"why the long face?"

I watched the clock ticking in the kitchen. I sat at the table from a 3 hour battle with sleep. The monotonous droning of the clock telling me that I'm wasting it's precious time. It watched me with it's eyeless, lipless face. 5:01 it read. I couldn't sleep as usual. Too early to get up and too late to try to go back to sleep. Far too many things plagued my mind. Lies, disease, cruelty, Deirdre. With my "coming back" she was mentally plagued. Of course, I was and to this day am no better. But because her dreams had told of my "death" and other perturbing phenomena, she was seeing a counselor regularly and I felt at fault. Spring had dismembered us like glacier and by summer we were frozen stone breaking off and flowing in different directions. Soul mate friends, yes, still close sisters, of course. but changed as well.
September had just hit and early this morning, a chill set in. I wrapped my warm grey sweater about my nightdressed, thin shoulders. 2 months since they'd told me I had leukemia. 2 months since I'd refused to believe it. Now the reality, medication, and weakness was setting in. My hair hadn't started thinning out yet. I walked out to the willow tree and lay beneath it, seeing the bright holes in the sky called stars through the willow branches fade away making room for their father the sun. Wondering if stars fell ill. Wondering if they sang, if they talked and dreamed. If they loved. My harp had been dismembered. I plucked a string far too hard and it coiled up in a most disturbing manner, like a shriveled appendage. I almost cried when I saw it, for these days it didn't take very much at all to set me off. I lay beneath the tree feeling the exhaustion set in. Which also didn't take very much. My eyelids drooped within a half hour of being there. I fell asleep and found myself on a grassy knoll. a young girl with a long white tunic and beautiful white hair and soft rose colored lips was kneeling down. Her eyes were the same sea green, sea blue as Deirdre's. She was young but with white hair. In front of her was a white glove, wire and glue. She had pliers in her hands working together these things. Stuffing it with sawdust & diamonds, she put them all together and into the likeness of a bird, her fingers nimble and careful. A dove.  Looking almost like a kite. in her sleeve, she reached her hand and drew out what looked to be string. She tied it to the dove and ran down the knoll and with being a few feet in the air, seemed to come alive! The bird flew down to the girl and perched in the palm of the little one's hands. She kissed its chest and sent it off. I ran after and followed and before me a barbarian man, decked out in armor and weaponry had caught the bird in a metal and glass cage. He took it to a great  and terrifying dark tower of a castle. Up thousands of stairs, the bird so terrified, blood dripped from the tip of it's perfect, white wings. The man took it to a room, pinning it down to a stone table and took a small dagger, examining it between his fingertips. His eyes black as night and none but evil lurked his heart. He walked over to the dove, who frantically tried to escape but to no avail. His eyes and hands took the dagger and cleft it through the bird's center. Blood poured from the beautiful beast and I covered my mouth with my hands. It was all I could do to keep from crying and making a scene. It fell limp, and he placed it into a tank where a giant python lay, curling through and through itself in its sleep menacingly. The man left and I hurried to the cage, and drew out the darling bird. When at the tip of the tank, the python latched it's large fangs in my hand. I refrained from crying out, though everything on my person pulsed a shriek. I punched its eyes and snout and pulled its tongue to the point of unbearable and it let go. I found myself with wings and flew out the window, the bird in my grey sweater, now soaked bloody. I took it to the bank of a stream near a waterfall I saw from overhead and knelt down placing it before me. I watched it. Lifeless, red, beautiful. Tears welled up in my eyes and I covered my face and cried. I cried for the dead beautiful bird in front of me. I cried for thousands of orphans. I cried for hungry and homeless. I cried for myself. I buried the thing and left to swim in the stream, cool and refreshing. Then a strange bubbling occurred not ebbing from the waterfall. Then, in splendor and light, a figure rose from the waters and stared at me with blue eyes and translucent body for mere moments and then flew over to the spot where I buried the bird. The creature pulled the beautiful little beast up from its final resting place and it came in an orb of blue light. the creature blew on the bird and it metamorphosed to light, all wounds repaired. The creature then set it off to be free. The creature then burst into flame and it seemed the land had been given over to a hideous drought. Trees charred and cooked by the sun. No flowers. Dead grass. And carcasses of deceased creatures lie all around. Everywhere I turn. I hear screeching up above my head and a vulture is bombdiving straight at me

In a cold sweat, I jerk awake to the kisses of my dog Broderick, the alaskan husky who took to me like a mother. I scratch his ears and rise, walking back to the house, very perturbed by my vision. Broderick cocked his head at me and his eyes seemed to say "Why the long face?"
I knelt down and kissed his head and stroked his muzzle. "Because my wings are made of cardboard and old magazines. There's no glory in man-made material posing as the real thing"

like a telephone's receiver hanging from the cord

I watch her. I watch her and my heart shatters for her. I am horrified at her behavior. She had taken a turn for the worse, seeming a disease secreteing from all she was. Diffused from her mind alone where she lived at all times of late. Locked up so tight and I was the only one with keys to open it. She fell so far with only I to hold her up and believe you me, I never wanted that to be the case. I wanted her to arise and the strength in her wings to take her far above the feeble minded . She was a butterfly, newly emerged from her chrysalis. She would disagree and call herself a hideous brown and black moth with no purpose further than to irritate those unfortunate enough to accidentally let her in there comfort zone. I sat next to her in her car. I watched her angrily snap at anyone unfortunate enough to belie her demands. I wished she could see me so that she could see the vexed expression on my face. I wasn't angry. It just hurt me that she was hurting and letting go.  But, alas, there was nothing I could do...yet.

Maybe I'm so bold to think she couldn't live without me. Maybe there was too much dependence. At any rate, in spirit, I stayed near. I hoped to comfort her. She had reverted to a primal, aggressive state. she could still speak in complete sentences, but the heart was disconnected. Too much pain associated. She went to school and home and nowhere else. She painted black on her eyes and lips and donned her face white. She had died. She wore black always. Never even grey. Always black. she was a telephone, hanging off the cord by a mere circuit. One snip away from losing it completely.
She had killed herself from the inside and was working on the out. She never ate. She mumbled and darted her eyes in paranoia, like a psych patient searching for things they see that aren't there. She makeshifted a lock on her bedroom door, previously without a lock,  to keep herself in. Or others out. She slept in fits of nightmares. Mumbling to herself that she killed her Psyche. I'm not sure she was speaking of her mental state, since she would cry over and over "Psyche, my baby" and screams to follow. Her parents could not detain her. She could control herself but she was the only one who could. That's when problems arose. She didn't speak to anyone. Not even her precious little sister whom she loved more than most. She totally cut off and it frustrated me. Death was eating her hope and joy.

"You gave me hope that I'd not lost her
And then thought it rather strange to see me smile-
as I don't do too much smiling these days."


Love never seemed a dimmer light. What is life and what is light? I don't know anymore. I hear nothing but static screaming in my head now. My own voice betraying me, deafening me to any other sound. Adelaide is dead. Dead, dead, dead. Everything dies. Everything good just dies. and nothing can be done. If she doesn't pull through this week, they're pulling the plug and packing her away like a toy in a box never to be seen again. I've become a wretch. I don't look in mirrors anymore. They frighten me now. I don't let people touch me anymore. It feels like barbwire to my flesh. I don't hear anything sweet any longer. The static remains and I am just as dead as she. I hate her. She left me. She wasn't strong enough and I hate her for it. And at the same time, I hate me for hating her. Because I know it's not her fault. Hate, hate, hate. All is full of hate and mourning and nothingness.

Maybe one day. But no. Hope is false to. "Lies of priests and poets."

they can all go to hell.

