The In-Between Girl

I remember the first time. In fact I remember all the times with a frightening clarity. I learned long ago that my memory does not work like that of others; I do not have a photographic mind for numbers or facts but for personal details, small things people said in passing, intimate moments that others forgot about... I remember them all.

I remember the first time. I was barely 17 and we had drunk down a bottle of tequila in 20 minutes. We were all running around the small apartment; you and me and her and him, laughing, giggling, tripping over the furniture. I had met you a few days earlier, the lost love of my new best friend. I was fascinated by your painted nails and big black jacket. All the boys in the tiny little town I came from wore cowboy hats, drove pickup trucks and none of them interested me. You were so different than what I had known before. I had been high or drunk for days at that point, on my first adventure out in the world. I remember... leaning on the little flimsy couch, you kneeling behind it. We were talking intensely like only two drunks can. Something exciting had happened to you that day and you were celebrating. We talked more and more intensely moving our faces closer together. Soon we were touching foreheads, rolling our faces back and forth because it felt good. Next thing I knew we were kissing and you were pulling me backwards with you, couch and all, until I was on top of you on the floor. The night spiraled out of control from there...

You know, she never let me live that night down. She would bring it up at random moments years later with sharp little jabs trying to hurt me. Trying to make me feel guilty. Even though I loved her then she was still a fucked up girl. It's strange now reading your side of the story so many years later; I being there shortly after it began. Always hearing her side only; her infatuation, the relationships she destroyed trying to be with you, her obsession, such a fucked up little girl. I had to let her go years ago, her destructive path too much for anyone to stick around for too long. I didn't want to watch her kill herself and I had too many other things that needed to be done...

Yes. I remember the next times; the intervening years. I did not forget. She was there again; somehow you knew where I lived. Had you seen me coming and going? When she left, you stayed and I was curious to why. We talked intensely once again, as we seem oft to do. You were there for hours; talking. The conversation turning from her and her fucked-upness to my recent obsession with the world of domination and submission; introduced to me by an intelligent dark-haired man with a very bent version of the world resting behind his eyes. He brought me with him and I realized I had been looking for it all along. And I let you play at it; I played at submission in those days still experimenting with what I wanted. Not all there yet. We played at it and it got deeper. More frightening the places we let it go. Your eyes locked on mine; the moment when I threw myself against you and had to stop. You were afraid of what it meant. At least I think you were. You picked up your crumpled pants off my floor and bolted out the door as fast as you could. It hurt but I had other things I had to dig for then; I had to find them and I had to tear at them. They needed to know I was there...

The last time. Yes, the last time. You brought that game with you again; tried to play by the same rules. But I had rewritten the rules; reinvented the game in all those years. Did you really think I would be the same? I still let you but I was always over-ridden with the urge to hurt you as I had hurt them. Always holding back before I took it too far. Didn't you feel the hesitation in my hands on your throat; squeezing but holding back knowing how far I could go. I enjoyed the fight; the struggle but it was a lot of work, forcing myself somewhere I wasn't entirely comfortable being anymore.

You know, it was the moments in between and after that meant something more to me. The moments when you lied in my arms choking back a sob, running your hands over me, confessing what had been happening to you; those moments meant... something. It's not like I didn't know you were going to run again. I attract men like you. I am the in-between girl; something interesting to occupy the time until the next girl comes along. Maybe I do it on purpose; I don't know. But you should know it wasn't just you. You weren't the only one that was leading me here. I knew you couldn't love me. And I didn't love you, but I felt something. You know what it was?... When I was trapped in a small house in the deep North taking care of my ill grandmother. I was exhausted, worried, tired, emotionally spent and everyday... every single day I was gone you got online and talked to me. Poked and prodded me to find out how I felt about you, sending me sexy messages, telling me about your Christmas plans, your cute little sisters... I had been trying to not feel anything for you at that point, just trying to have sex and move on like I did with everyone else. I didn't want to feel anything for you because I knew it would make you run faster. But you pushed me; wanted to know... What did you think was going to happen if you kept doing that? Kept coming at me? Kept trying to get under my skin? Didn't you think it was going to spark something in me? Why push if you didn't really want me? If you didn't really want to know?

But you pushed and we got too close and you ran. I expected it but it still hurt. I knew I was going to appear soon in your written history. I guess we all want to know we make an impact on the lives we move through. We want to be the hero for a little while. It's not entirely your fault. I had been trying to separate myself from the world for years at that point; do you know what it feels like to stand at your doorway and not be able to take the step beyond it? Unable to deal with the world that lays beyond; cringing when strangers touch you...

Is this the confession you wanted? The truth from me you were searching for? Yes I felt something. I'm glad I played with your sexuality and textuality. Sometimes it hurts to see you so happy. But I have loved and lived before; others have laid in my arms trying to take something from me. I just don't know what I can give anymore. I don't even really know what it is you want. What do you want? What are you thinking? What?

You have given me words and I have used them.
You have given me thoughts and I have twisted them.
You have touched me and in that moment I let it happen.
But I can't always be... can't always be... can't always...

It's done now, isn't it?

A Wall of Black Birds

My vision is filling up with tears. I feel feathers sliding against me at your touch. This world contracting to only the sensation of your skin against mine. Your breasts move against me; the warmth of each fleshy mound settling into the folds of my hands. Have you traveled far for me? Have you come to sit beside me in moment of rushing silence?...

I had something to say to you but when I saw you striding down the street all thought and coherence left me with the gentle flowing of your hair down your shoulders. You have always tasted of sweet distraction.

When you opened the gate to the yard, you startled the flock of birds hopping about searching for tasty little hard-bodied insects scurrying in the lawn. They flew up into a wall of black announcing your presence with a unified calling echoing through the neighborhood. The slicked-eyed neighbors poked their heads over their fences and whispered in conspiratorial voices. "Who is that now? That tall, swaying-hipped, crazy looking chick? Who is that? What is she doing there? I don't think she's wearing a bra! And blazing red stilettos? Who the hell does she think she is?"

With you standing at the bottom of my garden steps I start to wonder what I did to bring you here? Was I silently praying for you in my dreams? Was my subconscious wishing for you? You bat your delicate eyelashes at me and gently purse your lips...

"Aren't you happy to see me?"
"It's been along time. And the last time..." I trail off.
"The last time..." You glide your fingers over your heart, "We both suffered last time." You tug at the buttons of your blouse and suddenly I am in the past, racing through a field running after you down a dusty path. The police were close behind, shouting words I couldn't make out but was sure were profanities. You ran like a deer; gracefully, quickly, head long through the tall grass. I was close behind, my lungs burning, my legs aching.

"Stop! You crazy bitches! Stop!"
"Fuck that pig!" You screamed back over your shoulder. You still had one of the rocks your had thrown through their windshield in your hand. You were laughing wildly like a good-time girl on a crazy caper; I was afraid we were going to die at the hands of two big, angry, sure-to-be-rape-happy cops. I waited for a bullet to tear through my back. You turned your beautiful crazy eyes on me, "Come on!" you laughed reaching for my hand and pulling me down a steep embankment. I looked back long enough to see one of the cops falling head over heels down the hill as we cleared the train tracks and dove into the tunnel beyond.

You pulled me into a decaying building on the other side of the train yard.
"We can hide in here. They won't find us. They're too stupid."
"You're fucking nuts! You know that, right?" I said between gasps trying to catch my breath; my lungs still burning like they had hot coals dropped down them. My legs were shaking; I thought about how nice it would be to collapse right there. I didn't though, for fear of looking like a pussy in front of you. I wanted to be tough for you. To be crazy like you; an Amazon in a leather jacket fearlessly screaming "Pig!" into a 200lbs bigoted cop's face. I wanted to let go, just let go of my stupid little safe life and embrace some recklessness. Embrace you.

