10 feet below the water’s surface and losing breath. A hundred pink gladiolus flowers float in the water above me. I see the sun’s rays burst through the edges of the petals to me. Grasping the sun’s rays to pull myself to the surface, I use the light as a ladder. I reach the surface and grap the pink gladiolus flowers. They turn into atropa belladonna in my cut up hands, the sun hurts me and Atropos threatens to cut my string. I retreat and go 11 feet under the water’s surface. I stay there and I lose breath, my lungs feel as if they’re going to collapse and just as I was going to close my eyes for good a single pink gladiolus gently sinks through the water past me. I watch it sink, it goes down past me and keeps sinking. I keep my eyes on it until it finally disappears into the darkness. I look up and I see hundreds of pink gladiolus flowers sinking in the water. The beautiful sight gives me hope. I grab flowers and pull myself up to the surface. I fly up out of the water and Atropos looks me in my eyes. I have one chance to change the goddess’s mind. I wrap my arms around her and she gently puts away her scissors. She knows that I’m worthy of a new fate so she sends me to a forest filled with gladiolus flowers and weeping willows. I know that I will someday see her again so I will make the most of the time that she gave me for now until we finally reunite.
END

(Thoughts On Vanity)
I bandage my flaws but they never heal. Covered, still there. I paint the bandages pink, only temporary. I want to retreat into a shell where I can be safe and unseen. Vanity is a burden. It is a disease, an addiction and it is a distraction. Why must I be this way? Why do I care so much? Is it that I crave acceptance? I want to be loved, to be in love, can that happen for me? I await a dove to land on an alligator’s nose, thinking it’s a mossy log floating in the water, just as the alligator dies from heart failure. I await perfection. The odds, though, weigh completely out of my favor. I feel like perfection is just coincidences lined up just right until they are right where they should be. I’m not important enough for that. My goal here is to stop giving a ****. Help?
END

I bandage my flaws but they never heal. Covered, still there. I paint the bandages pink, only temporary. I want to retreat into a shell where I can be safe and unseen. Vanity is a burden. It is a disease, an addiction and it is a distraction. Why must I be this way? Why do I care so much? Is it that I crave acceptance? I want to be loved, to be in love, can that happen for me? I await a dove to land on an alligator’s nose, thinking it’s a mossy log floating in the water, just as the alligator dies from heart failure. I await perfection. The odds, though, weigh completely out of my favor. I feel like perfection is just coincidences lined up just right until they are right where they should be. I’m not important enough for that. My goal here is to stop giving a ****. Help?
END

Bless the cross. Bless the sinners that worship. Forgiveness is necessary, excuses are accepted. Innocence in all. I crumble with it’s stare, with the weight of my beliefs. Religion equals no evil but you are still tied down. Tied down to the cross, it’s always there on the back of your head. The devil is accepting, the god is forgiving.

Now… hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Satan… hail Mary.
END

The stars that were once hidden behind thick, dark clouds ignite into fiery explosions which spread out into one light to fill all of my senses and guide me through all of the hell you put me through. It makes me aware and as I squint into the light of truth, I know that this is finally the end of my suffering. I used to travel through the empty, quiet darkness of space in search for planets to show me the big picture as I passed stars on the way, but now I see as trillions of supernovas surround me in every direction that it was you all along. For now I know how to use the smaller details to see the big picture.
END

Your words sound joyful yet the they taste of melancholy. Your beauty hypnotizes me but it would be wrong of me to complain for I’m guilty of giving it permission. In fact, I requested it. A trust fall would be catastrophic, not that you wouldn’t catch me, the problem is that I know you would. I need you to comfort me and then toss me into a pit of snakes. I need you to hate me, hurt me so that I can stop thinking about how perfect you are. I don’t want to be stuck thinking about your perfection while my heart pumps blood into my pen. I’m tired of mourning over the loss of something that I never even had and will never end up having because your body is inches away but when I look into your eyes the color is miles out into the distance.
END

A scorpion stings my foot and injects its pain inducing venom into me. The pain spreads throughout my body and as I suffer the scorpion laughs at me whilst I stand underneath the blazing, desert sun with nowhere to go. This vast, empty, waterless desert with nothing to see but sand. Sand as far as the human eye can see, so much empty space yet I still feel trapped in the scorpion’s presence. A dry skeleton confronts me and puts a hole into my arm and ***** all of the meat out of my body until I am only skin and bones. My skin twists and knots around my meatless bones.
I scream.
I scream.
I scream, but when I do it sounds like laughter, so the scorpion and the skeleton laugh with me.

