Darkness

huddled in a corner

hunted by sun

too much for the moon

to overcome

Yesterday and yesterday

She has a memory.  One beautiful memory.  Carefully held in the palm of her hands, so that no one else might find it and steal it.  She must leave it nowhere.  It must always remain with her.  The memory of that one summer morning, while they still slept.  The pavement of the driveway cool on her bare feet as she stepped into the shadow cast by the huge Mountain Ash in the front yard, the sun burning golden at the edges.  No one must have this moment.  This moment must never be touched.

Because she must hold it so close and so carefully, she cannot hold onto any others.  She lets the pictures framed in broken glass fall through her fingers.  There must only be one world.  One world, underneath the tree, where no one else exists.  Let the others sleep.  Let them all sleep.  She is a girl standing in the shadow of a golden halo.  She must never step out.  She must live here forever.

Shadows

I shivered, walked past the knives

only to be stabbed a thousand more times

Atomic rage

I surrendered my travel book centuries ago

burned the forest where you were 

my favorite tree

You are the reality I cannot close in on 

the dream I mistook for 

permanency

A World Away

The shimmering patch of air was now positively beckoning her. 

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Kitty asked out loud.  As long as she took care not to run into the cactus lurking just behind this potential hallucination, the answered seemed to be nothing, other than a few wasted moments of her life.  And it wasn’t as if Kitty had something better to do.  Her existence was so devoid of excitement that it seemed a shame to ignore even this smidgeon of potential.  So she said brightly to herself, “Well, here goes!” and feeling more than a little stupid, marched straight into the shimmering light.

Kitty felt herself gasp as a blast of frigid air blow through her—air colder than anything she’d ever experienced during a Wisconsin winter, including the January when the temperature failed to rise above zero degrees.  Just when she thought she would never feel warm again, however, the sensation passed.  And then Kitty stumbled and promptly fell down onto her knees.

Embarrassed, she stood up and brushed herself off.  At least no one had been around to see her make a fool of herself—and, more importantly, she had avoided the cactus.   Kitty didn’t even want to think what it would have felt like to fall into that.

She was still flicking bits of dirt off of her clothes, imagining herself covered in cactus needles, when she noticed a battered pair of black riding boots just a few feet in front of her.  

Kitty looked up.  A man stood in front of her.

*From my upcoming serialized YA fantasy novel, A Window to the World, coming to https://channillo.com/ soon!

            

Silence

I hear riddles all day long

words but not in English

no one wants me to know

My heart is a tinder box I

am not allowed to open

Illusions

And when I choose to come here again                                                                     

will it snow how it did in my dreams

                        will I be

a story worth telling

                                    because the sadness—

it crackles in the night

           

for you           

the mistake worth regretting

                                                the faraway voice        filled with belonging

do you see where eternity ends

did you know that you were my friend

this planet a box that holds me

when she could not worship the sun               for so long she yearned to sleep         

but the storm came rolling in

                        the storm came rolling in

a million miles of prairie grass

and your golden-haired girl                            exposed once again

unsure how the course of right became the final turn wrong

how her rabbit-hole time for falling   

                                    just      gone

gone

gone

a triumph but for you 

my one truth worth deceiving

a child’s dream for tomorrow so good           it deserved to be buried

behind the wall a red she had never seen                  

           

if I had                        discovered

yet not been found

would your golden-haired girl           

be six feet underground

I guess this was why you had to go

maybe I should have known

but the sadness—

no one told me it would come with the leaving

especially not you

my last hope worth believing