Fingernail stratches

I would soon be expelled, I am sure.

My grades had plummeted like the 20's stock market crash in no less than 24 hours. I burned my uniform in the parking lot, and refused to wear apparel unless it was black. I painted my face everyday, with more black eye paint than I had ever used before. Black-the absence of color-had become my new best friend.

I spoke to no one, glared at the pseudo-care principle until he stayed in his office for fear of his life. I had no weapon but myself, had no comfort but my mind, and had no love but that of the day I too would die.

I was mourning, I was in rebellion, I was in hell.

I am an anarchist An antichrist An asterisk I am an anorak An acolyte An accidental I am eleven feet Okay, eight.. Six foot three. I fought the British and I won I have a rocketship A jet fighter A paper airplane Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh! Say what you will I am the kill The only thing that keeps you really truly safe from being real I have a tendency To exaggerate Just a little bit I am a plagiarist Apologist A lawless calculator Ah oh I am an optimist A closeted misogynist I fought the British and I won I have a wishing well A living will A magical eight ball Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh Say what you will I am the kill The only thing that keeps you really truly safe from being real (Put Pat Sajak back in office) Put Pat Sajak back! But the sun still sets on you And the retarded party nobody came to but you And so you drink to all the emptiness until you wake up And there's hell to pay again And the punch line point at you And all the comebacks in the world are in your head But you can't say them until everybody leaves And it's just you and your imaginary friends... Your imaginary friends... Your imaginary friends...

Such is the song of my life. My life that felt like the rest of my life but was only one literal day. It felt like the rest of my life because I knew each day for the rest of my miserable existence I would dwell this way. I was the fallen Sydney Carton. The unredeemed Orual. All the characters in their own stories that I analyzed and pondered and dreamed up in my head.

Yes...my head. For that was where I live now. My body trembles in its auto pilot mode, it searches out the barren of the day. My garb and demeanor are a falsehood, their only intent is to keep people away. To frighten them so they might leave me alone.

Truth be viciously told, we are all monsters awaiting a catalyst. I feed on prey in this aching head.

if you're wondering, I know.

What followed my death was an unforeseen expectation. I had always wondered if people would miss me when I did leave earth for an eternity far greater. If I'd be realer. If people realized that I would be a true loss. If I would realize I was a true loss. And I never knew what my conclusion would be, until now. I watched over Deirdre during the following days. People in relation to me insisted on life support, which is what the white coated beings did. Simply to appease those who loved me enough to try to keep my body going even if a spirit no longer resided. I had more freedom to come and go in those days than I did any other time in my life. I roamed the woods in search of something. In search of the faceless man. In search of the lion for reconciliation. In search of my dead father. In search of the past. Anything to help me toward a decision. But to no avail.
I killed Deirdre inside. I killed her and I never meant to hurt a soul alive. I had become no better than those who had killed me little by little, ultimately trapping me inside my own head.

What had happened, my death, to anyone would seem absurd. I was killed psychologically. I was killed within the realm of my mind that brought me to a hidden place of darkness. A place that people never came away from. A place where creatures could kill me with the right stare. I had been sitting with Deirdre beneath our tree, Muse, and was recalling one whom I had become indifferent from. One who reminded me of another that killed me. Both of which looked like wolves cunningly disguised as domesticated dogs. The dream, the happening, whatever it was. The trauma was too great. While in the hospital, I listened to the doctors mull over my strange "death" over and over. They said many things about my psyche. That it wasn't likely that I'd survive this. That I was alive but dead.
I visited myself in the hospital. I looked at myself and it was weird. I saw person after person after person come into that horridly bare room and look at me. Some would talk to me. And I would listen. Some told me that they missed me. Some said they were angry about something I said in 3rd grade about their brother. A very scarce few kissed my forehead lightly and whispered in my ear that they loved me. I didn't care to stick around the hospital. It was a strange silence, save for beeping and the walls wailing. They cried for everything and everyone within their parameter. I would check in on myself every now and then, but never lingering long enough to know anything.

I followed my bosom friend by day. Watching her barely hold on through her classes. Watching her grieve for a supposed loss only to come home to sleep. Only to awake again, crying and shaking from relentless nightmares torturing her battered psyche. I slept beside Deirdre every night. As she tossed and turned in between dreams and nightmares. As she cried in her sleep, dried her tears and sang to her. Her favorite songs. The saddest songs I knew. Ironically, they were the ones with the most peace in them. The sad ones. I knew she wouldn't mind. "Deirdre, love, I'm coming back. I'm not done here yet" Then I would continue to sing: "And if I'm wondering then you show me, If you're wondering I know" 

I will open my door for you, little one.

Clock trapped. Intentionally bound.

Black embraces my body everywhere. Ancient black garb swirls with my form, and sooty black eyes birth sooty black tears. My hair is black. Ashes compliment it gray.
She is gone.
My Addie-bird. My Eden. My doll. My angel. My blue doorknob. My sparrow.

I cannot sleep, for an anvil the same shape size and weight of her, lays in my lap still. Heavy, weary, nothing. It forces my back into the springs of my bed. It terrorizes me until my stomach raises like a frightened cat's back. It grows wings that beat me instead of carrying me away. It sprouts claws that rip up my throat. Like vapor come its eyes, forcing mine open with their devil stare, bleeding into them poison.

It is guilt. It is mourning. It is death.

For 5 hours in succession, my tears fell out of my head. With feigned resolve, I let my albatross lead me away.

My sustenance is air. I wish I were a sheep, with nothing to give but my wool. With nothing to say but a peaceful baaa. With nothing to think of but myself. And death is yes, incommodious, but I would forget the next day. The shepherd could yell and scream in rage, and I would be dumb and chew the inside of my jaw in complacency. To be dull would be easier. Easier than what? Than this haunting apathy that consumed my entire gut? Than the realization that my best friend, the one who understands and cherishes me, the one who is like me and life to me.....is no more.

With that thought, I collapsed in invisible tears. Tears that ran over with an endless flood in my soul, but never touched my visage. I choked and vomited up my recent food...air. I was nothing. Now, I was vanity as well. And there was no sun.

I feel as if I have been morphed into the hand of a clock. Always moving forward without any say. Each tick is a break of my bones. Likewise, the ominous clock continues to hustle me forward as if there were a rush for the death I felt. A death of half of me. I get up.

I was once told that I would do well in the world of anime. I have often dreamed to thrive in solitude amongst only precious fauna. My dream seemed to turn in an impossible position and bite me in the face. My desolation makes me popular among kin, but I find no consolation or joy in their presence. I only lay with them, impossibly wishing they could speak their innate protective senses into my dense head. I got too close, and when she died, I did too.

No, not quiet death, but I begin to fall into the trend she developed without suggestion. I make a conscious decision that if I cannot die, I will live in my mind. For it is cold and dark there, but it is not able to smother me in agony. I can recreate my love...in my head.

I climb a massive weeping willow stocked with vultures, curl myself about a branch, and shut my veined blue eyelids.

doorway: inbetween silent earth and eternity

In an instant, I am at a standstill. An inbetween. A hallway, a cross between silent earth and a home I always long for. A home I have always longed for. I'm not frightened. I'm not puzzled. I know exactly where I am. This isn't the first time I've died. Or come this close. Life such a fragile state and I a mere freckle on the face of the earth. A door behind me leads me back to my life and one in front leads me to my impending future. I have always wondered if I had some kind of serious psychological condition. I live life in my mind. All adventures, all tales, they are a mere figment of my imagination. And I don't really know how to get out. I don't want to hold on any longer. I'm tired of the life in my psyche. I'm not just bored with life. I want more than this world can offer. Those I love never love me back. Why should I stay? There is no further purpose for me in this life. I want to go on to the next, more perfected one. I reach my hand out towards the door and the man appears behind me.

