Ghosts

I know nothing at all       only that in the end        everything is a lie      that suns do not live forever     and neither will I          

Getting away with it

just to see        just to fail       

            a tiger once caught                  by the tip of its tail     

                                     farewell farewell

                        my fairy tale

            farewell farewell…

Out there

the light 

a threat

and yet here I am

attempting to kill

what I have resurrected

instead

Into the sun

When I fell asleep I dreamt I was walking through the field of flowers I’d so spectacularly failed to paint.  I looked up at the sky, and there was the red dragon.  As he soared above me I wished I could grab hold of his wings and fly away forever.

Warning

This place I find you

the clouds mirrored in your eyes...

Temporary

We are the paint peel chipping
dangling over the prickly
bushes
waiting with an eye
toward falling
I wonder who I will be
when I am cut and
bleeding 
I wonder who I will be
when I have
given up

It is like the blanking of
a color screen
the bleaching of dark
green carpeting
hold my hand for just
a little while
We are moving
and fading
on and on

Trapped

when I am the snow without the season

made to believe in the riddle

but not the reason

what should I have asked you to bring? 

one shelter for seeking

one memory good enough for keeping

when I am

waiting

forgotten

trusted

to accept what cannot be

because after all of this

what was your plan

what is to become of me?

The year after

oh how I loved you

more than the tides could ever

love the moon

but now silence mocks the faithful

as I ripple with the green grass

go blind from the apathetic sun

Forgotten

I woke up as a fairy in the empty restaurant next to the woods.  I suppose I always knew when I wanted to live in the dollhouse in the attic that my hopes and dreams beat inside of a tiny heart.  But not until I opened my eyes and found myself crouching in the furthest corner of the kitchen pantry did I know for certain.

I had been gone for a year—where, I couldn’t say.  Some industrious housekeeper within had thrown huge dust covers over much of my memory, but I wasn’t sure I minded.  Something about the twilight endlessly falling over the woods told me that the last good day had been long ago.

So Far Away

You were a picture in a book                    nestled between a cranny and a nook             where I could close my eyes and see       but the library locked its doors        and I am prostrate on the floor                       you do not belong to me               you do not belong to me

Damocles' Sword

We ate dinner that night in almost total silence—or, should I say, I pretended to eat my dinner while Bryan just sat there, lost in space and nursing a large tumbler filled with whiskey.  His excessive intake of alcohol was starting to worry me, although I would have died before I told him this.  He might have thought I still cared about him then.

Goodbye blue skies

We are one day past forever

so let me tell you a

story

full of hope and

recrimination

and yet somehow                   

somehow

            hello hello                    fire in the hole

I wonder

but I cannot get past the bluster

the suggestion dripping down my throat

We tried but

            this is not what I

kiss me good night

            as forgiveness winds around my

could we just

            a lie must never be hunted

when the game is already dead to me

I could tell you a story

full of tomorrows and redemption

but who would we be

kidding

acceptance is the poison

In this lexicon of sorrow

I am too tired to speak for myself

if you saw miracles spring from darkness

I saw only memory

swathed in charcoal dusty

dream

Betrayed

In the endless twilight that enveloped the restaurant, no customers ever came.  Instead, my friend Marietta, the hostess, usually sat at one of the perfectly-made tables by herself, doing paperwork of a kind we never discussed.  Only the fading light that rippled through those whispering trees dared enter the large T-shaped room.  Why were there no customers?  On my previous visits I’d just seen Marietta in that hushed hour of solitude.  Like so many other questions I must have forgotten to ask her this one, too.

Seen

“You want to do this,” the witch whispered into her ear.  “His love is only for the worthy.”  But she did not want his love.  She wanted only for the old woman in the crinkly clothes  who smelled of lavender powder to let her go.  Let me go.

I have a secret words

will never find,

images I tucked

away.

I once heard a voice.

It beckoned me,

singing,

tell me your secrets,

your hopes and fears

and jealousies.

I whispered back in the

safest voice I could

reveal,

my dreams mean nothing

to you.

Hope is a Weapon

Here I am

fool again

There is always an

answer

a justification

the I didn’t mean to do it

the it’s not my fault

your blame just one

interpretation

not mine to take on

so sorry to hear it

but you were wrong

How we hope

craft fact into

fiction

this little triumph

of rationalization

but in the end it

plays in our ears

you do not belong

try again, my love

stop looking for wisdom

once again you are

nature’s victim

take a deep breath

carry on

nothing more to see here

you were wrong

Alone again

Her room looked as if Kitty had merely stepped out for a moment, as opposed to forever.  The sweater she’d been knitting sat in a basket next to the couch; some of her drawings were scattered on the table.  A book she’d been reading laid face down on the couch cushion. 

The King glanced at the book—a translation of the Interior’s history—before he turned his attention to the drawings.  Although quite impressed by her skill, he realized with some sadness that Kitty drew what she saw, not what she felt.  Even the few drawings of himself that he found told him nothing.  He would never know the secrets of her well-fortified heart.

