Recovery

In a bold moment

            I said it had been worth it

            but knew you did not believe me       and neither did I

                        my black and blue hope you were hearing     

                                    to come

                                                to fight

                       

I am so tired of death

            please

                                    let it just once be life

Conversation with George, Pt. 3

I’m sorry, George,

I reply.

I didn’t know.  I wish

I could fight them for

you.

They would slash you to

ribbons,

he says.  You, who

can’t shout, who

runs in slow motion,

who can’t dial a

phone, or remember

our mission.

I wish you were interested in

our mission.

I have to stay here until

you set it in

motion.

That isn’t going to

happen, I tell him.

Are you or aren’t you

my friend?

Friend, he repeats,

sounding surprised.  Why

would I be your

friend?  What would the

point be in that?

We have a war to

fight,

and I am your weapon.

The boys are nice

enough, and I could do without

the dolls and their

knives, and sometimes

my thoughts echo.

But there is no love

here.

Look somewhere else

for it.

Acceptance

Not for the first time the King felt a fit of rage that he’d even met Kitty.  How absurd that she would just stumble into the Interior when he, and not someone else, was monarch.  And through the Arizona window, when the Last Window was located mere moments from her home.  Why?  Why couldn't she have fallen through some other window, realized her mistake, and retreated again to the safety of her own world?  Why had Kitty stepped through at just the moment she would nearly run smack into him on an extremely unusual scouting mission?  If only he could understand.  If only he could turn back time and make it so that he never knew she existed.

A child's dream

Go ahead                               

say it was supposed to be so

                That the color of light would blind me

                And the mystery of this starry night would deny me

the reason why I loved you

more than snow on my

birthdays in December

Hidden

1994, Diary entry

Erica calls me a couple of days after Thanksgiving.  We talk for a while about work and debts and boyfriends.  I thought I knew everything but now I realize I know almost as close to nothing as you can get without having fallen here on accident from another planet.

Abandoned

This one last time                    come along with me                you run so slow I lost you centuries ago                     now is not where you said you would be               leaving me alone and out of breath                    this breakdown in the making                        where are you love      where are you sleeping            I am awake I am all aware      that I am here and you are there                         you do not belong to me         you do not belong to me

Yesterday's storm

There are many ways to die.  She died believing she had survived.  But all that survived were her involuntary functions, like breathing, and hoping.  Everything that moved under direction was murdered.  There can be no free will.  There can be nothing left that opens all of the doors in the hallway.  There can be no way through the red straw network.  There can only be walking.  Walking and walking and walking.  And there must be acceptance.  Her life was forfeit.  It was never meant to be practiced.  It was meant to be sacrificed to the greater cause.  If only the buffoon hadn't been such a buffoon.  The great buffoon who accidentally saved them all by being so very useless and weird.  It does not matter who you are or where you came from if you are weird, and, therefore, unpredictable.  Close counts in more than just horseshoes and hand grenades.

He was a fool.  Even with fools he could not fit in.  He was a fool who fools despised, because he did not know he was weird.  His genius brain betrayed him.  Everything and everyone betrayed him.  It was a family full of nuclear silences.  The bomb has yet to go off.  Instead the leaking radiation is killing us all.