"What are you doing?" he asks, innocently. I turn around quickly and see the scars on him all over. Gashes, fresh it seems. "What happened to you?" I replied. "Waging war is never attractive or beautiful. Answer my question, if you please?" I looked at the my feet wishing I could evaporate in to the ground beneath."I'm moving on." 'Something's missing in me' is what I'd rather say. There's more truth in that statement. "Explain?" his eyes hold no question. He already knows. He always has. "I've lived my whole life a big mess. Things have happened and I could never do a proscribed thing about it. I always end the victim and this is only fitting. I want to go where it's perfect. Where I'll never feel lonely. Where I'll never have to hide again. Where love is perfect and returned. I'm empty. Something's missing in me." I looked down at my feet again. He moves closer and raises my face close to his, looking straight into my eyes. "Child, do you not understand? You are so stuck in your own head, in your own world. You're to love where there's none. You're to shine where there's no light at all. You're to laugh when mourning is inevitable. And sing when people scream. You're the love, you're the light, you will be one that people look to. You're not like everyone else. You don't belong there ultimately. You are one of few. There are others, but you. You are special. Set apart for this task. To be the very essence of love. To exude Love. To never waste love on the lovable. and really, if you consider it, no one is lovable by nature. You can come home to me. Or you can carry out the task I've laid before you. It's your decision to make. I won't make it for you." He then disappeared before a molecule of wit or logic could come to my very human (at the time) mind.

I weighed the options. Minutes crawled to a gradual screeching yield. I thought back to those who would miss my presence. My mother and younger siblings. Friends and relatives. And Deirdre. My Diana. My Istra, my heart. I would miss her. But I couldn't stand it here. Tears well in my eyes as I touch the doorknob. In that instance I feel a hand on my shoulder. "Please, child, at least give yourself a little time to think about it. I will let you roam the earth as a spirit. No one will know you are there but me and you. After 3 days, you may come back to me with your final decision." I nodded my head submissively and with a blink of his eyes, I was back to the forest. I watched as Deirdre cried over my body. I was there. But I wasn't. My lifeless body slumped over and moaned a last time. A sickening chill filled the air and Deirdre turned to face where I stood. She obviously could not see me, for I waved my hands in front of her face and she did not respond. "Addie, why are you leaving me?!" she cried and I began to weep. She shifted my body over on the ground next to her and lay down next to it, buried her face in my chest, and cried.
And in that moment, I felt like the worst human being to not live.

Buried alive

I feel like an imbecile. Holding such a doll in my weak arms; watching her fade like a final sunset. Incapable of resurrection - she is lost. I am sure. And yet, I encircle her still body as if I can do anything to prevent the inevitable. As if I, the weaker of we, could possibly save her.

It began a mere hour ago. Like a Bastille prisoner, buried alive for 18 years, Adelaide still lived, on occasion, in a hollowed out canoe of her own mind. It was there that she lived her adventures, the ones this world could never offer nor fathom. She survived in her own head, instead of her own body. Madly enraptured by venues of the psychological, I have often spent hours conversing with her about the journeys. In them, Adelaide was just as vulnerable as in physical life - perhaps even more so. The danger she received there, a knife to the skin, for example, cut and bled and scarred her mind, and she tended her own wounds accordingly.

Upon the conversing in Fauna, Adelaide became silent at the mention of a beloved. She stared ahead, and a terror griped me. One of recollection of the past. She was staring...static, disconnected.

10 minutes. She began to scream.
10 minutes. She shrieked and begged for mercy.
10 minutes. She began to breathe in gulps, sucking in the not so readily available air.
10 minutes. She cried. She said she understood. Said it was okay, she was inanimate. It's okay. It's okay. I'm fine.
Then she stared up at me. Back.

"Deirdre, my darling, don't get lost in the wave."

But I only looked at her, feeling like an impediment. Like a mental zombie. Like un developed social skills. Like a nurse that kills a patient.

I don't utter a word. For once, I realize that there is not an effort I can implore that has a possibility of helping, much less saving. So I lay next to her, clutching her, waiting without fingerprint of hope.

telescope eyes and metal teeth

From there, my vision or dream or whatever it was, transitioned to a horrible, calamitous state. I was thrown into a great forest, a forest who's vines were overgrown. Overgrown and different colored. Darkly colored and encircling around me like the arm of a false friend sent to whisper pretty things in my ear. A least desired cage in it's finest form. I am disheveled and disoriented. From the ache in my body and the dirt and sweat on my face and everywhere else, I have been running for a long time. From one I am most frightened of. I know his secrets, his deepest and darkest. And now, I have made him angry and he is relinquishing his wrath upon me. I smell his closeness. I take of like a deer in the headlights, scared to death of what is imminent. My legs are weak, regardless, I run. I feel his malice converging. His telescope eyes see my every move. His matted, red brown hair askew. His instincts bare, and ready to take me out. His metal teeth borne to show me how he's been stabbed. His intention: to take me out before I can hurt him.
He's got me right where he wants me. He has me in a death grip and I am too weak to escape. He moves in, not looking me in the eye once. He takes his knife from his hip and with a groan, permeates me with it. I do not cry, I do not scream out. He stabs my heart first, the most fragile part of me. Then the rest of me. My body writhes in anguish, but my soul lives on. I feel the pain no longer. he continues to stab saying over and over "I didn't want this, I didn't want this." I see his eyes stab my consciousness for a mere moment. his eyes like that of a beast. they plead for forgiveness. "Please, don't make me cry. I'm just like you, I know you know. I'm just like you, so leave me alone." And then, all is black.

Consciousness finds it's way back to me and I find myself in the arms of another. In the arms of my Deirdre-bird. My best and closest. My bosom friend. I held her close to me, our hearts pressed against each other's with no intention of letting go. I knew the blood from the beast's impact was soaking through her clothes, but I didn't have the heart to tell her to let go. For hours that felt like moments and moments that felt like hours, we embraced. No one was nearer to me and I loved it that way. I released her and told her she must get back to where she needed to be as I drifted in and out. She'd seen my worst and now she was watching me die. "Deirdre, my darling, don't get lost in the wave." She looked at me with her grassy eyes, crying black tears so chagrin. Like the beast's. Except, hers begging me to come back. To stay. I go in and out of the dark and towards the last, she glows brighter and brighter when I come to. Like an angel, fierce. With telescope eyes that see me as a child. She strokes my hair, crying and singing softly. My eyelids flutter and I am gone.

We are intrepid; we carry on.

Deirdre's insides felt as if they were falling out from the violent shaking of her own small body and the violent shaking of the great oak beneath her. She buried her vulnerable head inside her soft slightly mangled wing. It slowly turned warm like blood. Warm with salty exhausted tears. She would surely suffocate herself in the death sauna. Deirdre squeezed herself out of the enjambment, her small smokey eyes falling downward under the weight of the skies.

As if an angel alighting to catch Deirdre, Adelaide was climbing towards her. Deirdre wanted to scream, to fly, to weep until she could no longer sob. But she stayed taciturn, drinking in Addie with her transformed black eyes. How Adelaide had changed since last they met. She was, in fact, the creature of Deirdre's dreams: gashes from beatings cling to her olive skin, her ebony hair was matted - like the wolf's - like the lion's, her amber eyes were tumultuously storming - disrupted ocean stirring up sediment. But she was not growling, clawing at Deirdre for coming too close. She was not sullen, grudgingly slinking towards Deirdre as some sort of pre-conceived false reassurance. She was carefully gently maneuvering herself into, between, under, above the stoic branches.