"Serves them right. Calling us dykes like that. I shoulda done worse." You turned that fearless stare on me and I couldn't help but admire your unthoughtful bravery; and I couldn't help notice your unbound breasts heaving under your thin white t-shirt. Each breathe causing them to rise and fall like mountains of soft flesh; quivering to be touched. I clenched my fists at my side and looked down. Suddenly your hand was on my chin raising my eyes to meet yours. Every inch of me filled with longing; my body ached with it, the core of me burned with it. You must have seen it in my eyes.

You met my lips with a soft kiss wrapping your arms around me playing your fingers along my back. Suddenly my hands were under your shirt, sliding over your nipples soon replaced with my mouth. I gasped out loud when your fingers slipped below the belt of my jeans. Time hiccuped and we were on the floor tearing at each others clothing; trying to find an opening. Slipping hands along skin, lapping at each other like hungry dogs, fighting for breath. Your skin shone in the dusty sunlight through the dirty window as you held my glistening face in your hands and gently mouthed, "I love you."

I snap back to the present. You are there. At the base of my garden steps. Your long hair shifting in the breeze, your breasts pressing against your shirt (still not wearing a bra after all these years), your eyes still full of that crazy glinting energy. You are framed with a wall of black birds all calling out your name. I stand in the doorway of the safe little life I built for myself when you left. The hole in my heart carefully covered over now. I want for nothing. For nothing. You left and I convinced myself I needed nothing. If I step away from this door my safety will be gone. My life fractured for sure. I clench my fists at my side. You chew on the inside of your cheek and for the first time since I met you I can see a nervousness under your smile...

"Aren't you happy to see me?"

Suddenly I am down the stairs and taking you all in my arms. I am forcing my mouth against yours and our lips are meeting in a moment of searing heat. We are both gasping for breath; all the memories of your skin rushing back to me at once. Your body sliding up against mine; no air between us. Chest to chest, eye to eye. Tears are sliding down my face.

"I've never been happier to see anyone in my entire life..."

Glitter Wound

I dislike your euphoria. I would like to rip it from you plucking out your eye as a reminder of my presence in your life. I think you forget me too easily at the passing of lithe legs and perky tits. If I kept your eye you could watch my movements from the bell jar on the shelf. I could carry you in my pocket, take you out and roll you over my palm. You could look up at me forever.

My sucking chest wound is a portal to inner lands of gooey organs in a landscape of red bones and sinew. I am an organ grinder, a liver tap dancer, a heart eater. My threats are real; I store them under my tongue to run against my teeth in times of dire need. I have sore spots in my cheeks where they rub to the point of agitation. I feel agitated every day running in tight circles around the interior of my mind. Wipe your feet before you come in here.

When this light hits me; when my eyes are momentarily blinded in its' bathing, I stare at the darkened faces of the audience looking for the whites of their eyes. I reflect this light off my skin and highlight it on each individual feature. In these moments I am a swaying goddess with my lips parted in the trembling ecstasy of the intellectual erotics. I am a glitter wound in the minds of the impartial parties to the indoor reign of this queen in bone corsets.

Come to my wounding; fall under my hand. Let me lace my fingers in your hair to wrench your head back to my mouth. I kiss like glass, running blood down your throat like a predatory lover. I want to be your worship; your skin kneading under my fingers, catch you in my teeth with little edges of happiness. Stand naked in front of me as I have stood naked in front of them; do you feel my eyes sliding over you? Can you feel it down in your nerve endings, dancing with a fevered pitch of unconscious pleasure? No one escapes my singular notice; my sweetest poisoned apple. I came here. I do not intend to leave.

Look up from my heart lined pocket, little glitter diamond, and be forever with me.

My Secret Drawer

Black hair and intelligent eyes; such an insanity I lived with him. Six short weeks and we tore the city apart; my first explorations into a very new world. So much time spent with our clothing on the floor; slipping into darkened spaces, throwing ourselves about a crowded dance floor, sliding vinyl against vinyl, chasing dreams down alleyways. Our academic lives soon separated and the last time I saw him I was staring out the back window of a bus as he got smaller and smaller in the distance.

Brown hair and brown eyes; skin dark with a Mediterranean heritage. He was the first to own my heart and I loved him with an abandon that only the very young have. We tore each other apart in a search for some kind of understanding that we were frankly too inexperienced to have. We hurt each other on principle and cried in each others' arms. We loved as only a disaster could hating each other in the end; but we shared the early bloom of blushing cheeks regretting only the harm we could inevitably do each other. Our love was too much to last and he went off to find the children I could never give him. In the many years since that time, with the pain now a distant memory, I only hope that he found that family he was searching for and has grown happy in the intervening years.

Black hair and blue eyes; blue eyes absolutely treacherous and dangerous in his possession. So obsessed with himself that he could not see how he affected others. My returner; for some reason unable to give me up. I marched away over and over again; screamed in his face, explained with cool reason, or simply ignored his calls, but still he darkened my doorstep with a near clockwork series of reappearances. Every time his heart is broken he seeks me out and I simply can not say no to those villainous blue eyes.

Long brown hair and an accent; a voice so sweet with a mystery so deep that I could not stop my curiosity. No matter how many hours we spent talking or languishing in each others' arms I could not entirely ferret out all of his mystery (usually such a simple task for me). Flirtation became a game, a long standing battle of who would break first. All though our encounters were brief, the intensity surprised me every time and I have never forgotten him.

Light brown hair and dark eyes; a beautiful poet I stole from a darkened rain-drenched street on a fast-paced night. A short affair with all the trappings of whirling dance of flaming hearts; in and out of each others' beds as fast as we could. My life so unhinged at that point I could barely eat; he saw what I was clearly and fled before I could sink my teeth into his heart. A short game, but significant none the less for no other reason than the quick work of words I made upon his departure. You gave me a lovely poem, boy.

Blonde hair and blue eyes; that long hair slipping into his eyes as he leaned over me with a gentle smile to plant a kiss upon my lips. How could I not fall head over heels for a man who took me home to meet his dog? He pronounced his love for me shyly over the pounding speakers of a vibrating dance floor; told me tales of far off places I may never go; told me stories I did not want to hear, cooked for me naked with a silly grin on his face, kissed my shoulders to wake me up when he felt randy. We locked ourselves in a small room for a year much of it spent in the bath; raced from new adventure to new adventure and took the dog for long walks by the beach. I loved him to the point of near insanity which unfortunately was too much for his delicate sensibilities; I was a pressure on his life he simply did not need and I needed more than he could give. He is my life's single greatest regret and single most cherished memory but I will always need more.

Hair of many colours; my lover of many, many years all seeming to bleed into one another now. Over a decade we have known each other; first thrust together on a very drunken night on the pitch-black floor of my, then, best friend's bathroom; banging my head against the door. Funny how many years pass between meetings and how we just seem to pick up where we left off. We each write the other into our lives for a short affair then he wanders off to find someone he can actually love. The nights are hot, the skin sticks together, we fight each other for control but neither of us win.

Red hair; a funny man whom I met in a funny way. Our entaglements always brief, naked and unusual. No other man has made me feel like more of a whore and more adored. His explorations into my closet always amusing as I assured him it was not strange for him to pick out shoes for me to wear. Believe me, I have had stranger requests. Poisoner. The last time I saw him he was tripping over his tongue with apologies as I turned my back full of anger marching on. I doubt we will meet again.

In these years there have been others; quick encounters, names I have forgotten, a girl whose virginity I took, names I did not even bother to get, bathroom stalls in loud clubs, strange ceilings I woke up to, a queen who kissed the skin off my lips, an inexperienced young man I taught all my tricks to, quick mistakes, lively bed-mates, and a good story or two. These years have not been uneventful. I think I will close my eyes and go to sleep now.