Blasphemy

All of the empty hallways.  Mile after mile of empty hallway.  The boy continues working on his own.  He doesn’t care if I know.  He doesn’t care if anyone knows.  He is a genius. 

We are all quietly sitting in an auditorium.  We are waiting for the presentation—for the balding man to come and turn on the projector and show us transparencies.  He will write on them in marker, circle the important bits, underline words, draw arrows.  We will all sit quietly but make no notes, because notes are not allowed.  We will just hear it again and again until his lecture is all we know.  And it is always the same lecture.  The same lecture, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  They just roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing as the boy turns written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  

The Monster Within

I chose to come here.

But the sadness...

It crackles.

Undercover

“Why do they keep coming after you?” Kitty whispered, as she wrapped the strange, foreign coat more tightly around her.  If she'd had to stumble into another world, she wished it could have at least been a warmer one.

“Because,” the young man murmured, his eyes searching the dark forest around them, “I am the king of my people, and if they capture me, they can use me for negotiation purposes—or, should a certain element have their way, they can kill me to effect a new reign.”

“You’re a king?” Kitty hissed.  “You’re joking!”

“That is nothing I would joke about,” he answered, in such a way that Kitty got the impression he wasn’t exactly happy about being a king—if he even were one, that is.  While she didn’t expect kings in any world to run around wearing crowns or sable robes, she did expect something…well, less university student-ish.  Yet all those men in the camp had greeted him as if he were a rock star, and the two soldiers who found them in the ditch looked massively relieved to discover him safe. 

Could it be possible?  

Through the Mirror

Into words      into stars          into another boring discussion on who we are            who we were     who we long to be            I am still in that treehouse      still hiding in the leaves                      if memory is my master then I am its beaten dog                  wouldn’t I be clever it I could put it all together                   wouldn’t I be the one calling the shots                mock me with riddles ridicule me with rhymes                      you know I have no power                 that I am afraid to be alive

Waiting

February, 2005

I am trapped.  I can’t do this but I have to do this.  The Roman soldier is at the door: I must drink the hemlock, or be executed.  

Thanks for the email.

I’m surprised that you would think anything is wrong.

Nothing is wrong, I’ve just been taking time for myself to work on things.  But I appreciate your concern.  Everything is fine.   I hope you had a nice birthday.  Unfortunately I'm not having visitors right now, but thanks for the offer.

I hope your job’s going well.

Love, me

Cold

I have been thinking of you

Reminded it seems by

the presence of

something sadder than

you or me

How very long I held on

When now I knock against the

hollow inside

the abyss you left in each

part of my whole

So much and so completely ignored

ripping the hinges off of the doors

catapulting me into a world where

daydreams remember

How I would like nothing more than

to feel the cadence of your

pulsating love again

Nothing more than to know it is me who

you tried with your heartbreak

to protect

Instead I am left waiting on the hill

shaking with knowledge of

lost connections

I am left on the pier with memories of the dead

their sorrow pointed toward

the horizon

The Light in the Dark

Someone tore the straps off of my wrists and ankles, and lifted me off the cot as an oppressive wall of heat closed in around us.  The smoke was so thick I thought for certain I would suffocate.  And then I was lying on the grass and coughing in the cool night air.  Next to me I heard violent hacking that wasn’t my own; I looked over and there was Rick, on his hands and knees.  When he saw me watching him he crawled over and held a sooty hand against my face.  Behind him I could see the barn consumed by flames.  “You’re all right,” he assured me, in between bone-rattling coughs.  “You’re safe now.  Everything is going to be okay.

*From The Abduction Myth, available to purchase here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU

Postscript

I wonder who is listening

I am not

You close and you close and you

close

Because there is nowhere to go from here

Opaque

Back at my apartment I went through my pictures of Bryan again.  Studying the captured image of his much younger self on a city street, with his come-hither eyes directed on some poor unsuspecting waif, I wondered if a chance still existed for us.  Could I buck the common wisdom and go home again?  Might he still love me, if not as much as he had before, at least enough to save me from my downward spiral?  Because things were most definitely not getting better—they were getting worse.  Time and distance had provided me with nothing more than a lot of time and distance.  And Tim was not an option.  He needed someone who his family would welcome with open arms; it would be cruel of me to go back to him.  But could I go back to Bryan?

*From my upcoming novel The Last Confession of the Sun God, available soon

Shadows, Pt. 2

Tired but awake again

because wakefulness is waiting for

my answer

am I ready to embrace 

the disbelief

to refuse the hand that

once could pull me to

my feet

Floating into ache once more

with no morning defense

when the sun broke me like

a cudgel to

the head

stole from me any

last moments for

dreaming

Memory waits still and near for me

I am endlessly choosing I am

at last losing what allowed me to

creep through the hole in the

floor

So tired of attempting

            to end this need for sleeping