Deirdre watched her with a critical eye. The resurrected apparition eventually reached a branch parallel to her, and lifted her aching eyes to Deirdre's downtrodden ones. Deirdre did the most uncanny ridiculous thing. Every muscle in her body urged her not to do it. Her body told her to fly, to quit. Deirdre pulled her legs over to Adelaide's domain, and tucked herself beneath Adelaide's arm. She curled herself to fit with Addie, trying to force her constant warmth into Adelaide's foreign coldness. Deirdre spoke words to her. Words of comfort and joy and forgot her previously swearing to remain silent. She opened her heart to Adelaide, comforting her with words of God and joy and peace and love. Being herself comforted the same.


Adelaide was falling apart. Falling apart in her arms; Deirdre could sense it. A relief washed over her icy fears and brought pale green grass to grown again on her heart.


"The seasons always change, and life will find a way."


I believe. What if I believe you now? Forgive me, believe me, please come back to my life.


A trickling stream of words began, rushing into a flood of apologies for wrongs and apologies for apologies. Deirdre cried, Adelaide spoke - two displays of securities that neither had expressed for months. Its about time. Any longer and the misunderstandings would be enough to scar.

Bewilderment is common amoungst Fauna

Deirdre was balanced in the trees gnarled grasped. Though she was deemed a bird, she was unable to sing. The very idea seemed blasphemous. Caged birds sing for others, but how might one sing for a broken person? It is the cruelest of jokes, that a song to please will decimate. She was unsure of herself because she placed her security in those she loved. But she ran and they ran, and the whole world is running, trampling itself. One would think Deirdre the most self-less sacrificial person breathing. But though she pretended it didn't hurt to lose an organ when a loved one took it with them on a journey from which they may never return....it did. She felt as if she were decomposing, unraveling, unbearably empty, relying only on what she had ingrained in herself years ago. Years ago when life was easy. Regardless, that was no excuse. A terrible vicious current that she allowed her mind to be warped in to in times like these. Nothing made sense, and all the problems she had were too confusing to dwell on. She desperately needed time alone without worrying that she was neglecting someone. As she felt now.

Deirdre started in her repose, the chilled air stroking her face and ruddy brown crackled leaves nudged her skin. Subconsciously, she could feel the guilt of neglect impending. Her most loved, Adelaide, the one who she felt scourged on the inside for not being with constantly was the same one whom Deirdre felt herself doing more harm that good. Idle words. Yes, yes. But when love is idle, what else might the words be?

Always apologizing.

Where did I go? The despair was too heavy on her chest. Where did she go? The past was too devious and unpredictable.

Always apologizing.

For the noise, for the silence, for the....

The misunderstandings.

This gap seemed insurmountable. The walls that were never there now were preconceived electric fences. And the words that were always there now seemed merely offensive.

Always apologizing.

How could Adelaide love such a cynic and a skeptic and dull one? Deirdre could offer her nothing that she lacked. Only more tears. Another faded relationship to weep over. Deirdre hated herself for causing more heartache. Either people were worrying over her or crying over her.

Yes, crying. She could feel the entire tree shake with a sob, she could feel the wet unwanted tears, hear them clouding up her ears. Perhaps the whole world was running, trampling itself, but the whole world was crying, drowning itself while looking, paranoid, for Noah's ark.

Just because I hold you for a little time, does not mean I am your Savior.

you might tire of me

At the foot of a tree, Adelaide is standing, unaware to the realization of fact or fiction. Whether it is real or not, she is here, standing at the base of this great tree who's species to her is unknown. She feels so very close, close to something familiar. Closer to something she remembers. Maybe love, maybe pain. She cannot be certain. Familiarity is a strange and foreign notion to her of late. She seems to have left the past behind her, like sand by the sea. It sits there and stays there. Carried occasionally into the depth by its watery grave, and oh, how she wishes it would die. She wishes the past to die, so that she may move forward. Chains around her ankles, weights of  great mass strapped to the only source she has to run and she is stuck. Stuck at the base of this tree. You might tire of me, while our December sun is setting. Cause I'm not who I used to be.. She is so very changed. A warm, summery breeze blows through and plays with her hair, making her want to dance. Dance for joy, release, or simply because she can. For ability. But where is love? Where is passion? Where is depth and understanding? What? Why? Where has she gone?
She has been reduced to a shadow in a game of hide and seek. And those she loves so are coaxing her out of hiding for what seems to have been for years now. Trying to help, but in essence, only want her back. But she's not coming back.
 She thought a bird to be a most wonderful thing to be. Not if all she does is fly away. People are worth sticking around for, right? Sometimes, she supposes. It's easier to run away. Especially with all the chaos humans make. She simply wants to scream "NO MORE SOUND!! NO MORE IDLE CHATTER! NONE!" Her mind hurts from the dystopia. But the odd thing about the place where she has found herself is that it is quiet. No one is here but her and what is familiar. and she doesn't know if she should fly away or make herself at home.
Before her appears the man again. He holds a wall mirror in his arms. She opens her mouth to greet him, but his eyes refuse her from speaking. She looks in the mirror and sees nothing short of a monster. An abhorrent creature. And it is her. She looks at him in quizzical horror. His face serious and tight lipped. His expression tells her words are unnecessary. And best is such for both of them. What have I become? He places the mirror on the ground and in his hand is a stone. He shows it to her as to demonstrate and drops it on the glass. It seems as though the glass is water and the surface breaks eerily. In a broken up mess, she sees my real reflection again. I am broken far beyond repair. "Beyond human repair, I hope you mean." He whispered. She looked at him, puzzled. "How can you tell me that this is fixable?" He looked at her, then the pieces. Then her again. "Anything is possible." She faced down, ashamed. "I feel like I've done a terrible thing. I hurt one of the things I love most. I hurt so much but can only say sorry." he placed an index finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. "You are forgiven."

He disappears as he does with a small breeze to follow. She hears rustling in the leaves above her. The knots and branches on the tree are perfect for climbing. She scales the branches closer to the ground with ease but the ones higher above prove more difficult. Whatever it is that is the ultimate goal, is worth the trouble. She smells a familiar scent. One she gave to one she loves most. She follows it and finds her. "Deirdre?" her voice a whisper

Catch 22

Deirdre sat amongst her classmates, only enduring the field trip bus ride, and not enjoying it. Odd how life had changed from exhilarating and mysterious to only static. Once there was a time when she would write for the freedom and pleasure. Now she wrote for others. If there was anything genuine in her words, they remained protected in her journal. The words used to look like code,with scratches and scrawlings and circles and underlined words....Deirdre's own language. Now, for pleasure of others, for acceptance, for neatness, Deirdre was careful of the word's cleanness. Her writing was beautiful, her erase marks unnoticeable, her form perfected. Only...the words were not the same. She had mutated into an obsessive sentential protecting bones of beggars. Somewhere, something went wrong and now she wrote from someone else's point of view. Who knows what the answer was. It was blissful freedom to write...now it was rare. When she exposed herself, she shouted that she was unmysterious and the unmysterious are forgotten as worthless additions to society. What people once fought for in her was now open and pleasing to the critical eye. Before she expressed herself, she was happy with herself. What possessed me to think I needed to give my words to the world to be happy? I need to start over. Restoration requires death...as she had once told a dear brother, "An oak is ugly when its burned...but that's what it needs to continue growth to become better." She hated eating her words. She hated her double standards and her embarrassing lack of social skills. Life was like a knotted snake at this point. A beautiful snake consumed in eight million things until it tied itself to suffocation. Her recent lack of sleep and excessive caffeine shots made her physical heart feel it was poisoned. Poisoned with exhaustion, with lack of art, and foreign love. It seemed that the only music that calmed her was instrumental, bereft of words to warp her demeanor in any way. The only person that could make her laugh was her brother, and he made her laugh long, with an influx resulting only from its starvation. Deirdre stared out the thick windowpane, and without realization of the fact, fell asleep.
Deirdre was atop a tree, higher than humans, observing their curious ways. Love, hate, nothing new under the sun. She was a narcissist to the rotten core. She had built tacky cheap houses with her vital organs. Now she wanted them back. Even if it required destruction.