Original Land

The circle of stones in the field across the beaten dirt road was overgrown with weeds. To get to it I had to trudge past the decaying barn with its' splintering boards and rusting nails careful to avoid stepping on an errant piece of jagged metal. The gate had collapsed sometime ago and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The neighbor's cows crazed the hillsides freely up and down the valley; my mother kept her garden firmly locked from their devastating defoliating presence but they wandered our unused pastures snuffling out tender shoots of grass.

My dog ran ahead and chased them off occasionally running into a mother cow with calf who would chase him in return with a hot snort. We made our way up the field climbing carefully through the barb wire fence, me holding it up so the dog could slip under, his belly close to the ground to avoid catching his fur in the wire. It had happened once before and I had knelt to cut him free with my pocket knife as he whimpered quietly. He sported a funny patch of shortened fur for weeks after.

We climbed up the grassy hill with stunted birch trees rustling their papery leaves in the wind at us with our passing. The dog disappeared and reappeared in the underbrush searching for ground birds to scare up into the air with a leaping bark and a wagging tail. I stopped and picked daisies along the way until I had a large bundle in my hand. I kept my eyes on the surrounding ground searching for pieces of white bone that the past winter's frost heaves had exposed to the elements. The mountain sheep would die of hunger or predators during the winter and their bones would become part of the landscape. I often searched for their weathered skulls to take home with me adding to a growing collection.

The rushing creek babbled at the bottom of the field swirling around our swimming hole where I had scraped my leg the day before. Fat grasshoppers jumped into the air as my pant legs disturbed the tall grass; their brethren calling to them in the vast expanse of the field. The sun beat down on me scenting the world with the smell of drying grass and baking mud. The original homesteader of this land settled here more than a century ago; he sold goods to the miners and raised pack mules. A tragic small pox pandemic ripped through the neighboring native tribe and he buried them in trenches because the glut of bodies were too many for individual graves. In the very early spring up in these hills you can hear child-like laughing in the distance; the ghosts of dark-haired children running through the fields.

When I reached the apex of the hill the great circle of ancient stones was waiting for me. Each boulder was covered in red lichen creeping into a different pattern on the surface. These rocks had worked themselves into this circle thousands of years ago as the earth moved and bits of the mountain above crumbled down. I scrambled atop of the biggest boulder situating myself to have a sweeping view of the valley below me; the cabin we lived in, the old shed, the broken barn, the lush belt of foliage snaking along the creek bed, the languishing fields stretching out before me golden in the sun. The dog settled onto the dusty ground in the shade of the great boulder. I closed my eyes, inhaled the dusty golden scent of this original land and felt home sink down deep into my bones.

It's Many Years Since I Fell

My secret drawer holds all the remnants of my past lovers; those letters, those mixed tapes, those photos, those little notes written on bright yellow paper. Sometimes I take the items out and turn them over again and again in my hands trying to remember the feelings that brought me to now; thin pieces of folded paper holding all the secrets of my past.

The crows are sitting on the telephone wire across the alley way. My cat watches them from the window making little clicking noises of annoyance at their tantalizing presence. They call to each other in echoing voices of a time before time. A universe unfolding held under their wings; carrying our importance in their mouths. The seeds of us planted in fertile ground; each black feather a story you have forgotten and should have remembered. My cat flicks his tail turning his golden eyes to me; such a cunning devotion. He curls in my lap and purrs soft love extending each claw as an echo to his wildness. My own little panther in my bed.

This bed, some days, seems so strange to me. There has been traffic here; the only constant being me. I open my eyes to the filmy light streaming in from the window casting long shadows down my body and onto the far wall. The wind is whipping against the window, rattling the frame and clinking little pieces of metal and glass together creating the tinkling music of my morning life. I have woken to a storm. I have woken to rain pelting the streets clean. I have woken alone. I stretch my limbs testing my ability to move; I get up and go find something to eat.

I sit in my living room and stare out at the darkening day; the dark clouds bring down the sky so you can touch it. You can feel it sliding over your skin; dampening your hair, matting it to your head. The fall has come and my tomato plants have died waiting through the long winter months for the spring to touch their leaves and waken their cold slumber. The fruit is rotting. The vines have slackened their hold on the world; I settle into winter like a warm bath enjoying the dark cold. I always was a strange girl.

I stare out the window and think of you. I wonder if it was love or some semblance there of that led me to opening my door on the little world I fight to keep people out of. I write the world falling and you write it in action. I recall confession; your arms around me searching for... something. Some sort of truth I could never offer. "Sometimes you look so sad..." I know. I have sadness written into my cells; a DNA-copy of my father's insanity and my mother's strength and everything she gave up to have that strength. I like to think that my body is somewhere you can find comfort; in the softness of skin and understanding voice. I am, however, beginning to realize that no one offers me that comfort in return. I have spent a lifetime filling the empty spaces in the souls of others; I have been offering pieces of myself to stop the tears from falling from your eyes but when it comes to be my turn to seek comfort you are already up and on your way to the door. "Have a good night! It was nice to see you!" A kiss goodbye, and the door shuts and I fumble with what is left.

I am left here with my dieing tomato plants and the crows calling their names down to my cat; both of them knowing the universe before time began. They turn their eyes on me, tell me their animal love; I go to my secret drawer and drop one more memento into a world burning with a heart that refuses to learn.

You Held Me Under

Strange now, that you would come here to find me. I was being so very quiet, trying not to move lest I create a noise that would turn those eyes on me. Those glittering eyes; I have never been sure if it's love or malice that stares back at me.

And I remember. I did not forget. I remember your hands on my skin, sliding up and down my side. In that moment I felt like gold. Golden like the dawn all these people are moving towards. Seeking out light in a dark world not unlike little rats scurrying towards oblivion. A reverence for all those dirty little things and all those dirty little words. You felt like a sexual superhero. Funny, I felt like a murderer. I felt the walls bleeding. I felt guilty. I felt demonic. I felt a familiar darkening inching into my skin as the moon was blown out like a birthday candle on this sweetly delicate cake of sky and frosting clouds.

I looked in the mirror and saw my hair flare out to a crown of fire. I ripped open the window and howled at that starless sky with all that fire surrounding me. She whispered to me, "I knew it. I knew it all along. You are a vampire. Some sort of evil walking the earth. What are you taking from us?" Am I so vampiric? You seem to think I am. At least I think you do. Maybe I am confused. And then it screams inside of me and I break into a million pieces wandering through this world with an emptiness that can only be reflected in a vampiric want feeding on torn hearts and forced words. My bloodied feet pound the ground as I race down the back alleys searching for you; searching for anybody. When did the world get so empty? If you could only see the beast I have become.

Back in this room I lay myself down on that big bed slowly wrapping my body in soft silken sheets as I cradle my mind in the memories of strange lovers who made me happy with their tenderly spoken lies. Until they made me unhappy with their unwanted truths. Every wound collapses in on itself creating an individual universe of gasping winking stars. I am a black hole; drawing everything near me, into me and tearing it to pieces. You see, each of you moved so easily onto those better things; those better things than me. It is not so easy for me; I am trapped in this cell, screaming at the walls, waiting for the night to fall so I can sneak out and feign normalcy among these crowds of happy giggling sycophantic lovers staring glassy-eyed at each others mouths, hungry for freedom. I hate them.

I hate the day. I hate strangers touching me. I hate this pain. I hate talking. I hate these interlopers. I hate these empty rooms. I hate your secrets. But I love you and I guess that counts for something... I just don't know what it is.

A Textual Romance and a Passive Suicide

He plied me with words, each more sweet than the last. Every syllable tasted of pomegranate juice slipping down my chin and sticking to my lips. My fingers were coated in the slickness of it; I licked each digit savoring the tactile response to the languishing touch. Velvet tongue to softest skin. Words like hands sliding over me, into me, through me.

