Betrayed

In the endless twilight that enveloped the restaurant, no customers ever came.  Instead, my friend Marietta, the hostess, usually sat at one of the perfectly-made tables by herself, doing paperwork of a kind we never discussed.  Only the fading light that rippled through those whispering trees dared enter the large T-shaped room.  Why were there no customers?  On my previous visits I’d just seen Marietta in that hushed hour of solitude.  Like so many other questions I must have forgotten to ask her this one, too.

Seen

“You want to do this,” the witch whispered into her ear.  “His love is only for the worthy.”  But she did not want his love.  She wanted only for the old woman in the crinkly clothes  who smelled of lavender powder to let her go.  Let me go.

I have a secret words

will never find,

images I tucked

away.

I once heard a voice.

It beckoned me,

singing,

tell me your secrets,

your hopes and fears

and jealousies.

I whispered back in the

safest voice I could

reveal,

my dreams mean nothing

to you.

Hope is a Weapon

Here I am

fool again

There is always an

answer

a justification

the I didn’t mean to do it

the it’s not my fault

your blame just one

interpretation

not mine to take on

so sorry to hear it

but you were wrong

How we hope

craft fact into

fiction

this little triumph

of rationalization

but in the end it

plays in our ears

you do not belong

try again, my love

stop looking for wisdom

once again you are

nature’s victim

take a deep breath

carry on

nothing more to see here

you were wrong

Alone again

Her room looked as if Kitty had merely stepped out for a moment, as opposed to forever.  The sweater she’d been knitting sat in a basket next to the couch; some of her drawings were scattered on the table.  A book she’d been reading laid face down on the couch cushion. 

The King glanced at the book—a translation of the Interior’s history—before he turned his attention to the drawings.  Although quite impressed by her skill, he realized with some sadness that Kitty drew what she saw, not what she felt.  Even the few drawings of himself that he found told him nothing.  He would never know the secrets of her well-fortified heart.

Blasphemy

All of the empty hallways.  Mile after mile of empty hallway.  The boy continues working on his own.  He doesn’t care if I know.  He doesn’t care if anyone knows.  He is a genius. 

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, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  They just roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing as the boy turns written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  

The Monster Within

I chose to come here.

But the sadness...

It crackles.

Undercover

“Why do they keep coming after you?” Kitty whispered, as she wrapped the strange, foreign coat more tightly around her.  If she'd had to stumble into another world, she wished it could have at least been a warmer one.

“Because,” the young man murmured, his eyes searching the dark forest around them, “I am the king of my people, and if they capture me, they can use me for negotiation purposes—or, should a certain element have their way, they can kill me to effect a new reign.”

“You’re a king?” Kitty hissed.  “You’re joking!”

“That is nothing I would joke about,” he answered, in such a way that Kitty got the impression he wasn’t exactly happy about being a king—if he even were one, that is.  While she didn’t expect kings in any world to run around wearing crowns or sable robes, she did expect something…well, less university student-ish.  Yet all those men in the camp had greeted him as if he were a rock star, and the two soldiers who found them in the ditch looked massively relieved to discover him safe. 

Could it be possible?