I, as a serpent, constrict a saw blade to save myself from the danger it threatens me with. Dying from blood loss as I constrict the blade I am filled with new wisdom on a subject I was completely ignorant, until now when it’s too late for the wisdom to be any use to me. The sky is myne to be free. Like a moth I chase after the light in the dark and crave to be in its presence. When day comes and light is in abundance I lose interest and hide away until it lacks once again. I ignore the stars beaming down on me as I chase artificial light. The tears of the stars fall down and become filtered by the clouds then rain down on me. They throw me down and take me to the wildflowers. The beauty hypnotizes me and I get lost there. There is where I will die of ignorance.
END

I sit on a planet the size of my head, it and I drift throughout the cold outer space. My eyes sparkle at the sight of pink stars which come by rarely. I grab them and hold onto them for as long as I can. My time with them are short-lived because my sweaty hands from the heat of the star make me lose grip quickly. Tears fall from my eyes, they fly down and orbit my planet. They stay for years until too many crowd, then they all set aflame and travel to my planet leaving craters in their places. Damage is quick and easy, it’s the healing that takes time and effort. When I’m lucky a gentle pink meteorite will interfere with my aimless course and hit my planet, filling the craters with its beauty. There are plenty of hideous craters  left behind by my sorrow. Don’t let this blind you, though, from the beauty that my planet contains. Someday, from the craters, there will be breathtaking, life-filled rainforests of which wisdom they take photosynthesis. They will fill your mind with new sights and knowledge of a world other than your own. Don’t see someone for their planet’s flaws. See them, instead, for their planet’s beauty. Learn from their craters and awe at their rainforests. Someday they might send your way a pink star to heal your damaged earth.
END

In a coma induced by your dark heart. Blind to the evils and red lights. I feel alive in my dreams where your touch awakens me when in reality your touch pushes me deeper into the abyss. A microphone wraps me in it’s love. I express myself and feel at home with you and then feel cold and empty after I’ve poured my heart out to you. Hold my heart in your morphine covered hands. You’re the killer wasp of my honeycomb soul, aggressively protect me from outsiders so that I can never see any other light. Imagining a place where love is freedom and being alone is locks and chains yet reality is holding me back from this. Deep in my head, happiness is a passing train. Depression is always there, sadness hidden in plain sight, anger breaks me into pieces and leaves me black and blue. I lie in the dark in agonizing pain throwing bottled SOS messages into a river of blood. Me, myself and I have a lot in common. Only us to understand each other as others try to decipher our thoughts.
END

Read this and absorb my soul. I’m rotted with wisdom as I travel through a grayscale world in which every living thing wears a frown. Morbid and alone, love is nightshade and agony is pleasure. Distopion, tyranny and oppression. This place is corrupted. I need a pen so that I can further depress myself. I scratch out the bad ideas as if the ones you read now are good. Scratch me, scratch my pen. Walk across my thoughts, lose yourself. Run across my thoughts and your soul will pour from your mouth and my demons will feast upon it.
END

I put a dandelion head between my fingertips and snap my fingers. I plead to be in your presence. I yell for you, I scream for you but it seems that this paper screams louder than me. To my heart you are the tyrant leader, it aches for you and you do nothing to cause it. I can’t imagine how bad it would hurt if you tried. When I’m around you I hide my feeling for you in a hollow leg and swallow the key. My lungs now ache from screaming your name. I beg for your acceptance. Let me prove myself.
END

The fiction of people’s pessimistic statements towards life seed and grow rainforests in my head. Breaking my skull so that the green may spread throughout my dirt shell. Nonfiction, as in reality, blooms into pink gladiolus flowers. The reality is that people’s thoughts can either work as an anchor or as an open sail. Whether those thoughts are anchors or are open sails is completely up to the thinkers, themselves.
END

My train of thought takes me to an ethnic enclave of pride located in my dystopian head. Outside of this head of myne is a pink butterfly trapped in a grey cocoon. I’d leave this cocoon and finish my metamorphosis if I weren’t trapped in a spider’s web, this hideous cocoon is my only protection from it’s pain inducing bite. I’m always on high alert to defend myself. I must always keep my defences high and never let my guard down or it will take advantage of my vulnerability. The word stress is an understatement, I feel as if this web is draining me of life, as if it loves the taste of my misery. I am bewildered and overwhelmed with the weight of my ever growing responsibilities. Soon enough this spider’s patience will die out and I will be the one to take advantage of its vulnerability. Until then I wait.
END

Fade. To go is not to leave but borrow my patience. You disappear then evaporate. Still there just not visible to the naked eye. Now you are in debt. It’s ok, keep it. You know what, just leave. Not for you, for me now. Go and never return.
You leave me in purgatory but the decision is myne. There is no higher power to decide, just repercussions. Heaven or Hell, What’s the difference? Your only advice is, “GO!” Go where? Left hand points to Heaven, right hand points to Hell. I will stay in purgatory forever because I can’t get hurt if I don’t decide. At least that’s what I think, you may still find a way so I hate you now for what you will become later. Later your left hand will point to me and your right hand will point to yourself, as it has always before, and all of your beautiful promises will turn to hideous lies.
END