He wrote me pages and pages of text; miles of cursive verse extolling every little crevice of our twisting relationship. The pages wrapped around me; curling me in a blanket of intellectual dalliances. His words slipped down my throat scratching all the way; filling up my belly with swimming letters of jumbled importance. I put my fingers down my throat and tossed them back up.

I stand in my kitchen with bottles of little words taking over the shelves like an invading army. They spill down the counters and puddle on the floor creating a mess; piling up in the corners, filling up the sink. I search through the clutter for milky jars of potent pills instead; something to quiet the chittering and chattering of his textual romance. I down onetwothreefourfive and onetwothreefourfive more; slide to the ground and cradle sentences of longing and love to my chest. When those words turned bitter and the pomegranate turns to rot; I poison myself in little ways with the love of a troubled man.

When I lie down, close my eyes and commit my little passive suicide, I sigh terribly. This never meant anything and words will never explain it.

The Writer's Confession

I see you eying your pants lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. You have been lying in my arms waiting for the moment to get up, collect those crumpled things, spout a few pleasantries and quickly exit out my door. All these men, eying their fucking pants on my floor.

Funny, I don't remember wishing for this. I mean, I know I created her... Created this version of myself... But I created her for an artistic outlet; to be a strong image, an interesting examination of my sexuality. I never meant for her to become this. I never meant to be a sexual fantasy (or maybe I did but not in this way). I can not exist in that static form; she is only a part of me (admittedly the most perfected part) but still only a part. The real me is much messier; comes with many more complications. I bleed, spend some nights doubled over in pain, cry at silly things, write to the point of obsession, isolate myself from others, some days I can't even leave my apartment; I'm neurotic, creative, demanding, violent, intelligent, insular, self-loathing and self-loving all at once. Those complications shouldn't be so hard to deal with; we are all complicated monsters, aren't we?

This is the one part of my life I never got right. Most days I feel like opting out; feel like giving up even at this young age. My body turns on me, cripples me with sickness/pain and it makes me feel like turning up the volume on my isolation. The less I have to do with people the less I have to feel. Or more aptly, feel for them. Anyone who makes the unrecommended move towards my arms soon finds the fire burning behind my eyes; I do not want to be this insane so maybe turning off/ turning away from human contact is the better option.

My mother was 15 years older than I am now when she made that decision. She turned her back on the world with purpose and created a home for herself in her little cabin in the woods far from the implications and interruptions of the rest of the world. She tells me, "The only thing that makes me depressed is other people, so I stay away from other people..." I feel like I am on that same path; like I'm arriving at that station even earlier with no children to link me to the world (I never wanted them; I still don't)... Is it my DNA that makes me like this; my mother and I; alike but not alike. Funny, I feel connected to her but so disconnected from everything else.

Has this confession meant anything? Probably not. There will still be crumpled pants on my floor but with increasingly less frequency; I will still feel the twist and pull of amplified emotions, I will still hear thoughts from your head before you speak them, my body will continue it's revolt, and I will still stand in this doorway, stark naked, and wish passion was for something better than this...

A Precarious Situation

All the world waits humped over in silence. The purring engine to the polemic mimicry of the universe doubts our existence. We were never here and we argue over our importance. The jungle breathes in the darkness caring not if we live or die. Vegetation does not stop for instances of the mind; it carries on eating up any rotting tissue in its' way.

There is an eroticism to this rotting; this disintegration of flesh, muscle, bone with the wet slipping of slimy bellied rats from one shore line to another. "I did not think so many were undone." Sitting on the river bank watching violet light seep into the ground water I ponder our undulations in the foreign lands eating up derivative elements of hard tasting candy. The wind blows my hair to a moving crown and I wiggle my toes in the mud.

The jungle breathes... waits in silence for the world to end. Waters lap at the shore of a timeless sea where pearls are little more than oceanic pebbles drifting into the eyes of dead sailors. "Look! Those are pearls that were his eyes!" The world waits... Watching... Breathless as the towers of ancient civilizations burn on the horizon with the shuttering rhythmic cry of over zealous demi-gods who undone so many. The world holds it breath and the jungle shivers creeping over the long dead assimilations of an industrialized society. Great machines of war mean nothing to the creeping vines and skittering beetles of the corpus genus...

In all of this wasted ironic mutations I lie naked watching the stars on a river bank dressed in the vestiges of a gluttonous race. Each star winks at me with a pearl-like eye telling me the secrets of unused emotions vibrating from one existential relapse to another. Each dead star brings me its' light as a dim memory of another existence in a futile race to arms. I slowly bury myself in the sexuality of mud like a cryogenic frog, testing the limits of each wriggling limb, and wait for the world to start all over again...

The Wrong Ones

A slow *slip-slop-drip* dripping on the floor. A kiss like fighting; fighting for air, for breath, for meaning, for reason... Kiss me harder. Kiss me like you actually mean it. This affection is an illusion; a story you made up to get me into that big soft bed. A story to run you fingers between my legs; leaving me in a want of shivering sinking pseudo-ecstasy. A shiny voice chittering in the back of my head, "It's a lie. Never trust warm hands and a buttery voice. Never ever trust blue eyes..."

Truthfully, I should have never trusted this passion I felt for you. Passion lights upon my eyes and heaps upon my shoulders like the baggage of a thousand passenger trains. I am so very very tired of being a train station... A place you stop on your way to something better. A hold over; a momentary relapse of straining meaning. "Let me take this North West passage to your legs; this mountain rail over your breasts, a stop-gap measure at your mouth..." Do not bother to wave on your way to that golden land; I have already turned my eyes upward.

Have I chosen this isolation or has it chosen me? I have never been entirely sure. I seem to remember coming to this room and thinking it looked comfortable. Did I think I wanted to spend my life here? I can not remember. The walls are now painted with my heart; the colour of chocolate, cream, roses, and fear. That dripping is no longer sensual; an act of fingers in careful places, but merely the annoying ticking of the clockwork lives of my neighbors. Little ants scurrying from one hill to another... I see the world pass through a cloudy window... I refuse to acknowledge its' passing... My colour is red and it bleeds through the walls of my inner most places... Pain is all I have left to give.

I find myself wishing for pureness and a slow pressing of skin to skin but I wake up wrapped in sweat-soaked sheets choking on some already fading dream. I twist around myself; face myself in the mirror stained with the tiny drip drops of another life. I face this ghost of myself; stare at the lines etched in moving granite, the haunting paleness of my skin, and the people living behind my eyes. The ghosts of fingers trail over my underwear and up my back; I would shiver if I had any feelings left in my nerve endings.

I live in a world no one else can see and only love the wrong ones...

Flap Your Arms

I am afraid to walk straight lest I fall into your arms. Every line I draw seems to lead to my feelings for you. I watch you put your hand on the small of her back; I shake my head trying to rid my eyes of the image. I hiss through my teeth and turn my eyes upwards. Crows blacken out the sky calling in time with the crying voice inside of me. My vision darkens filling up with black feathers; I feel feathers sprouting on my back, on the inside of my arms, along the crown of my head. I flap my arms and fly guiltily away.

I romance the words. Make them do my bidding. I call down your name and wrap it in every dark utterance I have. My mouth rambles around lost incantations as I force my lips to forget your touch. I kept your hair. I weaved it into my own. Some small piece of you to carry with me forever. I fall with no one there to catch me so I tumble through darkened space until I hit the ground. Falling is not so bad; it's only the landing that hurts so much. Maybe I should flap harder...

