They will never finish the building
It would stay in its skeletal form
forever
because the government is
corrupt

but then
they all are
so it wasn’t the grandest
tragedy of the world

It was a fun place for
the kids

A place where they pretended to be
monkeys and did parkour
and whatnot

A place where tight friendships
and love were to
be discovered
and kept hidden in the various
incomplete rooms
and under unfinished stairs

The unfinished building was the
wonderland of a truly magical childhood
And it was still unfinished by
the time childhood ended

It’s been twenty years
and her girlfriends kept asking
her why she wasn’t
dating or starting a family

She just shrugged. Said she didn’t
want to hurt any men

It was enough those twenty years
ago when she
told a boy that he had to
walk across the high ledge if he wanted her kiss

Poor kid was too dumb and love-struck
for his own good,
but his fall and death took her out of the
tomboy phase.
She no longer sought adventure
and thrill

twenty years…

And the building was
still unfinished

“Have you ever kissed a lover
so hard
you chipped a tooth?”
she asked
with a grin that
revealed more than one
chipped tooth

He shook his head. “No, and I
really don’t intend
to.”

Well, that’s what you get
for hitting
on a girl you meet
in the yard of the local asylum. But
she said she was a
nurse...

“Anyway,” he said. “If this is what happened
to you… What happened
to him? I mean,
after the kiss.”

“Oh, there were many,
many kisses actually,” she said. “He’s
dead now.”

“What? He died?”

“Well, yeah, dogs don’t
live that much. Compared to humans,
I mean.”

it wasn’t morning yet
but he woke up
to the sounds of cheering
and applause

He looked around
and saw
shadowy figures with
elongated faces
and bright, white eyes
staring at him

“Congratulations, they said. You
have awakened.”

“What in the hell?” he
said, looking around
startled. “Who are you?”

“The messengers,” replied
the shadows. “We are very pleased
to announce that you
may collect your prize
whenever you are ready. You’ve
earned it.”

“What? What did
I do?”

“You awakened. In a world of
sleepers
you woke up
and are therefore eligible for
ascension. You might follow
us through the hole
in the ceiling whenever you
are ready. All that’s left
to do here is
to melt the shackle.”

“What?” he said

Then one of the shadows
have him a small
bottle that smelled strongly
of gasoline
and a box of matches

The other shadows
pointed to
his desk, to all the papers
stacked on it
and under it
and all around it

“Those are my poems,” he said

“Indeed. They represent
everything that keeps you
tied to this world. Your shackle.
Burn your shackle and melt it
away so you can ascend
and take flight. The time
has come.”

“I worked all my life
to write those
poems,” he said

“Yes, you did. But now that you
are awake you see that
they’re all in vain. For
nothing is real
on this plane. It’s all
a dream, of course. You have
designed it pretty nice. A simple
dream spent entirely in
the confines of a narrow room
with low ceiling. Drinking
and smoking and
writing all day long
and late into the night. It’s
a beautiful dream. No family,
no friends, no communication with the
outside world, and no desire
for any. You’ve thus taken
a shortcut to awakening, but it’s by
no means illegal. You’re still
eligible for ascension. So,
whenever you’re ready, we are.”

He watched the shadows

The shadows watched him

He reached out for the
gasoline and matches, looked over
to the desk and the stacks
of paper

Looked for a long
time

Closed his eyes
and went back to sleep

The shadows were gone
by the morning
but they left the gasoline and
matches
behind

He got out of bed
went to the desk
by the window
opened the blinds
and started writing
another poem

the other night she went to
sleep
listening to
subliminal audios

and woke up in the morning
saying, “I am birds. Many, many
birds trapped together in
a bag of silk. This thing
that the world looks
at and calls my body is but
a bag of silk
that traps birds inside. I am not
the bag. A bag isn’t alive. I
am the birds inside the bag. And
I must get out!”

She ran into
the bathroom

Her father shrugged. “******’ ****,”
he said, shaking his head.
“To think that she could’ve
been a doctor, or a lawyer, or
an engineer. She could’ve
been anything. But she
chose to study
creative writing in college. Now
she’s a poetess...
and we are no more than
characters lost
in her verses.”

It became more and more
obvious
There was a storm inside her

growing ever stronger

and she sought
to terminate it
before it was too late

It's arguably more difficult to
terminate such storms
when you're fifteen
and still living with your parents

so she decided not to
share her struggle
with them
and reached inside her
for the eye of the storm
with a steel wire she'd kept in
a bottle of hand sanitizer for a day
and a night

Yes, the first raindrops painted the
white of the bathtub

they were crimson
and salty

like her tears

There was indeed silence now

Oh, and it's been but days
since the screams
cracked the windows
and the thrown bottles stripped
the walls of their paint
and the curses made the
gods cringe and cover their ears

The house of madness
no longer lived up to its name

For she was finally gone
and he was left
with the echoes

"C'mon, dare me to down it!" were
her words as she opened
the last bottle

And his were, "*****, you're mad!"

"Dare me, *******! Dare me
to down this here bottle. You
don't think I can, do you? Ah, you
slime-gutted piece of
****."

"I'm telling you to knock
it the **** out already! I'll bury
yer ******' eyes in, see if
I won't."

But she was already
pouring down her throat. She
had this talent that
allowed her to drink without
swallowing. Pouring
down her throat was like pouring
down the sink. No choking

And then she'd hurl
the empty bottle with terrible aim
and break it against the
walls, planting shards all over the carpet

and then
finally
she'd be waiting in the
bedroom

But not today

Today she was no more
and all that was left of her were
the echoes of curses

The neighborhood was
probably celebrating

And her man
stood by the broken window,
a bottle of her favorite *****
in one hand
and a fistful of painkillers in
the other

She no longer awaited him
in the bedroom
but underground
and he could already hear her
greeting words as he washed the
painkillers down with the *****

"Took you long enough, *******.
Now where's my *******
drink?"

there he was
arriving on main street
carrying a backpack
and a suitcase

both stuffed with
papers

“WELCOME TO THE TOWN
OF FORGOTTEN POETS.”
said the shadows that
watched from the
windows
of nearby buildings

He didn’t like the
sound of their
voices

but he sighed
and dragged his
tired feet along

they were almost as
tired as his soul
and just as hurt

He'll have to live on the
streets,
for the town
was overpopulated