Poem: "The Life of the Dead" Part 1

This story belongs to the series Love Is For Children which includes "Love Is for Children," "Hairpins," "Blended," "Am I Not," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys,""Saudades," "Querencia," "Turnabout Is Fair Play," "Touching Moments," "Splash," "Coming Around," "Birthday Girl," "No Winter Lasts Forever," "Hide and Seek," "Kernel Error," "Happy Hour," "Green Eggs and Hulk,""kintsukuroi," "Little and Broken, but Still Good," and "Up the Water Spout."

Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanova, Phil Coulson, Betty Ross, Clint Barton, Tony Stark, JARVIS, Bruce Banner
Medium: Poetry
Warnings: Past imprisonment, torture, experimentation. PTSD. Flashbacks. Dissociation. Cyclic amnesia. Temporal trauma. Broken people. Internalized oppression. Low sense of self-worth. Self-destructive behavior. Shame. Depression. Suicidal ideation. Physical and emotional whump.
Summary: Bucky experiences life in fragments as his memory cycles through past and present.
Notes: Hurt/Comfort. Mercy. Freedom. Good and evil. Family of choice. Team as family. Trauma and recovery. Healing. Friendship. Love. Nonsexual intimacy. No sex. Trust. Memory. Artificial intelligence. Safety and security. Competence. #coulsonlives

This story spans many different times in Bucky's life. It also fills the "amnesia" square in my 6-10-14 card for the hc_bingo fest. I know that this audience prefers to read poems all at once, but this one runs over 3,000 words so I'm going to break it into three parts to avoid the risk of hangfiring the blogware. If you want to read it all at once, just wait until the third part goes up.

A note on feedback: While it's not necessary to comment on every post I make, remember that I don't know who reads/likes things if nobody says anything. Particularly on long stories, I've discovered that I get antsy if there's nothing but crickets chirping for several posts. So it helps to give me feedback at least once, even if it's just "I like this" or "This one doesn't grab me." First and last episodes are ideal if you rarely feel inspired to comment in the middle.

Anonymous commenters: You don't have to specify exactly who you are, but it helps to have a first name or a username from some other service, so I have some idea of who's saying which and how many different "Anonymous" folks there are. You can just type some kind of identifier at the end of your comment.

(Also the perk story "Brotherlove, Brotherlust" is still open for audience activity to reveal new material; see Part 1 and Part 2.)

Skip to Part 3.

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Nature Photos

 Fish and flowers.

New verses in "The Lotus Warriors"

Thanks to a donation from rix_scaedu, there are 9 new verses in "The Lotus Warriors."  The invasion begins!  The resistance begins!  And promptly goes splat.  Clearly something will have to be done about this.