My body thrives in the night but my mind wanders lighting upon my often erroneous love. I am never right. I exist in wrongness. I dress my limbs in it like a bright robe of off-colours. I am vampiric in my wants suffering for a nothingness that fills up my chest. I raise my arms in front of my face as feathers glide against one and another. Feathers slide down my throat to give this darkness in me flight. I vomit it up with my undiluted love; I choke on feathers. My want flies free and I feel nothing... and everything.

I flap my arms and fly furiously on...

In a Time of Furious Qualities

I touch this beast inside of me. I feel her moving against me; twisting through my deepest hollows of muscle and bone. She shifts and drags her teeth across the tissue of my heart. She howls with such a ferocity that I worry the people who I am trying to avoid will turn their eyes to me at the sound. She strains against my skin and puts her fingers behind my eyes. She hisses for the love she has lost and the love she still searches for.

The intensity I feel comes from her. It flows off of me in waves and slams into the unsuspecting targets of my carefully guarded emotions. They stand in the face of a bright red hurricane and crumple like trees with weak roots. The beast howls for the world to burn down around me; howls for the fires to desolate a space around me so I can stand in the center of the burnt ground with a burning heart.

Passion leaks between us and I contort myself into strange positions as I fall to the ground writhing in a textual ecstasy. Her growling becomes the constant background humming to my daily life. I pretend to be a normal girl; polite, calm, accommodating... but when they come to examine me closely; to pry into my little insular world they find a black-coated mound of teeth vibrating to taste their presence. She paces just behind my eyes and gazing upon me they can feel her rearing up with glinting claws and a pale smile.

And she wants to taste you, this beast inside of me. She wants your love, your heart and a burning fury to match her own. She twists and I scream. My teeth sharpen as she moves closer to the surface; closer to the rib cage that is holding her back like the bars of a prison cell. She strains against my heart; forces it to beat after I have spent all of this time trying to stop it. Trying to quiet my rapid pulse; quit my fractured veins; turn my heart to deadened meat. She demands I live and I love and I taste flesh.

She wants us to be one unstoppable force and she wants more than all of this.

Darkened Hearts

My eyes flew open to the sound of my heart breaking...

I was trapped in the dark and screaming. I was curled around myself trying to keep my insides from falling to the outside. In my dreams I was safe but here... Here I was a victim in your arms. You had those arms as strong as steel wrapped around me and I could see your hands were soaked in blood.

If I were to bolt from this room running with my hair streaming wildly behind me, would you give chase? My legs ached to run. To run from these feelings. To run from this burning pain in my chest. To run from those bed sheets soaked in my blood.

The fear was deafening until I could only hear the sputtering off-kilter beat of my own broken heart filling up my head. I wanted your arms around me. I wanted to push myself closer to you until you completely enveloped me. I wanted to disappear into you.

I struggled to stand on wobbly legs with your arms holding me up. You whispered in my ear that everything would be okay if I were to only stay close to you. I wanted to believe that. With every last ion vibrating a mimicry of the movements of the universe quivering in my body, I wanted to believe the words hanging in the air between us. I wanted your heart to keep me alive; to bolster the weakness in my own so I could stand without fear or frailty.

When I collapsed to the floor, you crouched over me with tears in your eyes. You spoke softly, murmuring, "I love you..." I closed my eyes and listened to my heart stop beating...

Change in the Face of Frozen Souls

I can feel myself changing and I do not want to. Those men made a beast of me and I do not need you to twist me further into this fuselage of broken down heart tissue. I can already tell you do not really care. You are another demon in my path whispering false love in my ear leading me down a road to bright red hells burning in the depths of my mind. I cut my eyes out to stop seeing but I still see you.

I keep this bed an empty terrain for a reason. It keeps my soul cold so I can face each day with a renewed sense of ennui. I float from this place to the next through the throngs of diseased little people so caught up in their own little world altering dreams. I touch none of them and they do not remember me passing. Do not catch the glimpse of my darting eyes beneath the curtain of my hair. I just push past them and move on. They do not see me.

If my heart were to pry open the light would begin to spill out and I would blind all of those around me. I become darkness but light stays trapped in my tightened chest. I breath little bits of stars that break off and find their way to my eyes. You can see my eyes glittering at you in the dark if you look hard enough. If you only open your own eyes and stare at me from across this empty terrain. I bleed red blood full of diamonds in the space between us and peel my lips back from my teeth to let words collapse the distance from you to me.

I dream like a ghost and only love the wrong ones...

Too Much (A Witch's Heart)

With downcast eyes you whisper, "this is too much;" but I know the most intimate act between a man and a woman is to have him take your hand and lead you through a crowded room. You trace your fingers down my wrist as you lead me around the twisted throngs of careful on-lookers locked into their own tragic romances slipping shiny little glances at other parts of the room. Glitter falls from the ceiling and lights upon my skin as you wrap yourself around my form in rhythm with this tribal beat as a thousand feet pound the floor shaking the false columns of a lost Babylon. I rewrite this Odyssey as I sink into the ocean of your arms with my eyes half closed and your lips on my neck...

Odysseus was captured by Calypso's languishing eyes for seven years but I think I am Circe stealing your men and turning them to beasts. A Wicked Witch of East Van living on a mountain of internalized fears and broken hearts. This room is full of nymphs turning their bright eyes to us in a winking moment of tantalizing breath. A two-sexed goddess controls the air around the stage and all eyes cast upon her but your lips remain upon my neck and your hands stray down my hips playing out the beat of your lust.

When we flee this room full of the beating hearts of breathless dancers and slip into the darkness of the city stealing down the back streets of dimly lit houses, you stop me and kiss me under a tree dripping in the last vestiges of summer. You run your hands under my dress caressing your way to your own desires. Did you worship me in that moment? Maybe even love me for just a second? But I am just a nymph, only vexing in the light of passion and good for very little else. I feel fall creeping it's cold hands into my hair and the wind begins to blow from the North to chill my witchy heart.

This big bed is where I am undone and slip into a troubled sleep. You stand in the corner and whispered 'I have better things to do...' I can feel the fall turn even colder as I search for my clothing to cover my now seemingly useless nakedness. I can feel the new winter creeping further into my heart as I turn to leave. The dawn, once warm, now turns to frost in the face of my anger; all passion leaking from me as the summer vibrates on and on.

You whisper, 'I never meant for this to happen. I did not mean for it to end this way..." I look back into your sad eyes turning onward to my newly built kingdom of ice and the completion of my wintered witch's heart... You are right... It should have never ended this way.

The Angry Dawn

Your words are all apologies and sugar. You are pouring them in my ear flicking your tongue in and out seductively. Every time you smile, I make the wrong choice. Somehow your hands clutching at my hips inspires a quiet enthusiasm under my skin. This should be easier, but it never is.

Now I am marching out into an unwanted dawn with anger bubbling like acid behind my eyes. How does sugar turn to acid so quickly? How can a few words make me want to hurt you so badly? This would have been so simple for you; such a simple string of actions would have made me feel like a human instead of a fetish just for one night. This should have been easier, but it just gets harder.

What am I left with? All this anger turning to isolation and a resolve to sever any fingers that may dare lay against my skin. You poison me and walk away unscathed. Walk away into a world that seems so much easier for you with all your excuses and sugary acidic talk. It should be easier to hate you, but this all just gets so much harder.

I lie down in a coffin of my own anger and close my eyes. This will always be harder for me than it will be for you. Leave me now and stop thinking about me. I want to be in the arms of all this quiet. Leave me with no backward glances so I can be trapped in this angry dawn forever and never open my eyes again.

Latent

I cradled each of you in my arms over the many years between here and then. You with tears in your eyes, you with the memory of her still on your lips and you shivering from the fire of long lost explosions. I loved each of you in my own way and for a moment removed myself from the entrapped maze of my own mind to coo my understanding in your ears. To stroke your hair back while tracing my fingers down your cheeks. I loved each of you and forgot myself.