nor the moon by night

In a daze, I awake to the starry night sky. I realize where I am and am not frightened. I inhale the scent of the soil beneath me and the leaves where I've made my bed. I am uncannily relieved. Knowing that God had placed this particular pile of leaves here, knowing I'd fall but implanting something to break the fall. Knowing he put the stars overhead to make me feel as if all his eyes are watching me. I am relieved that now someone is watching over me and something is holding me. Relieved that the stars have returned to greet me with their beautiful faces and make a horrible situation less horrible. that they aren't merely shards of broken diamond. They are my stars. They aren't broken anythings. They're not like me. I lie there for hours it seems, conversing with the nighttime stars and the moon, asking them of life and death. I knew good and well that the stars and moon had seen both. Life being brought in the dead of night, a beacon undeniable. And life being taken as the dark seemed to snatch the soul away. "Moon," asked the I "why do you do nothing to prevent the capture of a child in the night from it's home. Or the death of human. Or the death of love. why do you simply watch it come to pass? I thought you wouldn't smite the weak." asking such a thing brought tears to my eyes. the moon did not answer, but the Creator did. "Humans are broken, these things cannot be helped. It is all well in the end. I promise, dear one." his response did not bring comfort, only a confirmation of my and my kind's infirmity. "Why, Creator? Why must we die?" I asked. It was in these moments where I felt the child in me again. where I felt small. "Because in death, there springs new life. don't be discouraged if it seems as if the  world is grey. I will take winter's blunt charcoal pencil and spring will come in with the technicolor paintbrush once more. The snow is white and white is all the colors mixed together, my child. I send it for you because I know that you love colors but necessitized placing them all in one form. Winter kills so life can spring anew. It will all make sense one day." With his words he stroked my hair and kissed my forehead. From behind the trees, the man appeared again, the one originally with no face. He walked up to me and watched as I lie there, helpless on the ground. He was built, not a muscle clad beast of a man, but muscular enough. Strong arms and hands with skin olive toned. His face bearded and his hair medium lengthed. Please don't hurt me, like the rest. I brought my arms up to my face in protection. "What are you doing?" he asked me. "Shielding my face" I replied, bluntly. "Why?" he asked. "Because I am afraid and vulnerable and I cannot get up." I placed my hands over my face so he couldn't see. "Don't be frightened. I promise to never hurt you." I tore my hands away, my eyes burned fire. "How can you blaspheme? Do I look stupid? No one can carry out such an oath." I looked into his eyes and saw that he was not human. He had a human face, but his heart depicted not the same. "I will never let you down. I will never leave. You won't always see or feel me, but I'll always be there." I looked at him incredulously. "How am I to believe you? I don't even know you." He smiled at me as only a lover can. "I'd love for that to change." came his reply. "Why do you want me? I am a mess" He bent down picked me up with so very little effort and swiftness that I couldn't have fought him off if I tried. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he turned his face to mine. "I am more than capable of handling you, my dear." He then walked on through the forest of threads, pins, and needles that my woods reflected. I held tight, but not tight enough to choke him. We came up to my house and he bent down a bit so that I could turn the knob and open the door. My room was warmly lit, which before, it was not. He trudged up the stairs to my tower. My room was warmly lit, which before, it was not. He lay me on my bed, covering me with my blanket and tucking me in. He kissed my lips very softly and said "Don't say a word. I just love you." and vanished, taking the light with him. In the dark I became moderately fearful, since I am fearful of the immediate dark. The sky was velvet dark and my room saturated in shadows. Don't be afraid, I'm right here.

A hell constructed of ice and snow

"This is not my heaven! This is my hell!" cried my voice so despairing, so desperate inside my own skull. I want to get up. I want help. I want to make things better. I want to create rather than war with myself. She said it's fine. She says she loves me. Her words echo in my brain from the last time we spoke. I am back to lying in the snow and ice. I don't care to die. I don't care to live. I don't care at all. No..that's a lie. I do care. I'd just rather not. Little white flakes flowing from their skybound home make their way down to the earth. They fall on my face in attempts to bury me alive, attempts becoming very well executed success. And I am bound here. Still to the ground. Who will pick me up and brush off my wings? Even if they are simply spiritual. My wings are pinned to the ground, icy needles never ceasing. Never letting up. Helpless, hurting, hell. My eyes hurt. My nose is frozen. My fingers have become like sticks attached to my hands and the rest of me, numb.
I had ventured off into the snowy lesser known of my backyard to take photographs of the world in two different dimensions. Apparently, walking out without a torch is hazardous to one's health, for I slipped and fell and now I am here on the ground once more. After one too many falls, my spine tingles and I know it is not a good sign in the least. I cannot get up and no one is here or within earshot to come to my rescue. Darkness disturbs me now. I am frightened, like a child, but with not a soul to care for me. I cannot help but feel abandoned. The ones I trusted the most pushed me far away
And with good reason too. Am I to be trusted anymore? I don't know, I've yet to make an assessment. 

 Where is the sun? Where is anyone?

Take my arms that I might reach out to you!

How can I reach out if I am down? Nearly impossible. As I lie here freezing to death, my candles finally snuff out. Dead. Dead like winter. Dead like earth. Dead, like me. Or dying, at least. I know this because my life plays out as a film in my mind's eye. Childhood memories, bittersweet. Or what I lacked in a childhood. My stepfather and his heinous behavior toward me. Reliving the darkest time of my life makes me wish I could cry  again. Best of friends that come and go. Suitors desiring my attentions. And then Deirdre appears, and I recall swinging beneath our tree named Muse and singing to the trees around us as they listen attentively to our conversations. I remember being nearly chased by a homeless man and our silly little girl adventures. I remember trekking out in the snow with my dove and finding solace in a cage of all places. I see us in my room and me speaking to her as she falls asleep on my chest kissing her forehead like a mother, holding her like a lover. Being her protection. Loving her with all I am and even here I love her still along with all the ones I love and have grown to love. All those precious and dear to me that have fled because I pushed them off for reasons of my own. All the hearts in my hands that I have sliced open. Cut after bloody gash. Beside me I feel a gigantic creature. A heavy breathing cat, who's growl penetrates my ears and I am frightened. How he returned and found me, I do not know. Hell, I don't even know if he is real or my subconscious's conjurings.The lion I loved so dearly, my friend and lover, I beat him and he bore his claws and struck me in return and has returned to finish the job. I feel the pain now from his beating all over and my body convulses. I see him and a blur of red and he rips me to shreds. His claws tearing through me, I feel nothing but anguish. He doesn't look me in the eyes once. He keeps his eyes completely averted. I caught a glimpse of them before he left me the first time. Cold, broken, unkind. I have made him unkind. I have struck him and now he tears me apart in return. My vocal cords are frozen stiff, so screaming is not an option. Even if it were, I wouldn't. I deserve it. I deserve this..I deserve this..

