Passel

Slept deep and dreamt of a secret journey. Doesn't know why. Need to escape? Feeling like feelings have to be suppressed. Again. Doubts. Again. "You asked me once to tell you all the stupid little things." Maybe there are too many. Sobs hidden by the shower. Things look different--better?--in the morning anyway. Thirteen day countdown to forgetting. Stopgaps, all. Light at the end of the tunnel, but what's on the other side?

Addlepated

She began to wonder if she was simply going mad. Her mind felt as weak as her body, so it made sense that her heart would too. How many days can a person forge ahead this way? How much can we take? Senseless, uncomprehending, like a beast, or maybe a machine, but even those break down. Little by little, maybe I said too much. Maybe I jump to conclusions. Maybe I should look before I leap.

Chugalug

I'd rather collect your words and your kisses than anything else in this world. Like folded paper stars in a clear glass bottle, the color of your affection brightens my every day. Sometimes I have to interpret your silence, and the effort tires me, the necessity saddens. But then there are those raucous rowdy outbursts, expressions of what I mean to you. These I swallow like sticky condensed milk, greedily savoring the unique taste of mutual satisfaction. I try not to ask for too much, but for me there's no such thing.

Steep

Need a break, beat pulsing, brain racing. Everything goes in but so little funnels out. Wrong angle, too steep, too narrow. Ignoring faces I know to focus on the worlds I create. Never was a numbers person, and now they're driving me mad, louder than the voice in my head, louder than my creativity. I'm already two and a half weeks ahead of myself. Can't catch up to the future.

Diluvial

Body as the earth, rivers pouring out, pain and sorrow and joy. All the seasons, all the reasons, turning and changing with the revolutions, the passing of days and times, good and bad. When quakes erupt from within, the skins stretches and the organs shift and the soul has to make a choice: heal, or lay down and let the darkness win. Drowning in the haunting, grainy, black and white "remember," with only tiny pores to release the bitter poison of injustice. Every step forward is an ordinary miracle. Something to be overlooked, taken for granted, repeated but never forgotten. Pink tongue like fruit, fine hairs like the grass, and only the mountains to rise.

Wheatstone bridge

Oil marks on her arms. Seared forever, her mistakes. She remembers them with fondness. Pocks like missing pieces. The days she'll never get back. Everyone says it's time. She's the only one who isn't sure. She can't ignore the unknowns in her head. What if? Sometimes it isn't about the sound, or the taste, or the gun in your hand. She knows. The bullet's already gone.

Belle époque

She wrote down the names of all the places she had been. Six hundred and seventy-one different ways to spell happiness. But everything shines under the sun. So she buried them in the earth and cried over each of the graves. Only one rached up out of the dirty, only one grew and blossomed and bore fruit. Then she knew which was her true home, and her real soul would find its way back.

Wallflower

Quiet words, silent on my tongue for so many years, slip off into this gentle honest night. Like ships disembarking onto unknown waters, they float into your silence and sail across the darkness between us. There is more that I long to share, more that I harbor in the slips of my pier, but they will wait for other tides. Not all can be revealed before sunrise. The moon means her light to cast a broad glow, a general sweep shine of truth, an accompaniment to the stars. The rest must go before the rays of the sun to determine their integrity, to compare their intensity to the ultimate night.

Natter

In Discovery, someone is always talking. In the afternoon it's the kids letting out of school. In the evening, the adults getting off work. At night, the old folks rocking on porches. In the wee hours of morning, the teenagers again, gossiping or trading words of love over the phone. At sunrise, the birds. Always there is discussion in Discovery. Today, Cristina just happens to be the main topic.

Élan

Triumphant hips claiming glorious home. Smoother than ink from this pen. Cool exterior melts and sticks. No room for doubt amidst the roomful of cards crowded with handwritten words read a hundred times a day. Moans become a mantra. The happiest day loses meaning in the context of a million happy moments, each one a lifetime complete.

