Thorns.
You made.
Poked and prodded
You invaded my soul
As if I were a cesspool
of your worst nightmares.
And the sad thing is,
I let you.

Chase the sun.

Then watch it fall.
Water her ashes, but keep her dry.

Only then can she thrive.

A kaleidoscope of fleeting embers appears beneath the fireplace—
Burnt ashes permeating these hollow halls of winter.
Faded cards with Christmas carols mark the existence of another absolution
Where we invent ourselves from glass crystals and a nonsense
Fanatical of perfection.

Shards of rainbow-colored glass on the floor as we run barefoot among the stars.
Sparks of yellow and orange and blue and red and gold illuminate
The dreary existence of this lonely town.
As we search for new illusions to
Fill our drunken hearts.

Chestnut leaves fall onto the ground
As we countdown—
Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
One…

Another year gone—
Another soul taken—
To cashmere sweaters and expensive screens.
What have we become?

They dwell in the shadows—
The darkness is all-consuming, reckless, obliterating
Everything in its path, wreaking havoc on her world
They surround her like a cloud of smoke, making it impossible
to breathe,
They thirst for control, they hunger for power—
They hunger for her beating heart, its rhythmic beat resonating into
Their dark, empty, lifeless souls.
They feed on her very existence: mind, body, and soul.
She struggles to fend off the toxic hands that seem to
Wrap her in their suffocating embrace, crushing the depths of her soul—
******* her into the blazing, torturous inferno of hell
Their sinister voices penetrate into the depths of her mind—
Her thoughts, feelings, and actions intertwine with their
Evil and corrupt unholy caldrons.

These are her demons. They are part of her. They are her world.
They hold her in *******—
She is a prisoner waiting to be freed from her captivity.
This silence is deafening; the world has suddenly gone numb.
She is paralyzed by fear.
And in an instant, darkness engulfs her broken spirit.

On Purpose

I kissed you without permission—
In hopes that you would kiss me back.
I was open with you—
In hopes that you would be open with me.

I waited in the rain on that cold December night---
In hopes that you would pick me up.
I wrote you 365 letters every day for a year.
In hopes that you would write me back.

I loved you on purpose—
In hopes that you would love me back.
I fought with you on purpose—
Hoping you would fight back.

Three years have passed since our last phone call.
You have probably moved on—
Yet I sit in this empty room,
Wondering why I loved you on purpose.

Daggers dance amongst the valleys.
Shadows plague troubled waters.
Reflections dim as tantalizing wildflowers sing.

I shut them out and drowned myself in troubled waters—
Swift visions succumbed to darkness.
Parallels fall like dominos, crashing into the infinite ground.

Sunshine wasted as I step further into the valley.
Away from hands that feed me.
Aimlessly wondering into the abyss.

What a beautiful paradise lost—
As I take my final breath.