happily, as a well-fed cat might. I have
always loved the morning, from the dawn of my
fourth Christmas to the sun-break of today;
there is a simple, extravagant beauty in the
glowing painted shades of fire that emerge, as
though to say the world, too, is a phoenix
like kind Fawkes. "And from the ashes
it rises in glory."
Twilight and the high exultation of stars – I'm
not a night person. It's too easy for things of
shadows to sneak upon me, demons, snakes, monster –
and men.
I know you hate – hated – it when I whine,
but I'm not trying to. I hate you, yes, but I don't
want to make you feel – how do I know
what I don't want? Or in these morning hours of
confident bewilderment, what I do want?
I want you to hear what my mornings were like
before I knew you, when I still had the promise
of freedom from fear, what the seconds
of my life were when I had you to confide and place
my trust in, and
what it is like now. If you aren't here at all or if you
have the tiniest smidge of your soul burned deep
into my core, I need to set this down, rid
it from my mind before it festers and bleeds slowly,
darkly to melt in my essence. Listen to me,
please.
I'm the last of seven, pampered and ignored
as both the baby girl and an annoying youngest.
Weasleys aren't rich and if anything we were
poorer then, but what I never had in toys
and dresses was more than made up for.
I don't think you'd understand, really, not with
your childhood being what it was, but
when everyone loves you and you spend every
day amid that love,
it gives a light to every step you take. (Is that why
you were so empty, Tom? Is that loneliness,
that emptiness of love and touch, what bled
you into Lord Voldemort?)
Ron was my closest friend when we were small,
lanky and headstrong and willing to shove me in
the dirt those times I was a snort, though no
one else would. We woke together and played
together until he was nine – do you remember
your ninth birthday? Did you become to grown up for
the other kids? – and then I had Mum. But it
was still quiet and gentle, the perfect homey place to
coddle a little girl as she grew to be a little witch.
My first year at Hogwarts…I was more concerned
with Harry than other matters, feeling sure
I was desperately in love with him and determining
I would find someway, even if I had to enlist
the help of a Slytherin – ironic, isn't it, Tom? – to
win his affections.
And I found you, or you found me, and
I hadn't felt as happy in years, with the glory that
was having a secret all for myself and gaining
my closest friend – I would say bosom
buddy, but I think you wouldn't like to be called
such. Men can be so absurd at times.
I fell so easily down the slippery cliffs of your lies,
trusting you and sharing in strictest
confidence all the things to strike my child-heart.
I don't know if anyone has ever said or writ
this to you, and I should hope you won't find
offense in it, but you could be a romantic, even
as a false one. Not once before, nor once after, did
I see a Gothic romance in someone's penmanship.
I was such a foolish girl to never recognize
the shallowness and the darkness behind the
delicate script and fanciful words.
I would sit through my days, listening only in
half-attentiveness in my classes, and night fall
replaced dawn as my favored time, as darkness –
cool, fragrant, black as an endless lake – fell and
the school day shaded away. Curling on my
bed, flipping our diary open, I found
youthful giddiness with each word shared in exchange.
Thinking back on it, when I first began to
fear something was terribly wrong with me, I should
have wondered, if just once! if it was of your
device. A Slytherin, perfect with words and so
very silver-tongued (oh you were so horribly charming),
a strange book that answered with thought of
its own, and a thousand tiny things that cried out
in breaking, glass voices: "deception!" But
I was deaf to those voices, turning to the source of
my pain for help, pleading and crying and weeping.
You must have laughed.
I reckon you'd know – the Voldemort part of you
that existed elsewhen – what Da said when I let slip
the age you were in the book, what with
Scabbers-the-fink living yet with us.
"Seventeen," you wrote most politely, your
letters smiling benevolently and with no shortage
of charisma. "I do hope you won't mind that, dear
Ginny. I should like to think you and I might
dare be friends, no matter a trivial age. You do
sound like such a mature first year, rather
more of a woman than a girl."
God, I wanted to believe that so much,
wanted to feel I was older, wiser, and worthy
of Harry's love. Why, in retrospect, is
everything painted in grey shades of irony?
"Seventeen?" sputtered Da with a great deal of
horror. He repeated it again, disgust and
offended paternal amazement touching it all, continuing,
"He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named or not, you aren't
to be speaking with boys that much older than you
if they aren't a Weasley!"
I wanted to write that to you, giggling at
Da's overprotective thoughts that seemed to miss the
bigger picture if but for a moment,
but was struck with a revulsion for myself. Had I
already forgotten you with your basilisk eyes
and the reptile itself, forgetting how you teased me
and spoke in a soft, comforting tone as
you readied me to die?
I became fearful of the night; the day is my
safety, my comfort, my centre of gravity, and the
night is yours. I wrote with you at night, with night you
sought to use my blood as bait and key, and at night
I feel you growing again, preparing to do
heaven knows what.
God grant me grace
when night falls.
Ginny.
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With thanks to She's a Star (twice!), raiining, and woww this is good (^^). Thanks muchly!