Iridescent

Growing ever-glowing never-knowing locked up love. Can you take it make me break it always shake it on the floor. Heat it beat it cheat it when your feet start meeting up. Brand new state without much fate just like you wanted ain't it great?

Marquetry

Wartime sins are not so simple. Intricate layers of reasoning and rationale. Lay them out one by one. Execute. They fall in a row. Walk upon the foundation before you. Ignore the squish of blood below your feet. This is how we walk to peace. This is the only road once we've begun.

Fission

We cleave together unlike the angry tides that push people farther from their shores. Losing all the air that keeps us afloat and dreaming of silky hair that tickles your naked chest. Drying here the droplets running down our legs. Sand sticks to our soles. Cloudless heavens draining slowly. Eradicate my sins.

Fresco

She picks up the brush. She can't remember what for. She can't feel anything underneath this skin, these bones, this barely beating heart. They're as false to her as the oil and horsehair and canvas. It used to be the other way, the paint used to be real like the flesh. But nothing breathes anymore. Nothing lives. She puts down the brush. Maybe tomorrow, she tells herself. Maybe tomorrow she'll exist again.

Mise en scène

Dark black hand pushing pieces on a board. Pull a card with a question mark. "Follow your gut out to the west." Handsome little songbird with a cozy little nest. This is the stage no one knew had been set. This is where I perform.

Banausic

Wake up in the morning, kiss on the cheek. Brush teeth, brush skin. Bathrobe, seeing off, hug in the doorway. Sunlight shimmering into the room. Music, dancing, cheerful nothingness. Waiting patiently, waiting anxiously, day slipping away into return to night. Welcome home, quick celebration. Dinner, to refuel. Another lowkey evening, television and friends. Shower, pajamas, or something sexier. Fold into each other's arms. Sleep, to dream, but what for when reality's just so damn good. Nothing mechanical about this routine. This is where life is.

Subterfuge

"I'm watching you," he whispers in my ear. "For him." We both know it isn't true. But as the rain falls onto the nylon of my umbrella, I contemplate the possibilities. Hours and miles, days and dreams. Loving deception, and the last thing I would ever expect. I fell for this last time, though, and I know better now. So I smile and we walk and I fall asleep with the knowledge that it isn't real. Not yet, anyway.

Lambaste

bombs underfoot
explosions in the distance
you know it's only a matter of
time
before you unravel

garbled voice over the life-
line
and i'm pulling
like teeth
running tongue
over my own
tasting the sweetness of my recent memories
and my future plans

tears and raised voices
won't solve this dilemma
because you want it
but you don't
and that's ok

"mm hmm"
is the only salve i have

time
tasting
you

Hootenanny

Avoidance. Certain words become too soft and familiar on my tongue. Catch them like snowflakes and melt away.

Scandal. Performance. Audience. This is who I am to me. Ever-watching eyes. I want to show you something sensual that you think isn't within. Would you ever guess the kinds of thoughts that are painted with the cream-colored passion I've had on my fingers? Do you know the fear I feel when I imagine your eyes on my lines? But what does any of that matter? An acrobat high up on her bar. Catch me when I fall. I'd rather work without the net.

Celestial sphere

This was the day I was meant to be. Could it have made a difference? Ten more 24-hours in this universe, ten more 24-hours sharing this world with you. Would it have changed me? Would we still fit so intimiately?

Bourgeoisie

Lips sealed, don't wanna impede on the silence the better man say he need. Read about all the lower man deed, never understand why he ain't been seed. Got a heart that want love so bad it's like a disease, cain't hardly breathe, gotta hide beneath these sheets. But then the sun rise and it's on with my smiling teeth. Don't nobody want to know what's going on in me.

Discomfit

She trembles in the warm breeze, her toes lined up with the edge of the shingles. You don't know what to say, but she's waiting for your voice. Her eyes are closed and her hands are held out and she needs to know where you are so she can jump. Leaves crunch beneath your polished black shoes, but she can't hear it over the roar of the wind in her ears. You've got to make some noise. You've got to speak up.

