A Simple Life

I do not know the riddle

I am tired, and I am not well

I cannot be alone

I am scared and exhausted with the effort

of being awake

It feels like I have been awake forever

I dream of snow

of running in it

of hearing the crunch of my footsteps

on the ice

I dream of diving into the water

so deep

and not needing air

I wish I had never seen it

never heard of it

never known it

I wish I could only remember it

as I ran in the snow

All very poetic, the dragon says

but you told me once

that wishing will not make it so

will you not join us here?

Not even the butterflies are

afraid

I am not well, I repeat

I want none of your riddles

I only want peace

There is the problem, my child

there will be no peace until

you speak the words

You knew this long ago

Safety

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

Clutching her battered teddy bear against her chest, Megan returned, “Why should I?” 

“For many reasons, some of them yours.  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.”

Catch 22

I am not well, I tell the dragon.

Still.

Yes.  I know.

My head hurts 

It feels strange 

I don’t know what normal is anymore but

I want to remember

I want to remember what it

felt like to hold my head in place

to not feel as if it was either going to

fly off

or pull me down to the

bottom of the ocean and

hold me there

an anchor I cannot escape

I am not allowed those memories anymore

I am not allowed any memories at all

Maybe if you asked.

I don’t want to ask

Then what do you expect?

I don’t know

Nothing

And that is the problem.

Gone Off and Lonesome

I have been pining for you, old friend

I have been searching my organs for

clues of your existence

I have been listening to the buzz of

the lamps, my friend

I have been understanding that we

are all without evidence

Because you are the intervening cause

you are where I buried my investments

I have been searching the heat registers for you

only to find cotton balls that missed the garbage

can

I have stood on my toes and screamed

through my stomach

I have flown off the linoleum by the force

of my breath

I plead to the cobwebs for you to listen

I wake up with charlie horses at 3 am

When I lost my travel book centuries ago

burned the ancient forest where

you were my favorite tree

You are the reality I cannot close in on

what flew through my hair that I

mistook for permanency

I would like a chance to hold you, old friend

I would like to touch your materialness

But I beat against the kitchen table instead

keeping time with rhythmic

loneliness

Excerpt, A Window to the World

         

"I am sorry," the young man said, "but I simply cannot make sense of this.  How did you come to be at the place where we met?"

"I walked," Kitty answered, confused by the question.  "My aunt lives in the trailer park, not far from here."

"The trailer park?"

"Yes, it's very close.  Off the highway that leads to Las Vegas."

"Las Vegas!" the young man repeated.  He stared at Kitty in such a way that she felt her game face falter; something very, very strange was going on here.  "So it is true," he said.  "Yet how is this possible?"  

"How is what possible?"

The young man shook his head.  "What is the last thing you remember before you saw me?”

           

“Well…I was watching this lizard, and I saw something sort of—shimmering, I guess, so I went toward.  And then there you were,” Kitty told him.  “But where did you come from?  Are you French?  I could have sworn I was alone.”

“I am not French, and you were alone,” the young man answered.  “You are no longer in the Nevada desert.  You are not even in the United States.  You are in our world.”

*This will be appearing in serial form on https://channillo.com/ come November.  More details to follow!

Starting over

I will cross out words

I will make believe

I will stop everything

You know me

I was something I liked,

once

I think

I don’t know

I don’t know a damn thing

anymore

the fire has gone out and

I am cold

I am so fucking cold

Half life

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 again and again, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  It is almost as if they are in a foreign language.  They just roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing and turn written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  If you stare at words hard enough you don’t see them.  You can read words out loud and not hear them.  I can read the same pages again and again and again and not recognize them if someone read them to me.  I am a master.  I am a genius.