The Princess With a Hole in Her Heart

There once was a princess born with a jagged hole in her heart. The whole kingdom searched far and wide to shore up the hole as a princess with a jagged heart brought bad luck to the land, soured the waters, shriveled the crops and poisoned the livestock. They tried stuffing it with mud and twigs. They tried filling it with diamonds. They tried bands of gold that only broke and shards of ice that only melted. They tried burning the hole closed, filling it with rocks, lacing it with iron and drowning it with sea water.

But the hole only grew as the princess grew into womanhood. The King and Queen were disconsolate and locked the maiden in a great stone tower. They wallowed in their own despair at having birthed their only child to such a bad omen. The princess, for her part, spent her days staring out the window of the tower down on the kingdom below. She never uttered a word or tear at any attempt to fill her heart up but just stared down on the courtyards with a sad turn to her ruby red lips.

The King and Queen were coming to their last wits at the doom that plagued their kingdom when a handsome prince announced himself at their door. Atop his great white steed he promised the King and Queen that he could fill the heart of the desolate princess. Having little other option they assented and sent the prince to the great stone tower.

The prince started up the long marble steps to suddenly find himself beset by thorned vines that seemed to come alive and grab at his gleaming armor. He drew his mighty sword and slashed at the enchanted vines, hacking his way upward. The vines wrapped around his throat trying to choke him but he refused to be dissuaded. He ploughed forward with great blows from his sword only find himself now faced with a perilous swarm of great black bats. They beat their great wings about his head and barred their fangs for his throat. Again he swung his great sword beheading any bat which ventured to close. He cleared the bats only to find a great chasm stretching before him and the door to the princess' chamber on the other side. He lifted his bow, slid a bolt home and fired an arrow across the chasm. The arrow embedded itself in the wood above the door and with the rope attached the prince swung himself across. With great might he hauled his way up the rope to the door only to find it locked. With his great fist he hammered the door until the wood splintered and gave way. He clambered into the waiting chamber.

Through many perils he had finally reached the princess' chamber. It was decorated in lush velvets and silks befitting a princess. The room warm and aglow from a fire in the stone fireplace.The princess sat at her usual spot by the window staring over the land. The prince stood straight and announced himself as her saviour and lord. The princess turned from the window to look at him with sad eyes and then turned back to the window with a sigh.

The prince huffed at the princess' slight and felt his ego stirred. After all he had faced, the princess had simply turned from him with not so much as an acknowledgement of his great deeds. The prince puffed up his chest, marched over the princess' sitting spot and demanded that she face him. The princess once again let out a lonely sigh and did not turn from the window.

The prince grew angry and jerked the princess from the window and into his arms. He announced that he was going to fill the princess' damaged heart whether she liked it or not. The princess did not fight but stared blankly over the prince's broad sholders. He carried her to the bed and roughly tossed her down upon it. He ripped her dress from her body leaving her naked and shivering on the coverlet. He laid himself over the princess pinning her to the matress.

He whispered in a dark tone in the princess' ear that the way to fill her up was to push himself deep inside her so there would be no more room for a hole or a heart. Once she was his, she would bow to him and he would lead the kingdom from darkness. For the first time in her life a tear rolled from the princess' eye and she uttered one word.

"No."

The prince was outraged claiming that it was his right as her rescuer and he would make her his. He would be her King and her kingdom would be his. Agian the princess simply said,

"No."

The prince reared up in anger striking the princess across the cheek. He reached for his belt letting his member free. He wrapped his fingers around the princess' throat and pryed her legs apart. Tears fell from the princess' eyes in great streams as the prince readied himself to enter her and own her.

Suddenly her tears stopped. What the prince did not know, nor did anyone in the kingdom, was that Death had fallen in love with the princess and saw that she did not bring bad luck upon the kingdom but that they had made her the scapegoat for their misfortunes. The little princess with a hole in her heart was innocent of any crimes attributed to her and punished for simply being born different. Death himself had seen what inhabitants of the kingdom did; slaughtering thier neighbors, conquering other kingdoms to make off with their wealth, leaving a wake of destruction in their path. Death knew all their deeds that poisoned their land and was laid to blame upon the princess.

Death had long been filling the hole in her heart secretly with stars. Stars that would burn with the fire of a thousand suns. The stars lay dormant in her heart. Even she knew not that they were there and that Death had been secretly visiting her every night to plant his shining seeds.

And in the moment that the prince arranged himself to penetrate her; to fill her up and crowd her out of her own heart, the stars flared to life. All the power that Death had planted in her heart came to bear. The prince was blinded by the light that spilled from the princess and screeched as he vainly tried to cover his eyes. He scrabbled across the floor away from the princess screeching like a banshee all the way. Suddenly from above him he heard a voice,

"Never again." The prince stared into the glowing face of the now not silent princess. Her eyes flared with a thousand fires from the depth of universe, her hair whipped about her face like a great black flock of ravens, her skin glowed like sun. Behind her he saw the dark figure of Death cloaked in blackness nod his assent. And with that the princess looked upon him and the prince knew all hope was lost.

