Fire Dance

            “How charming,” Alturis said, laughing.  “But now you must come out from under there.”

            “Why should I?”

            “For a lot of reasons, most of them mine.  And for some of your own as well.  Aren’t you a little bit like a fish in a barrel right now?”

            “You’re just going to kill me anyway.”

            “But you won’t have a chance to escape unless you come out.”

            Megan frowned.  That was a good point.

            “Besides,” Alturis added, “you are much too old to be hiding underneath the bed.”

Before and After

The clock

            is a lie that

                        I must keep

                                    unwound

Predictability

a lucky thing

A coin with two heads

or two tails

                        as the case may be

And yet too late

just one second too late

The Queen

              For a moment Kitty could have sworn the Minister was going to explode.  But when he smiled instead, Kitty almost wished he hadn’t.  Nothing about that smile felt like a warm fuzzy.  “You must be a queen in your world,” he said, but Kitty shook her head.  “No.  Only a girl.”

“There is nothing ‘only’ about it,” the Minister replied, in such a way that made Kitty’s skin crawl.  “Well, my dear, I would love to chat and learn more about you, but it appears that I must take my leave.  Until we meet again.”

And the image vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.

The view from here

the story that binds me to you

a balloon floating up into the sky

And then the sun came...

I want someone to trust.  There was a girl who kept trying.  But then she got tired and stopped.  She was the girl who wanted to feel smart and special, except that got tiring, too.  It was just so much work.  Now she isn’t a girl anymore.  She is just another person full of panic and desperation.

Yesterday's dancer

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 waiting angel

Tiredly I leaned back against the damp, cold ground.  When I closed my eyes I heard some more snuffling, and then felt her fuzzy head against the palm of my hand.  We will be safe tonight, I thought to myself.  Tomorrow was anybody’s guess.   Absolute safety would never be mine to have.  It simply didn't exist.