Over

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?         

Impasse

You tell me

You tell me who I am

I am too tired for questions

Take your riddle and set it alight

I am sick to death of it

go ahead, blame me

I’m used to it

There is a dragon in

the elevator

he knows where I am

if only I could un-know 

myself

Lost

I wandered around lower Manhattan, searching for some kind of clarity that never came.  Nothing made sense anymore.  It felt as if someone had led me out of Socrates’ cave, and informed me that what I’d believed to be blue for eighteen years now had actually been green all along. 

God, I just wanted to make it blue again.  

Relapse

Here we are again, I say to the dragon.

Yes, he answers, here we are again.

I am tired, I tell him.

I keep trying

I wait for the snowdrops each year

and they come

and I admire them

but something has happened

the wonder is gone

this was why I never meant

to know

The riddle, he replies.  When?

There is no riddle, I say,

just words to songs I

cannot hear

whispers that eat away at denial

not the rotten bitter kind

but the type that keeps the

hopeless alive

You are still afraid, the dragon returns.

You are ruled by fear.

So easy to say when you can burn

what torments you

I do not have that luxury

I must stand on my toes to look over it

as I try to breathe hope onto flowers in

winter

I must make peace with

this dwindling denial

how sweet it was

that blue sky I saw it

I believed

now I am resigned

tell me

is this victory?

There is no winning,

the dragon tells me.

There is only acceptance.

Remember the riddle.

It is your only choice.

Unprepared

Worried about Jack all over again, Kitty  toyed with the King’s chess board before leafing through some picture books she found on a shelf.  From what she could tell they seemed to concern Interior wildlife.  Although she couldn’t read the print, she could appreciate the photographs; they were marvelous, yet a startling reminder of just how foreign the Interior truly was.  An uncomfortable sensation began to overtake Kitty, as she gazed at a picture of what resembled a pink polka dotted deer.  Here she was, in a world no one in Beaumont knew existed, sitting in a king’s apartment like it was a totally normal thing to do.  But it wasn’t.  How could it be?  None of this made any sense.  Most of the time Kitty was willing to just go with it, but exhausted, stressed, and a tiny bit freaked out, she suddenly wished she were back home—believing all that existed was just the crappy life she already knew.

Frozen

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.

Knowledge

I am not well, I tell the dragon

Yes, he answers, I know

But last night I heard you

I heard you nearly speak the riddle

out loud

You stopped yourself

Why?

You are mistaken, I answer

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 it

never known it

I wish I could only remember it

as I ran in the snow