the empire of unsheathed claws

I loved the shadows when they hid me.
I let them wrap themselves around me like a wedding cape.
I walked on four feet, down at your knees,
And kept beneath your optics and your notice
Because I had learned it was dangerous to be beautiful.

Once in a great while, I showed myself.
I marched arm-in-arm on the barricades with my lovers and sang.
I posed for a portrait to show the world pride.
I danced on a pole in a palace on New Kaon
Where no-one who wasn’t bound to us all could see me
And no-one who didn’t love me could touch me.

But still I padded through shadows at night.
And the people who hurt us all fell,
Never knowing what hit them.

But now that you’ve all seen me dance
With the femme whose helm was on fire
And now that you’ve all read my poetry
Still you don’t see me.

I broke up with the shadows who loved me
I dropped my veils and my cape,
Slipped out of my gown of fine mesh
And spat out all my lanthanum chips.
And still you don’t see me.

Stop looking for all of the things I have been.
Stop trying to follow the tracks that I never left behind.
I’m standing right here, being more than the sum of those parts;
And you can’t stop the signal my love has been blasting from Destron’s heart.

I suppose we all come unwillingly into the light
Our sparks unprepared for the chill of this unthinking, careless universe,
Uncertain, without any promises made for our futures.

And I know there are people who were made to go into the darkness
And bring back the bright things that hide there
And give us all life.

Just remember that once you release things, they're no longer yours to control.

(I'm not going to 'face you again, but frag you anyway, darling.)

The doctor asked me gently if anyone was hurting me.
I was insulted. Is that what they think we're all like?

No, I said. You clearly know there's something going on.

They say they're different from us and they are.
Never a warning that privacy doesn't exist for us here;
We knew they were listening, which is how it all started again
because I had to let him hold my hand to have a private conversation.

I told them, okay, I've been hurt by this mech.
He broke my spark when he gave up on us, who loved him,
and told us he didn't trust us to course-correct.

When he asks me to stand with him under your symbol
And abandon the only person I've ever loved more?
Sure, it feels like he's pulling my cables out--what do you know?

And the one back home, that you've seen me with in the field--
how dare you assume that the way he speaks to me in a fight
is the way he speaks to me in our berth?

Can you not understand that I have never been afraid of him?
I just want to be able to say that I choose him again, and have it be true.

So, yes.
I am absolutely feeling unsafe.
And people are hurting me here.

But actually I didn't say a word of that,
because I need their help.

sometimes I wonder what would have happened
if we had owned all our perversions and lived them to fullness

would the archivist have shared his spark with our lord?
would I have become conjunx instead of cassette?

would that screeching bird have ever understood that he could be loved
and settled to build a nest for his trine in the warmth of our sparks?

could we have explained that even without a face or a title
love, not its lack, sets you free?

would we have broken less
and built so much more?

or maybe they just would've killed us all.

and after everything they did to you
a part of you still remembers

you were a senator
I was replaceable
he is your brother

don't think I don't know what your part in this was

or that when we are really all one
you won't lose that other eye

we met you on a cold sharp morning
under an unforgiving sky
surrounded by killers (like everyone else)
and opened a bridge to a world we could not yet imagine

it was long ago, just before dawn
when the archivist was still in love with you
but so was everyone else we knew

an army of lovers and warriors,
believing that we could set right the world
while everything was on fire

it's hard to remember after millions of years
and all of the things we broke

that once we were young
and we thought we could break every chain.

but somehow we all forgot
there were chains on our sparks
that wouldn't unlock

we are used to being betrayed
most of all by ourselves