Felicific

Here I stalk images with verbal arrowheads, ready to spear them through the virtual forest. Blood runs thick and black, the flesh slender but filling. The chase and the hunt put a smile on my spirit, but I have yet to make the big kill. My heart rumbles like a storm over the gulf, waiting to burst.

Root beer

Float away, champagne bubbles, sacrifices like little flicks of the tongue across your skin. Can't exhume the year I killed, and the bell stopped ringing anyway. Just want to revel in the triviality of the stars. Bury me in a windy city that blows goosebumps onto my arms, shuffles me into your bed. I'll live on as your private angel and keep you safe from harm.

Hobson's choice

Skin like the ink that dribbles out from my pen, but darker, richer, more like earth and less like beach. You are free now, free to choose your shade of future. I know mine, in my heart, and I take it, embrace it in full. Like me, this one is really two. Like me, this one knows. There is no alternative. This is how it must be.

Noisette

Vulnerability. Like being cut open, served for dinner, served raw. The taste of my words on your tongue. Too bland, he says. Does the filet cry the way I do? Tears squeeze out and pool with flavored juices in the subtle groove of the plate. This is the final resting place.

Legator

to you i leave.

i'd be ok with being alone
if i could be alone with you.

Lesotho

Stranger in the land of my fathers. Does that ring true all along this crystal coastline? Do children see through the thin plate of glass that separates them from each other? Do they hear the two gunshots in the night and wonder what world might be safe for them? I don't know this place anymore, and the home I long for leaves me listless.

Scurrilous

She was never so bold as the day she told him off. She said, I can't take this anymore. She said, You are worse than any whore. She said, You make me cry with your fool-around ways, and you make me dread my live-alone days. She took her things and walked down the road. She paused at the corner, then turned and never looked back.

Divulge

Secret weight to my eyelids as I revel in the moist sensation. Can't speak without pleasure seeping out in every breath. You find shame in my life, and I can't carry the weight of your judgment any longer. Shake off your shackles and leave myself free to shudder. Do you understand that your way isn't the only one?

Magician

She tiptoes onto the stage, her little feet encased in tar black Mary Janes. The pitter patter of her steps echo softly around the now-empty auditorium. Her curly pigtails shake around her full baby face.

She's looking for the rabbit. He was soft and big-eyed in the magician's hands, and she wants to play with him. She searches the table where the pretty blonde lady with ripe red lips had been sawed in half. she peeks into the crystal chamber where the magician had drowned himself yet lived. She ruffles the thick stage curtains and a cloud of dust puffs into the air. The rabbit is nowhere to be found.

Then she spies the big black top hat. It's sitting on a stool in the wings, quiet and unassuming. She bolts for it. Eyes wide and heart eager, she reaches inside. Nothing! She pulls it down, turns it over, shakes it. It's just an empty hat. Disappointed, she puts it back and walks away. Her parents are waiting. They'd told her there was no such thing as magic.

Just as she's leaving the theater, long white ears peek out over the brim of the hat. The girl happens to pause. She's tempted to look back. She wants to believe. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She makes her decision.

When she rejoins her parents in the lobby, they ask her if her journey has satisfied her curiosity. She nods. They each take one of her hands and lead her out into the cold night. She breathes out, and the air in front of her puffs like the dust from the curtain. She knows it's not magic, but she smiles all the same.

Aberrant

I can read the signs like I used to read my homemade runes: death this way comes, but this time I won't cry. I'm tired of your pushes and your pulls. I'm tired of tumbling for you. The grass is never greener; you just see it brown and shriveled anyway. So take your dressed up memories and your talking heads and leave me be. I don't need half a person weighing on me like an elephant. There's nothing in this room anymore.

Envenom

Every time I try to hide the venom it sticks like sap to the soft flaky bark of my soft flaky heart. And I get caught. I don't know what to do. I say, Please, feel free to ignore the parts of me that make you uncomfortable. And then I turn cold as the granite floors of a masoleum.