The princess burned the kingdom to the ground with the fires in her heart. All those who tried to fill her heart up with trinkets and baubles stolen from other lands, all those who cursed the day she was born, her own parents who locked her away so they would have to look upon her, tried to flee but were caught in her great fire. Death trod by her side collecting the wayward souls and gazed upon her lovingly.

Upon the ashes of the old kingdom a new kingdom to Darkness and Light was born. The princess with now a Queen and none saught to usurp her for her will was law and Death sat at her right hand until the end of days.

The Awful Truth

Sometimes you just gotta be horrible.

Too Dark Heart

Don't smile at me with your too white teeth. I know you are absconding with my best friend on a chilly Saturday night and filling him full of drugs so he'll see you all rose coloured. I know your thieving ways. I've experienced them first hand when you stole my heart and failed to return it. I know you've let it rot under your bed next to the big bag of mescaline you've forgotten all about. Just so much trash now.

Don't fucking spread that too wide grin in my direction. I've seen it before and felt the ice in your touch. No heat I radiated was going to melt that snowball heart of yours. You froze me through the summer and nearly killed me in the winter. You are much too handsome to be trusted.

There is wire missing in your fucked up head. The one that links love to emotion to somebody else. You dwell in yourself and try to rip yourself apart rather than accept the love that surrounds you. You are leaving me out in the cold. Leaving me unhappy but numb. I'm starting to go the way of rejection to the outside world. Why leave here when out there I can feel them thinking and hear them breathing and feel their distaste for me? I want to rip those stupid smiles off. Everyone of them. I want to rip out those frozen hearts and show them the reasons.

I see you there; smiling. I see you. Drug happy and nearly stupid with selfishness. I have my anger to keep me warm; to keep me company on these long nights. It whispers in the sweetest homicidal voice you ever heard and sings me to sleep. It cradles me in burning arms. Wraps me in immeasurable fondness. I call myself Monster and with crooked stained teeth rip my dreams of you to shreds.

For a Woman Impossible to Love

I do nothing in halves.

When I love, I love with every sinew of my body. I consume like a fire; burn up the room, the house and the trees around it. Intensity settles in on me. I do not fear the all or nothing. I love like a storm. A disaster. I see everything in your eyes and feel every little twitch of emotion that fills your face.

I love like this because I have lacked love in my life. I have been tortured to the point of near death. Hated. Reviled. Feared. And I struck out. I built walls so high that no one could scale them. I grew the thorniest vines up the sides. I stretched out badlands all around. And I drew away. I protected myself. I still do.

I do not love easily. To let someone in the glass fortress that is my heart is the biggest risk. It could shatter with the slightest prick. I am scabrous on my exterior; thorny, sharp but delicate as fading rose petals on the inside. I feel too much and to be broken desends on me like torture. To be left at the roadside staring at those tail lights as they fade into the distance relives that torment; that abandonment that brought me here in the first place.

If I love you, it is with everything. Very few can live under the weight of it and none have succeeded so far. I am a woman impossible to love so I retreat further into my caves. Block the light out. Shut the world off. I crawl further away and wrap my heart in layers of spit and tinfoil. Hide it in the back of my ribs; bury it under rock hoping no one will ever find it again.

Because when the light of minor pinpoints starts to pry it open and pain ultimately consumes it in the end, I become the monster I always thought I was and set to devouring the world one little death at a time. 

Still Breathing

"Everybody hurts. Everybody yearns."

There are tears trembling at the edge of my eyes. They have drowned my cheeks, smudged my mascara, sent my green eyes glittering. I am lost under a wave of tears. I'm planning on living down here for awhile. I can't see where else to go. The way out has gotten blurry. Rippling under the water. I always found it easy to drown. Just breath in and let the water do the rest.

I didn't want this. I just wanted you. But the reality of me is heavy. Distant. Pregnant with need. Isolated. Violent. Difficult to understand. And even more difficult to live.

I will pray for you to come back. I started it and I ended it but I will never lose that love. It is a weight that lives with me forever. I never forget. I never have. Years later, I will take it out of the drawer I hid it in and look at it. Turn it over in my hand and miss it. Like I miss you already.

It is true. I am the monster. Ugly. Unlovable. Hated. Unwanted. Unneeded. Unmovable. Sickening.

I will never not be... wanting...
I am still breathing but sometimes I'd like to stop.

Monster Tongue

Everyday I step up to the mirror and peer to the other side. That big monster is always waiting for me with a lulling grin, waving excitedly at me. It's long tongue slips out its mouth to moisten its lips revealing razor sharp teeth and red gums. It looks hungry. It looks right at me. Slowly flutters its long eyelashes. Blows kisses at me through the reflective glass. Teases and flirts all ravenous; its tummy grumbles expectantly.

I would hide, but I'm rather hungry myself.