There is a castle on the mountain with a thousand windows and two thousand doors. There is a garden outside each room that we’re not allowed to touch.

There is a castle on the mountain with blackened vines where the walls should be and specks of green in the sprouting leaves. There is where the blackbirds made their home and come to visit sometimes.

There is a castle on the mountain so tall, but it never blocks the sun. The sun kisses its walls, and the clouds bless it with rain. The weather quarrels here each wanting nothing more than to touch and spread across the castle’s wide and bending roofs.

There is a castle on the mountain, the keeper of royalty and lost souls. Four princesses live there and guard the castle with their wit and their sharp tongues. They leave the castle only to learn more about the world outside and only when the queen is awake to greet and guard and guide lost souls out of their stone walls.

If I lived there, I would make my bed every day. I would sit of the roof and look out at the sea and the sun.

If I lived there, I would make sure to sweep the creaky floors and make friends with the dancing dust mites living in the corners and the creases.

If I lived there, I would start a love affair with the mountain the one so deeply cut into the sky. I would start a love affair with the sky, changing with every transgression. I would start a love affair with the blackbirds curious, busy and sly. I would never close my window even during the nightly bracing breezes that push my curtains out and away.

If I lived there, I would never leave. My room would become my new world and have everything I’d need. If I wished for an apple, an apple tree would stretch out its hand, pass through my window just to drop one on my desk. If I wished for music, a soft piano outside would come alive and play.

If I were a lost soul, I would not be welcome there. I would not be guided to my room of eternity or told to never set foot on the garden’s holy grass. I would not be led up to the roof to bask in the view and the sun.

If I were a lost soul, the queen’s kind face would be the last thing I see. She would take me in her hands, rest me in the cup of her palm until I am liquid, malleable, and easy to pour out into the wind.

If I were a lost soul, the blackbirds and the sky and the mountain would not see me. I would not stop time and change or stop the busy blackbirds mid flight to fetch sticks for their homes.

If I were a lost soul, I would not. I would not. I would not.

And I cannot lie. I cannot pretend but love the castle on the mountain to close to the sky. My castle for as long as fate will have it. A lost soul in love with the fleeting, the falling, the forgiving.