Undetected

There are many ways to die.  She died believing she had survived.  But all that survived were her involuntary functions, like breathing, and hoping.  Everything that moved under her direction was murdered.  Because there can be no free will.  There can be nothing left that opens all of the doors in the hallway.  There can be no way through the red straw network.  There can only be walking.  Walking and walking and walking.  

It is an endless corridor full of nuclear silences.  The bomb has yet to go off.  Instead the leaking radiation is killing them all.

Safe

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

Lost Girl

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

Hollow Victories

When I opened the cage and released the girl, she howled past me, a cyclone powered by atomic pain.  I crouched against the wall and covered my ears but I could still hear her screams, and the terrified shouts of those in the lost restaurant, as she raged deadly witness against them.

The restaurant would not be serving again.

After it was over a dishevelled figure with a lopsided purple hairdo and an old face limped up to me.  We stood and looked at each other for a while, until she said, “You think you have won.  But the spell is broken for you, too.”

“I know,” I answered.  “But at least I can live with myself.”

“We’ll see about that,” she replied.  She then disappeared into a cloud of foul-smelling smoke--rather against her will, I thought.

I checked my back; the fairy wings were still there.  I would not be going home just yet.

Close the Door

This is my heart in denial

the scratching of the diamond

against the vinyl

I was young once it seems

and I spun your etched

reflection inside

of me

But reality is the 

toe breaker

is the dance

is the false teeth sitting

innocent 
in the glass

The Last Mystery

I woke up still tucked between the sweaters, and still, to my disappointment, very tiny.  A quick check confirmed that the fairy wings also remained firmly attached to my back.   I risked a  peek outside of the drawer, but nothing in the room had changed.  The lamp glowed softly, and the faded flower-print covers on the double bed were undisturbed.

I had no idea how long I’d slept.   Here the endless twilight never gave way to anything resembling daylight.  That hadn’t bothered me the other times I’d visited, when I'd been big, but now it left me cold.  I wanted to know how long I’d been in the drawer.  I needed to believe that the clock was ticking down on this fairy existence--that soon I would wake up somewhere else resembling myself again.

The quiet had begun to stifle me.  It seemed unwise to make my own noise, though, so I flew back to the restaurant in almost total silence.  Surely Marietta would be there by now.  She had to be.  She was the only hope I had left.

The Memory of War

Let me tell you what I know about 

my broken heart

this is the rhythm of it falling apart

toss the stones in the river because

we are

we are coming up for air again

What did I even know about

guilt and sin

all of the dreams that

I was dying in

it was a curse it was a blessing it

was utter nothingness

until it skidded and came crashing

home

No telling how the earth will

record this disaster

whistling dixie in the wind

as if I had the answer

            ballet with fractured form

tripped up by vengeful rapture

the hammer flung against

the wall

Dismantled piece by piece into

a million parts

buried back with Santa at

the Christmas tree farm

what is dead is what is real to

the falling apart

we heard the siren but not the

alarm

I wonder how I will know when

the sky becomes my master

when dreams of yesterday stop

mocking me with laughter

tomorrow is today tornadoes

circling my trailer

I was wrong over

and over again

Now I whisper to the wind about

my broken heart

to unravel in slow motion

not a subtle art

toss the stones in the river because

I am

I am here alone at the end