I never meant for each of you to hate me so completely. I thought I was doing the right thing when I walked away and tried to stop thinking of you. I just could not extract you fully from my mind. You all were buried so completely with your claws deep in my cerebrum. I convulsed under your memories and cast myself under the false walls of my little cell.

Now I have decided it is probably better to turn my back on the world. To refuse the stroke of a lover's fingers and hate my need for human involvement. Maybe I should be blind with my own fingers in my eyes carefully caressing the inside of my skull until I can think without remorse and love what I have become. I fear nothing and never leave.

Thrust and Parry

We seem to be writing circles around each other on either side of this invisible demarcation line we have drawn down the center of the city. Maybe one day you will look up and I will be on the other side of the desk, peppered with the intimates of your life, with a wry smile and a wicked wink. That is, if you ever look up. In the meantime, there is an invisible thrust and parry and I, for one, am not sure who is thrusting and who is parrying...

We both have teeth and we are gnawing at every literary nuisance that gets in our way. You in your little forest on the other side of town with a pretty young thing wrapped in your arms. Me in my carefully built fortress meant to keep interlopers from the walls who always seem to sneak in anyways. I should have set better traps...

I would interrupt you as you hold court to your glassy eyed admires but I am only passing through. I have to run. You see, I am just so busy with all this nothing to do. There are places I need to be and people I need to turn a blind eye too. I need to get all these words out before they turn to stone inside my head and my skull becomes a large rattling maraca keeping time with the tragically melodramatic songs of the world. I really am in a rush. I really must run...

Maybe we will meet again without our clothing and lay down our swords. Maybe we will finally write a straight line and close our eyes to the unnecessary noise of cluttered hearts. Maybe the pen is mightier than the writer and soft lips can hold the truth and demise of the hour at bay. Maybe one day... just one day will be enough...

Nightmare Landscape

They came to clean this tainted ground with their fevered dancing. Spinning in circles over the newly turned earth. A hundred of a hundred severed heads of refugees had been buried here. Each mouth gaping in terror spilling into the darkened earth. The stench and the rot seeping into my skin. Silent mouths screaming at me. Each eye a rotting accusation that I had nothing to do with.

They are dancing on this poison ground trying to drive spirits away; appease a hundred of a hundred hungry souls. This earth has been paved over. All clean now. See! No death took place here! It was all in your mind... But they know what happened and dance faster and faster with the movements of a thousand cultures. Spinning with feathers in their hair, fans in their hands, skirts flying, feet pounding... I can feel the skulls of the dead underneath my bare feet crying out for peace.

My god what has happened here? So many heads... but where are their bodies? An endless plot of severed head land underneath the pavement of the driveway. Built into the very foundation of the house. Holding up the rails of the fence. Quick! We must dance faster! Harder! We must clean this land. Send these souls to rest... calm these spirits... sooth these gods... Who did this!? What evil hand took these lives and left this horror beneath the ground? Dance harder! Throw back your head! Wail in pain! Raise your hands to heaven and ask the gods to deliver these souls to peace!

I open my eyes wide and scream... This nightmare landscape firmly burnt behind my eyes I rise and walk on into a burning daylight of a troubled mind lost in a world of terrifying dreams.

A Beautiful Anger

With my anger finally spent, I collapsed into his arms. I had beat my fists with the strength of struggling butterflies against his chest and screamed until my voice dried up like a cracked desert floor. Even though I desperately tried to hold them back, tears streamed down my face, slipping down my neck and pooling along the edge of my breasts.

"Serve with a single heart," he mumbled into my hair as he pressed his lips to my head. I lifted my tear-filled eyes to his and screamed with the voice I thought I had lost. It was not words but a primal growling scream from the very roots of my being. A noise that seemed to grow to fill the entire space around us. The ground vibrated with my irritation shaking me loose from his grip. I closed my mouth and stepped back.

Now standing eye to eye with him and his haunting beauty, I found myself again. My conviction suddenly became clear in the face of his silent indifference. I was not a cog in his machine to be manipulated to his liking. The tears dried in my eyes. My skin hardened to stone and my mouth set it's self hard against my teeth.

I could crack words off like bullets. I could live or die without consequence. I could snap bones. I could stare into the eye of God and not flinch. I could kiss him and feel nothing.

"I am free," I turned on my heel and walked into the sun with no fear left in my beating heart and my anger long since gone.

The Furies Bring the Serpents

"Bring me the skin of David," she said.

We were born into Fury. Every death was preordained. They slit the throats of their innocent victims and we brought them serpents. Tormented them with their own evil as we dogged them through a thousand star lit hillsides and grassy plains.

They had bathed in the blood of virgins and howled with laughter. They had slaughtered their way through the homeland raping young flesh as they burnt down the homes of our countrymen. They killed each of us in the name of a twisted god-king, leaving us for dead in the hills of our motherland.

We were reborn in her image; unable to rest in this soft ground. Unable to join our sisters, for the pain we harbored in our breasts blackened out our sun and veiled the moon. We were reborn in blood and hate and rage. Reborn of the sword and baptized in vengeance. Our name is Justice; look upon our eyes and know your doom.

We have leveled this army. Ripped off their skin and hollowed out their eyes. We drank our victory from their very skulls. God-king now watched his glory fall as we danced in the flesh of our enemies. Our faces twisted in the elation of dispatched evil, we came to his throne in one final act of retribution.

"We want your crowned head and we shall have it. Scream the name of every dead child as you drown in the snakes of our unending pain. Cry in our arms and fear our hands."

And when that king was dead and his army returned to dust we could finally retire to the dreams of every harmed woman to be reborn in the violence of every lifted hand. Know that we are the serpents in the eyes of your victims and our anger will never rest.

Riot

He slammed the baton into the back of her head. She crumpled forward like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut and slumped to the ground in a heap. He was stunned by the force of the vibrations as they moved up his arm. Did he really hit her so hard?

He could not see through his visor clearly. He swung out wildly as the mass closed around him. The smoke was choking him; tearing his lungs up with acidic after-taste. He could hear the hollers and barked orders of his comrades and the screams of the placard-toting protesters. He could feel the crush of bodies descending on him. Panic enclosed his mind; fear gripped at his heart. Would he die here today? He struck out...

People were running. Crying out for their separated friends; crying out for medics. Fires were starting further down the street. A sergeant was yelling for a line to form. Cries of pain broke the air. And there she was... A dark pool of red blood flowing out from under her twisted neck like blooming crimson flowers on the pavement. Her strawberry blond hair was matted to her head and her spine was twisted into an impossible position. She was not moving. Why was she not moving?

The world dulled and became silent as he stared down at her. Had he really hit her so hard? His hands went numb. The numbness crept up his arms, spread across his shoulders and snaked tingling fingers into his scalp. He felt bodies moving around him. Shoving, screaming, falling, bleeding. He was rooted into this place. He could not move. Had he really hit her so hard? Her blood flowed towards him, pooled around his boots. He was awash in a ocean of her blood. His vision was turning red with the colour of her blood. Her blood was staining his mind. Her blood was tinting the world red... so very very red.

Something sharp and glass slammed into his face. His numb hands dropped the baton to the ground with a deafening clatter as he slipped to his knees through a sea of red. He suddenly found himself face to face with her. Her eyes were wide, frozen in terror, but her mouth was silent. He reached out for her hand and clasped it. It was very cold. O God, why had he hit her so hard?

His vision slipped into blackness as someone drug him away towards the flashing lights of an army of ambulances. He grasped at her hand as they pulled at him. He screamed as they tore him from her. The further away they took him the clearer her face became. As the red world turned to a blackest black her face burned itself onto his heart. 'O God, O God, O God... why did I hit her so fucking hard?'