I feel his presence leave me, leaving me to bleed out as he has finished I deserve this, I deserve this. I'm sorry. Take what you will, what you will and leave. Could you kill, could you kill me? He couldn't even be courteous enough to do away with me. He had to leave me here to die in the mess I made for myself. A mess it grows.. I had told Deirdre once. 

I am no longer me. My hair has grown out, mangy and unattended. My nails to claws. My eyes blood red from lack of sleep and insanity's grip. My voice so altered, unrecognizable. Who could love something so hideous? Something so horrid..

The world turns black before me and I feel myself being cradled. My senses paralyzed, so by whom, I cannot tell. All I know is by the warmth of their body, I know they are a comfort, and let myself be swept away by the cold and snow and the whimpers, almost like a child's as this person/creature holds me in their lap and as I black out like the stars again, I mumble this:

Take what you will, what you will
And leave. Could you kill, could you kill me?
If the world was on fire
and nothing was left but hope or desire
And take all that I could bring forth, is this hell
Or am I on the floor over-desperate?
Hold hands streaming of blood again?
And then take full weight of me
Guard my dreams, figure this out,
It's me on my own. Helpless, hurting, hell
Will you stay strong as you promised?
Cause I'm stranded and bare.
Meanness is washed up in all that I am
is God. Take this and all,
Then grace takes me to a place
Of the father you never had
Ripping and breaking and tearing apart
This is not heaven
This is my hell 

Is love alive?

She sighed, that deep heavy-hearted sigh that always broke my heart. I waited for her to say something...and then, like a correlative to the silence came the rich strum of guitar chords that made my soul feel like a lit candle. She sang, her beautiful caged song. I listened to each note, each word, each breath she drank in like life itself to pour into the bronze darling she assuredly held in her lap. The words came as if she had written them herself.
This is my winter song to you. The storm is coming soon, it rolls in from the sea.

Yes, as the snow falls down the impending misery of the storm she faces and tries to hide me from smothers me. But in my mind, the snow continues to fall, each individual said six sided flake glistens before it catches itself on my eyelashes. And I am caught by an unbelievable realization that I am speaking to my bosom friend, while staring at static ceiling fans and knowing that, impossibly, snow is fluttering down outside the curtains of my warm solace. And each flake that falls reminds me of a time when she is who she used to be. Before she felt she had to apologize for the person she became. Before he tainted her with his second glances.
My voice; a beacon in the night. My words will be your light, to carry you to me.

Your voice is the beacon of the night. Your words are my light. You carried me to you and to freedom. You allowed me to experiment with my wings that I had no idea had grown underneath my costume. I remember when we painted the massive ply-board with fall trees and a fluent mixture of purples and blues. I remember naming Muse, she inspired me to name trees. She inspired me to see them as more than beauty, but as representations of people. She inspired me to treasure people, but to understand that there would only be a few that treasured me back.
Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love

It is alive. It is alive. It is alive. I feel it pulsing through my heart with memory.
They say that things just cannot grow beneath the winter snow, or so I have been told.
You're laying on the winter's floor, surrounded by candles you wish you could become. You're purple and blue like our painting. But you'll find a way to rise again, and perhaps its by taking care of me. But remember dear, remember when we stayed up all night on the phone with notepads because we relished the others freshness of mind. Remember when we didn't feel obligated to write those things, but we treasured it. I'm alright if it never happens again, but I still have the notes.

They say were buried far, just like a distant star I simply cannot hold.

You have buried yourself far, you are the distant star, but I thank God you let me hold you. My precious dull yellow emitted from a mysterious piece of stone. Remember when you fell asleep to my song? When I held you as you cried, so thankful you could still cry. When I fell down and scraped my knees and my palms because the wolf I loved so much bit me. When the lion you loved so much growled with anger and cornered you as you took his beating. When we burned what we didn't want to remember.

Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive?

It is alive. It is alive. It is alive. I feel it pulsing through my veins with an intensity.
This is my winter song. December never felt so wrong, cause youre not where you belong; inside my arms.

You're right...I belong in your arms because I love you. Because it's what you deserve. And your voice carries all the ache that the song emits. No one is where they belong...they've all left your cold arms that die now on the pavement, automatically reaching out but cutting themselves off in the process to keep from causing anyone else discomfort.
I still believe in summer days. The seasons always change and life will find a way.

And remember when we sat on the dock and lost our coffees and wrote furiously though all I wanted was to be close to your heart again. And then we laughed and smiled and you were okay. And that was all I wanted so I could feel okay again. One day we will spend several hours and weekends at the beach walking along the shore and finding treasures. One day the earth will be in bright blues and we can run barefooted in white dresses over the rich moist grass. And life, and you, will find a way.
Ill be your harvester of light and send it out tonight so we can start again.

I love you. I love you. I don't want to start again, I want to continue. I want you the way you are. Broken, mangled, still pleading that I take care of myself and not you. I don't want life the way it was. I just want to stay as you figure yourself out once more. To break down your walls, and watch you threw your windows to make sure you're alive. To play in the snow and the relish the rain.

Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive?

Love is alive. Love is alive. I feel it stinging in my heart with it's previous misunderstanding.

This is my winter song. December never felt so wrong, cause youre not where you belong; inside my arms. This is my winter song to you. The storm is coming soon it rolls in from the sea. My love a beacon in the night. My words will be your light to carry you to me.

I love you regardless of anything and everything.


Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive?
Love is alive.

"how could I be so heartless?"

Invoked with creative inspiration, I headed out into the snowy lesser known to photograph. Lacking in such in previous weeks (which is very unlike me), it is good to finally have purpose once again. I search for every candle I can find within my radius and end up with 8 candles in my arms. I add a lighter to the mix and push open the door to the very cold, very icy, fairly dark lesser known. The snow is hard and packed tight together like a family holding onto each other for dear life. My feet barely make a dent in the white precipitation beneath my feet as I choose a patch that is not as tainted by child and animal tracks far off from the comfort and warmth of my home. My vision is simple and set. Over and over in my head plays "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" by stars. No stars are to be found tonight. The snow clouds have overwhelmed the sky and hidden them from the silent earth. the world is silent here. There is a perceived lack of color here. I know that in truth, white is all the colors mixed together.And I can't help but love the contrast between the dark sky and the white ground. The air's crisp scent strangles me if I inhale too deeply. It's like smoke, but clean. I breathe in deep, the cold air burning my nostrils and my chest stinging inside. My heart is heavy. As always, so lately it seems. Ever since I drove the lion off, I've felt nothing but a concave crater in my chest, deep and charcoaled, like a meteor's crater after hitting the fragile moon.

 I set down my little ones, my lights on the ice. Clicking my lighter over and over in attempts to light them, the little ones do not last long. "Stay alive, please, stay alive" I whisper. They linger a bit, flames jumping about, trying to stay warm. In the same instant they are gone. Snuffed out by the heartless wind. Innocent lives, vanished. The three larger candles keep their fire, they stay lit. And it's all I can do to keep from going mad. They are my salve.
A simple degree of life in a world where innocent fish and children must die. Needless to say, I am unnerved. "God," I whisper in the cold "where are you?"
No answer. And I am only infuriated further. The heart that I gave to him is no more, and you're not even here to comfort me! What the Hell? There is no heart in my chest. It was taken when the lion left. I want it back but am too afraid to ask. I watch my little ones, my little flames. Their intoxicating dance leaves me tranquilized. I lie down on the cold ground, the ice and my face make contact and I realize that our temperatures are entirely too similar. Minutes feel like hours and hours like days. I don't even flinch. I feel my lips turning purple and my hands stiffening, arthritic from the frigid outside. Would you miss me if I died? A whispering wind winds through the trees to bite my face and strike my hands with an icy blow. I would love nothing more than to lie here. Just to see if someone, anyone, will come find me. 




