Collision, Pt. 2

The riddle, he says.  When?

There is no riddle, I answer.

Just whispers that eat away at 
denial

not the rotten bitter kind

but the type that keeps the

hopeless alive.

How sweet it was,

that blue sky.

I saw it.

Now I am resigned.

Tell me

is this victory?

There is no winning,

the dragon replies.

There is only acceptance.

Remember the riddle.

It is your only choice.

There is Nowhere but Here

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.  They 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.  Because I am a master.  I am a genius.

Lost

My lungs whisper love songs of 

you 

only to betray them  

with spasms of 

breath

The Problem with Memory

I hear riddles all day long

words but not in 
English 

no one wants

me to know

My heart is a tinderbox

I am not allowed to 

open

Fading

Because he was a vision in snow       

the carrier of my fears             he infected you with my reality          he melted you with my tears               he held out his hand as I looked for you             he was the last of my projections                       this hologram I could not see through              the carrier of your rejection     

Through the Glass

They found it, separately.  Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups.  They all instinctively shied away from each other, accepted without argument that certain hallways would remain locked to them.  What did they want to see each other for, anyway?  They didn’t.  They didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

Once they had all arrived and found their own shadowy corners, the teenage boy appeared.  He went to a courtyard in the middle, surrounded on all sides by brick walls with windows that opened from the inside.  On a white sheet spread out over the concrete ground he began placing red plastic drinking straws.  No one watched him and he paid no one else any attention.

Over time the straws began to form a pattern.  Those hiding in the brick building did not want to look at it, and when they did, they pretended not to understand.  It must be a formula, they said to each other. The kind that only made sense to a math genius.  They were not math geniuses, so they would never understand it.  Satisfied, they slid away from the windows. 

But the group of pirate boys living in the trees overhead did not leave.  They watched from the tree house they had built high in the branches.  They knew what the red straws on the white sheet meant.  They knew it was a key.  A key to a map that would lead everyone in the building to the one place no one wanted to go.  

The Witch, redux

“I am not a witch,” she told me.  “I am a goddess.  And so will you be, as long as you do what you’re told.”

I looked at her for a long moment.  And then I said, “You were my mother once."

The witch smiled and gave a little shrug.  “The universe is our mother.” 

where did I go to

just to be loyal            

to one last deception

cycles of wishing

no chance to be faithful

the line for redemption

from here to forever

that jail you broke out of

the last portal to heaven