Slip

My heart is in your hands,

I don't need to shake your hand to know you have a firm grip.

Down the rabbit hole

in another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was going to get out again. There were doors all 'round the hall, but they were all locked, and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.

I am back with scars to show.

Press two fingers to my neck, show me a pulse

Tell me my signs are vital

I'm over this,

but the black circles under my eyes betray me.

Crack my ribs and I'll crack a smile (I promise),

fix what's broken, cut away the dead, amputate the sick, the sad, my mind.

This gangrene is spreading faster than you will ever know.

And it's all you, you're the goosebumps on my flesh, the shivers that rack my body in the night. You're the hair that comes out by handfuls in the shower, you're the lingering chill in my room, in my bed that used to know your warmth. You break my bones, you sleep in my marrow.

I lean my head against the rattling glass window of the west-bound bus, my teeth shiver in their gums. Sometimes if I hold my breath, I can hear the gangrene consuming, destroying me.

This I know, my heart will be the last to go.

Ascending... descending?

covet.

Ghosting

And this is why I have decided
to pull these old white sheets from my head.
I'll leave them folded neat and tidy
so that you'll know I'm out of hiding.

"Il y a des jours ou tout semble tellement irreel." 

I want a love like Harry and Marion's. It's too bad I'm not fucked up on heroin, maybe I'd meet someone genuine.

From here to...

I wonder whether dreams are actually reality and what I'm doing now is just my brain making sure it's functioning properly. It would be nice if dreams were real. A lucid dreamer's life would be perfect. Never monotonous, never ugly. You could fly, travel time, create the perfect mate, look exactly as you would want to, have the most fantastical adventures. Compared to the dream world, waking life seems extraordinarily dull, to put an oxymoron into practice.

...

And another thing. I won't forgive you for appearing in my dream last night. I was stable, neutralized before you started talking to me again. It's dangerous adding another chemical to the mix, you've no idea what you've started. 

It angers me that I enjoyed my dream as much as I did. Your text subtracted four hours from my sleep pattern last night. Fuck you, don't do this to me now. I've only just gotten some traction on these weathered tires and anyhow, I've had enough of the ditch, we're well-acquainted.

Just tell me what to expect. My bruises are still vivid from the first punch, I fear a second one would collapse my cheekbone, drive bone splinters into my brain, knock me out of the ring for good. Tell me what to expect so that I know which side to brace myself for contact.

And so the chemicals react. The pressure builds.

It's what we say

I lay on my mother's bed as she spoke to me. A rare occasion of closeness that scarcely presents itself. Something she said to me struck me. 

"Smile," she said, "Feed the beast. Just don't ever let them see you broken."

I kissed her aging cheek and turned off her lights. Crawling into my own bed, I let her words stir in my mind as I allowed my body heat to warm the sheets beneath me. 

Feed the beast.

"Hi...?"

Hi.

Your former pristine ivory glow has dulled to an off-white somewhat. Your pretty paint has come away, cracking, peeling, yellowing. But somehow I knew I'd not heard the last of you.

Are you the beast, or am I? If indeed I am, then I rest assured that there must be beauty out there somewhere.

To see what it feels like.

Do you think I could repaint myself?

No, no, think about it. 

If I dipped my finger into a bucket and smeared it across a vast blank canvas, wouldn't that be nice? 

I could swipe, loop, swirl, strike, drag at the stiff white surface. You know, doodle, I've always been rather good at that. Build a foundation, fill the spaces in between the broad lines.. Nothing too intricate though, that comes later, once the base has set. A clean base.

Oh, but I wouldn't use colours, oh no. I'd use thoughts, feelings, sounds. 

The only trouble is this canvas I already have. I've had it for a while, it was always my favorite. It is not bare. It is not simple. The strokes are deep, slow, well-thought out. Careful, almost hesitant. That was the base, I remember. The next few layers are the most beautiful I've ever seen. Shapes that don't exist in the human world, sounds and sights only the stars have heard and seen. It's breath-taking, how they weave around and throughout each other, embracing, molding into each other. Taking shape. Growing. You could almost see a heartbeat, it was so alive. 

The topmost layer is the reason I have to let it go sometime. But I can't. The newest additions to the canvas are shining, still wet. They are beautifully terrible. More intricately woven than the finest lace. Graceful, gentle in such a way that it pierces your core at a single glance.

I stare at it all day.

It will come off its hook eventually, give up its honoured place on my wall to a greater artwork, perhaps. It will rest in the attic, mostly forgotten. Eventually. For now, I'll stare at it all day.

Maybe I should look into some new paints. Just in case.

Maybe.

Eyes lose their fire

My fingers smell like cigarettes. 

I haven't been this scared

So this is what it feels like. Being dead, I mean.
My low, pathetic animal keening faded long ago. I died with us.
My heart forces blood and movement into these limbs that dangle uselessly at my sides when they are not needed. Its dogged determination is fruitless, everything in life goes to shit sooner or later. I wish I had its courage.
I've been around the bases, was on the home stretch when the dusty playing field disappeared beneath my feet and I plunged downward into nothingness. Baseball is a dead sport anyway.
For now I settle down to meals with no taste, just an awful after effect of bloating that does not fill the gaping exit wound you left. I settle for forced mechanical laughter to keep them from wondering, or pitying. I settle for showers that feel like ice no matter how far I turn the hot water knob. I shiver compulsively all day, all night. Those showers, my one small comfort. My eyes and stomach empty, rid themselves of the day's shit. Of this fucking shit universe I'm expected to live in.
For now my tears mingle with the water that gurgles down the drain. My mother thought I cried because of my math test. I'm more careful now.

At least it's nice to think that stars are real.

Smells like 5

Another silent night last night, nothing shocks me anymore.

I'm sick of you. I'm sick without you.

I'll be your compass again, point me south like you always do. 

 

I am not thankful for food, food that hides my hip bones, softens the contours of my face, touches my thighs together. I am a pig.

I am not thankful for family or good company, I have neither today. I'm forbidden from seeing my very own cousins. A black market family is not something I am grateful for.

I am not thankful for health, at least when I'm sick I have a reason to feel sorry for myself. I get to see you when I stay home from school.

I am thankful for sound that breaks silence. 

And I quite like Harry Potter too.

We will never be foxes.

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Got my beginners.

=) .

Progressions

Hello again old friend, old enemy

Your familiar face is nice to see, though I know how it always goes. I'll resent you in a week.

It's how it always goes.

Every visit, you shine up your grays, whites, blues, a chorus of hues that compliment you well. You stand sparkling majestically before me, clean, naked. I have always been jealous of your beauty. You clean up good.

I'd like to say that you embrace me warmly, but nothing about you is warm. Your cool touch causes spasms of shivering in my abdomen, leaves my fingertips tingling, like the caress of a new lover, or the recovery after an electrocution, or that feeling you get when you're young, the one where you're convinced there's a murderer hidden in the shadows of your room.

Lover or murderer? Sometimes they're the same thing.

You're awful, you know that, I abhor you. Your arrival takes its toll on everything; green is crushed under the awesome mass of white. The skin you touch undergoes a progression of pallid beige to a raw,  flayed red. Why, you even make the very sky drain its face of all colour.

And every year, I wonder whether you'll be as mean, whether you'll always have that secret motive of yours. 

You never disappoint, do you?