Courage

     The dog who smelled like cake shuffled out from behind an overgrown bush.  “Are you real?” I asked her.  “Or are you going to disappear, too?”
     She cocked her head and bared crooked teeth at me, as if to say, does it matter?
     I dropped down to the ground next to her.  When I wrapped my arms around my knees and began to cry, she butted her head against me until I laid a hand on her back.  The sun was hot on my neck.  “You won’t be safe here,” I scolded her.  “You should go back into the woods, where’s it cooler.”
     But she wouldn’t move. 
     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. 

The way through

Where is                                  here I am        

gone home without you

when I would rocket from the world

out of an ocean so impossibly asleep                                     

is the rain your final call

because I am wondering what this was for

           

why you ever loved me

why you do not anymore

there is no witness here

only ghosts of words that nudged into breath 

the shape of a fool      shivering and wet       

your blanket thrown over the bed one cold night too late

 my eyes, heavy with dreams 

but you—                  

very much awake

how I welcomed the chance to be wrong

to never ask why you had to leave

why you had to come at all

was it to drift away from this eroding shore

or was it

                                    not wanting to be sorry

not wanting to be felt sorry for 

one last secret for memory to keep

Now our half-truths ship out

under cover of a cloud-filled sky

the sun you once spoke of

never any friend of mine

                                   

can you feel it rain

can you?          

Exposed

Because I am uncovered here

praying for the snow that cannot fall

Secrets

           When I went to bed that night I was still a bit unsettled.  I always needed ages to get over a confrontation, even the type that most people would classify as only a mild misunderstanding.  I lay awake for what felt like hours, but just when I thought I would never sleep suddenly I was standing in an enormous elevator.  Confused I looked around me.  That was when I saw it.

            A dragon.  A big red dragon.

            He was watching me through narrowed, yellow eyes.  He seemed dangerous in a quiet sort of way, although he said, in a perfectly polite voice, “Hello.”

            “...Hello.”

I tried to smile, but that only made him eye me with yet more suspicion, so I stopped.  “Um, are we going somewhere?” I asked him.

            “No.  At least, not yet.”

            “But we might?”

            The dragon clearly didn’t want to answer this question.  I therefore tried a different tack.  “I don’t understand why I’m here,” I said.

            “Because I wanted to know something,” the dragon replied.  He gave me a speculative look.  “Do you know who I am?”

            “No.”

            “Hmmmn,” he said. 

“Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I answered, relieved for some reason.  “But what is it you want to know?”

            “Everything.  Right now, however, I’ll settle for your secrets.”

            “I don’t have any—at least, I don’t think I do.  Other than the boring kind, I mean.”

            Amused now, the dragon told me, “That’s where you’re wrong.  Your secrets are the type I find most interesting.”

            “Why?” I demanded.  “Because,” the dragon said, “they aren’t the kind you keep from others—they are the kind you keep from yourself.”

           “And what are those, exactly?”

            “That you don’t love them.”

            “Don’t love who?”

            The dragon shook his giant, scaly head.  “You’ll have to answer that question for yourself.  But when you do, remember this: love is a gift.  Not a right.”

            “What are you talking about?” I said, only to find myself in a field of flowers.  The dragon had gone.  When I looked up into the sky the sun nearly blinded me.

            In the morning I didn’t remember this dream until I was sat at the kitchen table, having a cup of coffee.  As I tried to figure it out I wondered what on earth had gotten into my psyche.  Whatever it was, I’d hoped my subconscious had worked it through, because I didn’t want to see that dragon again.  Ever.

            

Hope

I can

hold this sky

let the air exhale me instead

Roots

I slipped inside of the

oily puddle today.

Even though I knew it

was there.

The twig you threw was good

enough to save

itself, barely.

Still, it was the strangest thing.

While I was waiting,

suddenly I had this tree.

Not much moves me,

but I had to move for the roots.

They were so big.

It burned inside, I know it.

The petrol had to burn the

branches inside,

had to leave scars that

never turn white.

The explosion would have

horrified you,

had you waited to see.

Oil does that—

it explodes.

And then there is nothing left.

Watching

They found it, separately.  Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups.  They instinctively shied away from each other, accepted without argument that certain hallways would remain locked to them.  What did they want to see each other for, anyway?  They didn’t.  They didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

Once they had all arrived and found themselves their own shadowy corners, the teenage boy appeared.  He went to a courtyard in the middle, surrounded on all sides by brick walls with windows that opened from the inside.  On a white sheet spread out on the concrete ground he very deliberately started placing red plastic drinking straws.  No one watched him and he paid attention to no one else.

Over time the straws began to form an intricate pattern.  Those hiding in the brick building did not want to look at it, and when they did, they pretended not to understand.  Was it a formula, they asked?  The kind you needed to be a math genius to understand, perhaps?  They were not math geniuses, so they would never understand it.  Satisfied, they slid away from the windows. 

But the group of pirate boys living in the trees overhead did not leave.  They watched from the tree house they built high in the branches.  They knew what the red straws on the white sheet meant.  They knew it was a key.  A key to a map that would lead everyone in the building to the one place no one wanted to go. 

No one, that is, but them.