Pietro

Felicity's Oddball Puppeteer

Back in late December 2024, our good friend Keath (@yaelokre) was building a whole new world in addition to their Meadowlark project. Everyone in the group was encouraged to make a character of our own to explore an ideal version of ourselves, and thus Pietro was created! It is no wonder then that he is my most fleshed out, as his entire thing is more or less based on my life and how I navigate through it.


Candlewax warm to the touch from the ghost of a fervent flame
Embers at the wick where a fire once was

Now all that’s left are sparks
at the grave
where we once stood

I chase the smoke downtown
hoping to see you there

We’ve fanned the flame I’ve lit with my match
It burnt this old house down,
We both left on our different paths before the beams came down us
and I’m the one to blame

and still I play with fire, it holds me in places you once did, candlelight in my palms, I open up to see you’re gone

Why do I mourn you like you’re dead
The door’s still open from when you left

Can’t look you in the eye even in my mind
Can’t listen to your voice though you aren’t there

THIS IS WRONG.

Pietro says this to himself about a hundred times as he crumples the paper and tucks it down his pocket, says it as he trudges home from work with a guilty heart, all the way up the stairs and towards his shabby, broken down apartment door. It is a mantra, repeated.

But even as he repents, it does not make a difference. He reaches for the paper as it burns in his pocket. It greets him with a flash of skin he cannot touch and hold anymore, the softness of her still tingling in the veins of his palms. A pain to unravel but he does so anyway, a fit of desperation to still have a sliver of her.

He knows what he holds is a lie. This is not her, just a poor imitation. It cannot give him the same burning warmth she used to grace him with. It cannot laugh, or cry, or kiss, or embrace him. It can only stare back.