I seem to have fallen asleep on the ice outside. How on earth, I do not know. I realize, quickly where I am and arise. Every bone in my body ache from the cold but are at the same time numb. Somehow, numb to the point of pain. At any rate, I make my way back to my house, kicking up powdery precipitation as I go. I feel like a child again. A latchkey child as I had always been. Very introverted, very much a loner, very shy. My mind is void of thought, possibly all intelligible thought was frozen over with everything else. My hands are stiff as boards and completely lax in feeling. My heart sinks in realization of reality and just really wish I didn't have to remember anything at all. I see my house not far off. And it is my only beacon of light. 

this is the moment that you know: a new chapter

The season's change was indeed a conduit. Winter's falling only reminds me of the summer past. Life on wooden swings when all was young, with summer tongues. To be honest, I'm tired of someone else telling my story. So I've decided from here on out to tell it myself. 


I sat in that swing at Deirdre's for hours it felt like. Days, seconds, minutes, time didn't matter at all. Kairos kicks in and I have no sense of time or home or human emotion or anything. Simply swinging. Back and forth, flying to rhythms dictated by the trees. They swish with the rain and wind, like an orchestra composition from the the 20th century. Humming and whispers are usually attributes given to trees. They seem to be the quiet type. But rain and wind thrown in the mix tends to make them hyper and chaotic, in turn, stirring up the universe. 


I heard this said once "When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire."
I never understood the significance before and to this day still do not, if there were any to be found. All I know is that in a few instances, I can think of moments when I would have loved to literally go up in flames. My thoughts tend to make no sense until on paper. The universe seems to make more sense when I have it down on paper. Or when I simply choose to ignore the trite world in which I live for a little while. 
I swing back and forth until daylight runs away. Eventually the wind and rain desisted. My hair and clothes are soaked and but I continued swinging, shaking from the cold. The clouds are sparse and scarce in the night sky and as I swing, I catch glimpses of the stars, twinkling in the sky like broken shards of glass. I know the world's a broken bone..  and it's moments like these when I realize everyone's perpetually broken. In a state of temporal imperfection. "Maybe the whole world is just a mass of broken," I think aloud "Just shattered and dented and crooked and lacking. Maybe, there's nothing wrong with that. Just that we play the fool and wear our broken masks to cover up the inevitable." To whom am I speaking? possibly myself. Possibly no one. It just strikes me in that moment that all that we see isn't all that is. I check the time and realize I should get home already. The grass allures me so, beckoning me come lie down and eternally sleep. Which, in retrospect, I would love nothing more to do, at this point. Really and honestly. It only reminds me of the Lion. But then again, everything seems to of late. Long gone he is, and I, I am fine. This is it. And here tonight, while the stars are blacking out, with every hope and dream I ever had in doubt. I've spent ten years trying to sing them all away. but the water keeps on falling from my tries..
This is the moment in which I come to grips with the fact that I hang on too tightly. This is the moment in which I see that people will come and go. Those I love will fade over time.
this is the moment in which I realize I've no say in the matter at all. and I've embraced robotics with the most duplicitious of intentions. 

this close

Adelaide walked up to the front step of Deirdre's house. Her car wasn't there, so she presumed she was not at home. In her icy hands, she carried the sacred piece of Deirdre's heart in the form of a key. She enclosed it in an envelope and placed it at the door, hoping she'd find it. Wind and rain whipped around Adelaide, but she felt none of it. Only acknowledged that it was. This was not the first time she had missed Deirdre. Busy lives kept them from fellowship and Adelaide was very alone otherwise. Isolation and heartbreak will do that to a person. She was tired of not being understood or comforted by the ones upon whom her love rest. She was simply a rusty machine. Like the tin man after years and years of weathered change. She taped a note to the door, knowing she'd be the first to see. I'm tired of chasing you. Come to me when you are able. Adelaide. She hated being so cold, but she was. She was cold. She was rusted. She was tired. Tired of having to work for love all the time. So she lie dormant. She'd lost her Love and swore it would be the last. The last until some lucky man decided to show her they were not all the same. She looked at herself in the window's reflection very puzzled. That cannot be me..She touched her own face, hair and body trying to make sense of it. After a moment, turned away in disgust and frustration and cut around through the backyard to the side of the old house to the tree swing. She sat upon it and began flying back and forth, singing softly as she did. Her heart sunk and mixed in with the mess of her internal organs. It hurt. It hurt to be so isolated. And here was as close as she could get without being with Deirdre. The distance hurt her much more than she could stand to say in just one sitting. But she'd rather not say anyway.

Every bite you gave left a mark

Deirdre curled into a ball of yarn shoved against the window. Midnight's chill blissfully conducted itself from thin glass to her thin body. "Something isn't right. Something isn't right." Her guts longed warmth. Her mind beamed with the previously memorized image of that great blue eyed wolf. He had rescued her from the deceased culdesac. And she was unsure whether she loved or hated him for it. She could still feel his warm body pressing against hers. Lungs rasping, regardless of the cold; wild inhuman heart beating crinsom blood. She could feel the same fire-like blood pulsing through her own fingertips now. It burned every vein it traveled. She shuddered, touching his rough skin and matted hair. Her coneas flashed errotically with thought of his pained concerned eyes.
Then, like a needle to a helium balloon, he was gone, replaced once again by the window's frigid blank sheen. She fitted herself into a cramped fetal position; her fragile fingertips brisking their way over bare legs in attempt to wane the chill. She could feel several raised crescents in her skin.
His brand on her.
His love on her.
His carelessness on her.
His bitterness on her.
His hurt on her.
All on her.
Yes, of course he had saved her.
But he expected her life and ever present devotion in exchange.

I cheated.

Embracing Robotics

She sat upon the cold, wet ground in the rain. She was at the base of the woods where she had gotten lost. She was found this time. Found, lost, and grey. She stared ahead at nothing. She felt like plastic. Plastic or metal or something that doesn't feel. Everyone will ask what became of you.
What HAS become of me? Beautiful eyes that sparkled with the sunlight, it was as if someone blew them out and they were nothing but smoking embers. Her hair, whose sheen was undeniable, playful as she was, dull and faded. Her glowing skin and a smile that shone like the sun, they were gone too. She was reduced to a rag doll. Or worse.
He was gone. gone for good now. He hated her now and she deserved it. She'd watched him leave. He didn't  run at her and tear her to pieces. Not in the physical. but his eyes ripped her limb from pathetic limb.

Goodbye. The only thing she had said. And she hated goodbyes. Her eyes grew heavy and came to terms with how very exhausted she was. Like a child, she curled up in a ball right where she was and somehow drifted off into subconsciousness.

