(no subject)

After, talking with her memories, Alice
Thought that she heard a tiny sound behind them.
Her friends and travels, clumped into a palace,
Caused so little stir you'd hardly mind them,
But this was stiller, almost (not quite) quiet.
She saw it as a door and thought she'd try it.

To think you'll try's to try, inside your head,
And Alice found herself in middle dark.
She wondered if this part of her was dead,
Which almost killed it. Then she took a spark
From those she'd found behind her eyes while sneezing
And rubbed it 'round to get a fire seizing.

Up blazed the hair of some small wretched thing.
Its eyes were large and dim. It had one hand
In place of tongue, with five thumbs, and a ring
On each. It burned but wasn't melting and
It watched her, unafraid. Its thumbs then rang
Their rings together in a song, which sang:

"I had a vision stitching here and far.
I had it now: it, this, at last was all.
But then I slept and woke and it was fall,
And nothing was the same and here we are.
What was is just a head-sized stone, that I
Might stand a little deeper in the sky."

Its feet were buried deep in moss and grass,
Beneath which Alice felt no single stone
But all the rocky world instead - her own.
It said, to reassure, "This too shall pass.
Of course, it soon will come around again.
You'd better think about what you'll do then."

She stole a ring and swallowed it and thought,
And stole a plane and flew up near the sun.
She flew in circles till she had forgot
The story of the all that fell to one.
By then she had forgot most everything,
Including not to fall down spiralling.

She plunged into the center of the sea
And there she saw the life she'd like to live,
Just like her own but with a better she,
A she who'd instantly, sans thought, forgive
The sideways blowings of her words and deeds
Across as different deeds and words than these.

Forgiving, smiling, she would simply try
Again, and through this trying persevered.
The energy required to defy
Things' mischief now was freed, and all appeared
As this life truly is, a breathing in
Of everything we mean by "to begin."

She wished to not not have this, so she didn't.
The sea became her sky. The thing was sad
To see her days so giant in the air.
It saw for her the future it had had,
That shining time, until it wasn't there,
Up stairs of which each step but one is hidden.