Beast of God

I am that beast who made her way to you. My fur is black and my eyes glistening red. My teeth gleam perfect white and my claws are unmatched by your swords of nobility. I lie down at your feet in a bristling mass of growling temptation. I am never true.

I shift like tremors under your skin. A mountain of black fur moving like an ocean. Twisting into impossible positions but never taking my eyes off of you. I hunger and am never full.

I lick your leg like an adoring pet. I have seen the gates of hell where I loved demons with many heads and grotesque limbs. I have scoured the earth and heavens for tasty morsels of fleshy children. I have shoved my head under the hand of God and purred in his lap.

I am under every frightened child's bed. I run wild through dark razor-sharp thickets. I howl at the moon for her lost love. I tear the meat from the hunter and bath in his screams. I terrorize villagers and make off with virgins. I fear nothing and have been here since the world began.

Never trust that I am not hungry for you. Do not lay your hand upon my head with the assumption that I will not bite you. Do not mistake my growling for affection. Do not turn your back on me because, my friend, you look very appealing and I do not worry about biting the hand that feeds me when I am oh so hungry...

Dark Lover

"I like the way you smile when you hurt me," he said as he rolled over on to his stomach. All ready the teethmarks where I had bitten his neck were turning a satisfying purplish red. I swung my legs over his hips and pressed the length of my body down his naked back.

I snaked my hand along his scalp and grasp a clump of hair. I pulled his head back and traced my tongue up his neck until I was whispering in his ear, "You like everything I do to you."

"Have you always been this sadistic?"
"Of course, you were simply too afraid to see what I really was before now."

I slipped my hand around his neck to keep his head back where I wanted it and sunk my teeth into his shoulder. He yelped in a mock horror which quickly faded to a muffled moan as I squeezed my hand on his throat. He bucked underneath me. Finding himself unable to throw me, he began to shudder as I licked the wound I had created. I pressed my hips harder against him, my excitement rising with every attempt to evade me and at every whimper escaping his lips.

I ran my tongue down his spine careful to keep my grasp upon his throat, tightening it every time he twitched at my touch. When I reached his hip, I bit down again. This time he screamed but did not move as my hand on his throat continued to tighten. He had learned the game quickly and was fast becoming my favorite playmate. How could I not enjoy someone with skin that bruised so easily?

I moved quickly now. Darted my way up his body, trapped his wrists beneath my knees and wrapped both hands around his throat and tightened. He let out a strangled gasp until I let him go with a sudden jerk. I turned him over underneath me and straddled him once again. I pressed my lips to his and kissed him until we were both gasping for air.

"Now we both have something to smile about. Hold still, my lamb. I've barely begun..."

Strangers

I have been kissing strangers. I have been sneaking up behind them and running my fingers through their hair until they turn. When they find themselves face to face with me I lean in... and I kiss them. And then I run away.

I run like the devil is chasing me. Like fire is licking at my heals. I run to keep distance with the insanity inside me. The neurosis vibrates at a quickening pace speeding up my heart whenever some hapless person dares venture too close to me. I lash out. I bite and kick and scream. And then I run away.

I have been keeping strangers in my bed. I pretend for a little while that I am a normal girl. That I can stand to have someone's skin so close to mine. I pretend that to feel their breath disturbing the air around me does not make me twitch. They get up to walk to the other room and I run. I run away.

I will run until my lungs collapse in on themselves like a foreign star trapped in the vortex of a distance galaxy. I will run until I can find a nice dark place to hide. And when a stranger's feet walk by I will snap at them with my teeth like a wild dog. I will claw at the ground until I can bury myself in a tunnel of my own distorted mind. And when I begin to scream at these prying eyes of strangers coming to peer in on this strange girl; maybe they will finally run away from me.

Victorian Embers

I lit a fire in the old stone fireplace. It sparked to life as the match hit the dry wood and the room was soon cast in a warm glow. I studied the room I now found myself standing in; this house had that Victorian dour looming over every part of it. Heavy velvet drapes covered the windows, ancient black and white photographs hung in ornate frames on every wall, and the mantle of the fireplace was crowded with trinkets and curios I imagined came from all over the world. Time weighed heavily on this place. I could feel the ghosts of two hundred years of family history swirling around me.

I settled into the ornate couch and drew my knees up to my chest. He had been following me through out the house as I explored every room of his family home like a tourist on a holiday. I was fascinated by every story. "See this photo here, this is my great uncle. He ran whiskey during Prohibition through the tunnels under this very house. And this painting, this was my great great great grandfather. Some said he had ties to pirates in the South Seas of the Empire and stole a princess bride from the island kingdom. And this, this is my great grandmother, she was a nurse in World War I. She met my great grandfather, who was a soldier, in a field hospital after he was wounded and fell in love with him. They were married in the garden outside."

I thought about my own history as I looked into his eyes as he sat across from me. The hundreds of years of family history that had been lost to me. My drunken father could barely remember his own name at times, let alone the tales of generations gone past. I felt new to the world. Like I had not existed before now, like the loss of all that history had disconnected me from the world and from my own past.

He moved closer to me and traced my fingers with his own before clasping my hand and lifting it to his mouth. He placed a gentle kiss upon the back of my hand, his lips barely grazing my skin. I suddenly found myself thinking about my first kiss; a time when kissing was the most exciting thing in the world before all the complications of sexual expectations and grown-up responsibilities got in the way of a simple pure kiss.

To his shock, I suddenly slid into his arms and forced my lips upon his. I could feel the ghosts in the room pull back and begin to hum in the background. He fell into the kiss with ease and slipped one hand into my hair and the other to the small of my back so he could draw me closer to him. His kiss was so deep that I felt like I would get lost. That someone as unattached to this world as I was could get lost in a moment like this and never reappear again. I could just slip in between the cracks of this reality and become one of the ghosts swirling about the room. I could be trapped here forever to haunt his dreams like a wraith lost in all the dusty history caught in this dour Victorian landscape.

I drew back from his lips but not from his arms and studied his crystal blue eyes. The flickering light from the embers of the fire danced upon the terrain of his face as he smiled at me. The ghosts in the room now wrapped themselves around me like a thick quilt and began to sing in my ear. I lie against him as we entwined ourselves around each other like we were teenage lovers and pressed my ear to his chest. As I listened to the rhythmic beating of his heart I knew that soon I would know all the secrets of this ancient place and the ghosts would take up residence in my heart. Suddenly, I felt like I was home.

The Burning Theory

From the shore I watched the scene unfold.... And I hesitated.

Now she will not stop because I have failed and I can see the towers burning from here. She is my Kali, my destroyer goddess. The very air burns with her fury. They should have never turned their affections from her. Her rage has become tangible; I can breathe it in, taste it on my tongue. It is as bitter as ash that falls to the ground in a terrible flurry of torched flesh and cinder. She is my cinder goddess.

I hesitate. I stand on this shore frozen in my own dramatic inertia torn between my urge to return to the sea and to rush into her arms. Her terrible arms, that hold many swords and many severed heads. Her victims stare with slackened maws gaping at her bloodied hands holding all their pasts and futures like a crushing vice. She was their mother, their lover, and now she will be their destruction.

They should never have turned from her. Never have forgotten her awful beauty. They had once cowered in temples filled with lilies and chrysanthemums and the smoke of a thousand perfumed pyres; they had scraped their knees and soaked blood into her sacred ground. Her womb grew heavy with their seed and she rebirthed their world a thousand times; she fed the world with her own flesh, turned it, brought the sun to them, coaxed the crops from the ground, stood the moon still and filled the rivers with fish and bounty.