She sat in a single chair in a white room with no windows or doors. One lonely light bulb hung from the ceiling. Swinging back and forth to the rhythm of Adelaide's breathing. What the.. There was a television in front of her. Silent, no sound evoking from it. Simply static. Silent static. A sinister and confusing lullaby. Fear gripped her and shook her like a heart attack. She looked down at her hands that were taped to this chair. Her legs as well. Her mouth, somehow, had been sealed shut. She couldn't move. She had no idea how she got here. the last thing she knew was that she was at the base of the woods...
Out of nowhere the hooded apparitive creature in chains returned. In his shackled hands he held a large shard of a mirror. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to scream or cry or run away or all of the above. He held up the shard so she could see her reflection in it. Upon her face was blush, bright and pink on her cheeks. On her eyes the brightest beauty paste imaginable and her lips donned the same. Except, her lips were sewn shut with black thread. And her eyes replaced. They were grey. They were glass. She could see through them, but it was very limited. With no power to scream nor freedom to punch her fists and stomp her feet. She was beyond trapped. This was worse than Hell. She was alive. Alive and mute and deaf and blind. THIS was Hell beyond measure. She could see only one feature of the horrid apparition's face. It's smile, a smile like the Chesire cat, lips curled over perfect straight, white teeth. It dropped the shard to the floor and she watched it shatter into more shards. The apparition picked up one of the shards and smiled bigger, more sinister and held the shard upon her pasty skin, dragging it across but no blood poured from it. No, the shard simply drew a black line. The ghost continued this, drawing black lines on her legs, arms and any skin revealed. What in Hell? Why am I not bleeding? Her eyes were false, she could not cry. Her lips were sewn, she couldn't scream or beg for mercy. Her legs and arms were tied, she couldn't run away. She looked down at her arms and legs and saw that red was pouring from her. She was bleeding. She was in the beginning processes of dying. Jesus, kill me inside this!! Her tortured heart cried out, doubtful that the desired recipient even heard her. Suddenly, there behind the apparition, stood a man with no face. Yet she recognized him immediately.

The apparition knew too. He disappeared and appeared behind her as suddenly as a vapor. "See him? He can't help you. You're not real. You're broken and easily replaced. False, plastic. A robotic, living flesh-toy. Let yourself bleed and die. No one will notice, none will see or care." Just as quickly, the faceless man appeared behind the creature, taking his hands and wrapping them around the demon's neck, whispering but loud enough to reach Adelaide's ears "It is finished." Choking and gagging, the creature cried and shrieked surrender, dissipating as the faceless man let go. He then stood before her and she shut her false eyes and squeezed them together tightly, biting her tongue. She wanted nothing more than to scream "Don't look at me!! I'm a shame!" He, with such a quick motion, removed the shackling from her wrists and ankles. He gently placed his hand over her eyes and gave her original eyes back. Then with one finger placed upon her lips, removed the thread so she could speak but placed his hand over her mouth so she could not. He moved his head close to hers and whispered in her ear "You are free." She looked at his face to see that there was one present. Kind eyes and smiling lips, pearly teeth and a nice face. He was kind. He was love. And as soon as he appeared he was gone again. Looking around the room, she realized there was a door on one of the walls now, and turned the knob to the waking world.

Pendulum

She gagged on the concrete, as she heard the glass door hammering behind her. Hearing it like it was in slow motion. Twice her weak stomach wretched and plummeted, trying viciously to expel the filth she had just swallowed. But no words came out. Her eyes seemed to involuntarily pivot to the window, where they saw her mother's concerned face. A vein must be connecting her eyes to her feet, for she ran, socked feet feeling none of the rocks or vines or thorns beneath them, neither slowing when she heard her mother's calling. Her feet led her into the woods behind the back yard – the place the place she had lain so many times after punishing herself for her tears. Not now. No, she could not stay here. Any set of presumptuous eyes could spot her, and further questioning was unneeded. She fled further; deeper into the brush, mind dizzy and heart trying to catch up with the flowing blood and mechanical lungs. She collapsed on the pricking pine straw; eyes drowning themselves in a horrid catch 22. From her vantage point she viewed stately pines. Their solid bases deposited around her tired body, while their free tops were weaved by the wind. Their green crowns surfaces and receded like waves colliding with the shore before taking back their angry words. But such and act was expected. No one lectures the waves for their rudeness. They apologize in advance, and it is accepted. Like 70 degree weather and 1 ½ children. “So many wasted days come and go like ocean waves. Hits me like a freight train. Now I can't get off my face.” She stayed in the position for a long time. Just reciting mortal thoughts of life's unfairness. So selfish. Her cat, Little Little, purred her way over, nudging Deirdre to see if she were still breathing. She circled several times until at last circling herself around Deirdre's feet. “Oh, that I had wings like a dove, for then I would fly away and be at rest.” Oh God. GOD, make the sky cry because I can't. Tiny particles oh H20 fell on her face, feeling more like frozen needles than water. It let like little freckles painfully being added to her skin. It felt like Chinese water torture. She could feel the rain before she felt it. It chimed into the bushes making whispers come out. It fell, swirling onto her pale skin and mixing with the hot bloody tears that had soaked into her matted hair. The sickening combination only made her cry. Sob and heave like a trembling leaf. Then, as hurriedly as the tears came, they departed. She faced upwards once more, resolving to be silent so the rain could go on uninterrupted. Little Little trotted away, but Deirdre stayed, staring into the drops that fell on her. They quickly glistened before descent, and fell seductively onto her cracked lips. I want to die in the rain. Not here, not now, but someday. I want to die in the rain, just like this. The trees approved in hushed tones as they swayed to and fro in an unprecedented manner. Like a clock's pendulum, ticking back and forth to time gone by at an unsteady rate.

the trees rejoice with the wind here

She slipped out of the laundry room door that leads to the outside world like a cat, smoothly making its way into the crisp night. A black cat with a black backpack full of fireworks.. An unwanted bad luck charm. She felt she'd become this as well. An apparition invisible, opaque only to those who chose to see her. She liked it better that way, to be honest. She couldn't sleep for her life. Not now. Not with the sickening anticipation taking up residence in her stomach. She looked up to the velvet dark blue sky and the stars that called it home. So beautiful. she whispered to no one.
The stars, in her opinion, were the watchmen of God. As if he needed them.. but still. Much too beautiful and purposed than to have been thrown up there at random, like a child with glitter and glue. In Adelaide's own opinion. She tip toed as if the world outside would hear if she made one move louder than a mouse's footstep.
The piercing, dagger smiles of men were too much. Which is why she had grown accustomed to the night. Men don't come out at night. Animals do. The dangerous and benign. Night birds screeched their songs, little ground creatures rustled the grass, hurrying for shelter.
Adelaide made her way to the trees behind her dwelling. The ones that lead her astray. Where she found the great cat. Tears sprung in her faded grey, brown eyes. She missed his presence. His comforting pur, the warmth of his great golden coat. The scent of his closeness. She missed it all. And his eyes. The eyes that spoke to her. Not with words, but with feeling. They spoke with intense emotion and feeling. And she left him.   He had come to save her. To show her he loved her. And she couldn't do the same for him. She ran in the dead of night, in the dark where she could not see at all and called him. Hoping he had gotten free. Hoping he would return and nuzzle her face and look at her with those big brown green eyes and show her his love. That he forgave her. That he knew she couldn't do anything and it was okay. She stopped, out of breath and no feeling in her face, tears coursing down it when he didn't come running up to her side. She sat at the base of a great oak and lay her back up against it. Her knees pulled up to her chest, she buried her head in them and cried. Angry tears. Anguished tears. Bitter tears. Her head pounded. Her ears rung. Her eyes burned. She shivered and shook and her teeth chattered. It seemed as if she had arrived at a place where all of the things that go bump in the night reside. Where they vacation from their posts and watch and wait for pathetic souls to come traipsing in their territory. The trees seemed to be a gigantic hand that closed around her. She buried her face in her knees further, listening to the heinous cackling of the nighttime beasts but not for long. She began to hum within herself, a song she loved. As her shaking desisted and her chattering teeth still, she sung in a voice that disrupted all manner of silence. In some cases, silence is necessary. In other's, it is better to disturb it.
The wind seemed to join her, rustling a breeze through the leaves of the trees, creating a rhythm all their own.
The trees rejoice with the wind here, Hallelujah Yeshua.