Secrets in the taste of my voice, they fill us with wonder. We run on a rainbow bridge that glistens in the darkness. In a trance, I follow the smell of our love. Grasping hands while grasping hearts. I grasp your soul and you grasp my voice. I question your beauty and you remind me that angels have flaws and Satan was the most beautiful angel. Crushing souls and tearing hearts. Scarred and never to think the same with new wisdom. Lost on a grayscale bridge, secrets lie in the sound of my tattered soul.
END

I don’t like puzzles, not this kind, anyway. My thoughts are puzzle pieces and these days are prophetic. What is my prophecy? Where I am supposed to be is far away, maybe. I feel that life is on autopilot.
LOST! Where the hell am I?
I don’t think that I’m meant to be here, nothing goes as planned. I see everything as if it was made of glass, I see it all. Surrounded by mirrors, I’m discombobulated. As I see everything, everything is everywhere. I know how to get there so I go but somehow I become lost… but it was so clear. The mirrors always catch my eye, I guess.
At some point I steered off during my prophecy and now the gods can’t seem to locate me. How will I ever get back? I’m trailed off in a simulation living in the background, I feel. I don’t want this, I want to be the main character of my own life.
I. Feel. So… l o s t.
I  am  getting  nowhere.
END

I stand naked in front of the mirror. It looks back at me, its eyes don’t seem to follow myne. I can hear it’s thoughts as it says, “you ugly fool, why do you even bother with me…” It whispers every single one of my flaws to me and darkness fills my peripheral vision and they are all I can see. A strange, black being enters the empty, dark room and shoves a sewing needle into my ugly, skinny, white arms and then sews the rest of the string into the arms in the mirror. The beast shoves the needle into my ugly, brown eyes and connects the string to the ones in the mirror. Once every one of my flaws has been connected to my reflection I stand there stuck. The beast watches me scream in agonizing pain for hours, days, years. I think to myself, “this is no way to live,” and I go to throw my arm back, then hesitate, then I do it. I throw back my arm and I watch as the string gets ripped from my flesh. The searing pain hits me and then almost immediately the wound heals itself but it leaves a scar. I throw my head back and the strings rip from my face. The beast watches and cries, it seems to be in pain as I pull out my strings. Each missing string makes it weaker and weaker. It tries to fight me, to stop me. I resist and continue to pull out the strings. Once I get all of the strings out the beast bursts into light and the once dark and eerie room becomes bright and white. I now wear heavy, thick, soft, white robes all over my body. I turn to look at the beast and it is a beautiful pink light. The mirror had a golden frame and when I look into it I see me. I see my perfect imperfections.
END

I want you to infiltrate my senses. Fill my ears with your voice and my head with your words. As I watch your lips move my stomach fills with chalkhill blues. As you move closer to me I choke on my heartbeat. Your hand is a burning flame and my skin is the fuse that leads to my gunpowder filled heart. Boom, my heart went as it exploded from your gentle touch. “Her, her, her,” I think as the moon is in the sky and I am surrounded by darkness yet I still see you everywhere I look. I am wrapped around your index finger and am always there yet you never notice.
END

It goes in a straight path for miles. The glossy, black marble walls on either side of me and the red velvet carpet under my bare feet. A pitch black sky lay above my head with thousands of stars. This hallway seems never ending, to go on forever. I run. I run but I don’t want to, I have no control over my body. Sometimes it feels like I’m walking and when it does I think more about what could be at the end of the hallway, I fear it. This hallway feels like home, it’s all I know so I can’t imagine anything else. Sometimes I still wonder what the end will look like, though. Will there be a wider hallway? Will the walls be velvet and the floor be marble? What if marble will have lots of spots on it like the sky? I do fear the day I finally make my escape although I know it’s inevitable.

Rusted eyes and dynamite hearts. Tortured thoughts and shredded paper mache souls. Falling and flying, drowning and breathing, screaming and laughing. Going into a cave inhabited by our worst fears, wave your flaming torch to overpower them. Beat them down and toss them into the back of your head. We come first, your supporters in pink at the front of your head, wear us as armour. Your thoughts surface at the top where we pass our judgement to them. If you let us go then our pink love will evolve to dark pink and then as dark as the abyss your mind is lost in. You hold one side of a rope where we hold the other. We try to pull your mind from the abyss as it pulls back and overpowers us bringing us down with it. Lost and cold, we will split up and find our own way out. We find our way out and wait for you in candle light.
END

We are slaves of our thoughts, as they bifurcate down crossroad after crossroad, as they diverge in all different directions and force us to obey, and if you must defy then prepare for the pain of cracking bones and resting your head on a cinder block to sleep at night as your brain comes up with new, insufferable ways of torture to force you back down onto your knees, making you bow down. Rebel against yourself all you want but there is no escape from the dystopian society in your head. Knowing this will only make your hunger for escape even greater for we want what we can’t have.