Foreboding

Kitty’s mind raced as the dark forest moved in streaks around her.  Although she didn’t feel afraid, she did feel terribly disoriented, like one woken up from a dream.  Somehow she just could not pull her thoughts together.  All she could focus on was the fierce breathing of the horse, his hooves clattering against the hard ground beneath them.

Haunted

Most remained here with me

I gave some to the wind                       the wind that separated my toes

but something stayed crept poked inside

mocking me with icicle whispers to

never mind the frost outside

inside is just as cold

whatever stole into my pillowcase

left me silenced

crystallized the dripping ceiling

buckled the paneled walls

I could never begin to wonder how

it came to happen

how I whimpered for it to go away     

yet still forgetting to scrape off the scent

that yesterday is a dangerous thing

this something has left my cheekbones bruised

this something has cut into my knuckles

why God has given me these fingernails                      I do not know

but maybe forgiveness hides in the mattress

maybe in the frozen droplets trapped

on the branch’s edge...

Most remains here with me

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.