But they turned from her, they tore down her temple stone by stone and salted the earth with their ungrateful tears. One by one they forgot her silken skin and delicate feet. They lifted her veil of hair and toppled her idol from the center of every city. They grew indulgent and fat on their own importance. They forgot her. They forgot the horrible truth of her existence; her ability to turn the rain to acid with her kiss, the sharpened cruelty of her smile, her eyes burning since before the time of ancient gods, her hand upon every heart ever born into this world or the next.

I have been her lover for a thousand of a thousand years. I have lain in her many arms when the world was still. When the air dare not touch her for fear of its own death, I would slide my hands down her skin to the hum of her eternal songs. She would lay her swords aside to cradle me against her breast. I bore the stars for her to claim her love and laid kisses upon her brow to calm her troubled sleep. I folded myself to her chest and listened to the many heartbeats of the dieing dreams of a universe of crumbling civilizations. I ran my fingers in the miles of her flowing hair and drew her to me. I swore my eternal adoration and meant every word I uttered.

But now I hesitate on this endless shore because I know I have already failed. She slipped from me as they forgot her dark divinity; as they forgot just how much they needed her. I could not hold her as her rage grew no matter how hard I tried to soothe her with my gentle caresses. They have robbed me of her love. She will burn the world clean now with all the fire in her belly. The tremors of her wrath will be felt in the space in between every quivering sob and I will never lay in her arms again. She is destruction. My lover, she is destruction. And they will pay with flame and flesh and pain and suffering for ever being so bold and arrogant as to turn their backs on her terror and beauty. They have become the designers of their own deaths and the catalysts of my eternal loneliness and sorrow.

I turn away and hesitate as the towers burn down around me and the screams fill my ears across this sea of my great and terrible lost love. I lay my head in my hands and I begin to weep. I think that I shall never stop.

Fury in Love

I am slow with you. Like poison. Every move is deliberate; calculated. I am sliding into your veins. Even from this distance with another woman asleep beside you; you can feel me pulling at you. Pushing behind your eyelids. Pulling at your strings. Come on, little puppet, dance for me.

I am a quiet killer. An assassin in your dreams. You try to rise up, angry, and you try to scream. You want to stop me but I have destroyed all of your predecessors. What makes you think you will succeed where they have failed?

Can you see the demon inside me? This thing that has taken me over and replaced every spot of light and love that ever existed behind my eyes? My own anger rose so high and my hatred became so acid that the demon found me. I had been waiting for it all along. It knew where I was. It could feel me pulsing under the weight of my own rage at ever allowing you to enter me. Letting you in again and again to try and kill me with your slippery smile and soft words. The demon invaded me through every pore of my body until it infected the very cells of my being moving along the pathways the hate had laid down in my heart. It made me what I am. I am monster. I am damage. I am Fury.

Weep for what you have made me. Quiver on your knees at the realization that this weapon I hold has your name upon it as I have your name upon my lips. Know that I have given up my humanity to become this for you. I will bury my love in you up to the hilt. I will kiss the blood from your lips. And I will hold you as you die because I still love you and everything that I ever was is dieing with you.

It was all just a dream...

I was dreaming about you last night. You kept showing up in all the places of my secret mind; the lake by the highway, the apartment where I had never been, a park I think does not really exist. You were there. You were mysterious and brooding like when we were young. You had a long black coat on and your hair was blue and black. I think you were waiting for me but I was never going to be able to reach you with all these obstacles in my way. I knew someone else (someone prettier and thinner than me) would find you and draw you away before I could ever make my way to you. Why does this highway never end? Why are you always walking away? If I scream will I wake up?

I've been having nightmares. Every night I dream I am in a darkened room and I desperately need the lights on. I can feel something in the dark waiting for me. Waiting to reach up and grab me. Something bad is going to happen in all this darkness. I try every light in every room. They glow and flicker for a moment and die. I'm still in the dark and I can see faces peering at me illuminated from somewhere under the skin. I know they are ghosts. Who are you the ghosts of? Why are you here? To distract me from the mass of arms and hands reaching up behind me to drag me down? Where is the head of this many limbed monster? I want to tear it off so it will stop clawing and grabbing at me. But even when I get it's sharped-toothed head between my thighs and dig my fingers into its neck and twist and the flesh tears away until I holding it's monstrous form in my hands-- all those arms still grab at me; choking me, dragging me. Where are they dragging me? I scream for my mother and wake up.

Tonight I am in a very old house. It's Victorian form looms over me. It twists and turns and the walls change as I pass from corridor to corridor. This place is shifting; breathing, living. At the top of a stairway that wasn't there before I find a haunted room. I can feel the spirits twisting around me; disturbing the gossamer curtains covering the windows that cast the room in a filmy light. Did you die here? Or did I die here?

Maybe it is you who is haunting me. Sending me these dreams to invade my mind so I will never sleep again. I will become a waking dream walking through an enveloping fog in the really real world. I will be the ghost. People will pass through me with a dim recollection of touching something soft; something warm. I will run my hands through their minds. Touch their memories. And stream my fingers through their hearts. Whatever is coming to pull me down will grasp at my feet and my shoulders and will find itself passing through mist. It's many arms will mean nothing.

But it's still waiting for me. It's eyes are glowing red. It's hiding in my dark room. Please turn the lights on. I need the lights on.

The Last Time

The last time I saw her she was standing in the doorway of that derelict building with her high heels and stockings in her hand, the gun in her other hand and the rest of them dead at her feet. The light spilled from the doorway behind her illuminating her form into a sharply defined silhouette. Even as she picked her way through the pools of blood, careful not to splash any onto herself, she maintained her feminine poise. Each footfall carefully planned to sway her hips with delicate hypnotizing ease. I could not stop starring. I desperately wanted to tear my eyes away to survey the carnage at her feet but I could only see her.

She lifted her hand and pressed her finger to her lips, mouthing "shhhhh," as if the dead men on the floor were only sleeping and we dare not wake them. Each of her footsteps made no sound even on the creaking ancient pine floor; like she was a cat with silent bird-stalking paws. The gun in her hand stood out in stark hardness to her inherent softness; the gentle roundness of her hips, the sloping curve of her shoulder, the delicate bow of her lips and her fingers curled around that hardened steel. The gun seemed to be a man-made abomination to her organic movements and illuminated skin. The precision with which she wielded it, however, and the ease with which she now slung it into her waistband, unnerved me. I started to shake ever so slightly with the horror of it, but still I could not take my eyes off of her.

She glided down the steps of that house, now tomb, and covered the distance on the rocky ground in her bare feet as if she was moving with the currents of air. The wind seemed to shift around me as she neared. I could smell her faint floral perfume mixed with the metallic scent of blood and gunpowder as she picked up her skirt to avoid dragging it in the dust. I saw the glimpse of her shapely leg which I knew would feel like silk if I were to trace my hand up her thigh to the lace panties she wore. I glanced at the dead men who had saw the same flash of flesh. They would never touch her.

She now stood in front of me; not a single droplet of blood on her carefully arranged outfit, no shards of bone in her meticulously styled hair, she hadn't even smudged her eyeliner with the exertion of what she had done. She lay her hands upon my face and then slipped her arms slowly around my neck. She held my gaze steadily as she pressed her body so close to mine that I could feel her breath through her ribs. I traced my hands down her spine until I hit the cold lump of metal in the small of her back. Before I could think of that instrument of death and her ability to play it like a harp of destruction, she pressed her lips to mine and darted her tongue into my mouth.

Soon my vision clouded with the halo of her perfume and sweet breathe expanding my chest like it was the only thing keeping me alive. I sunk into her arms and drank her kiss like I was dieing of thirst in a deep hot desert. I laced my fingers into her hair and drew her closer to me; hungry now for her taste. When she drew her mouth away from mine, she slipped her hand down my arm and grasped my wrist...

"Come on," she whispered, "it's time we left..."