At the top of the hill
two thieves stood in the midday sun
with their faces lifted upwards.
Down there,
in the fear-ridden town
the only lights they had
was of reading lamps, screens, street and car lights,
and an occasional candle in the dead of night.

Bottles were fished out of pockets,
corks were unscrewed,
bottoms were lifted,
laughter was heard,
spells were whispered,
sunrays were enchanted with song,
so enchanted they stopped dead in their step,
bows were held up,
arrows were shot,
grass was searched,
light was conserved in bottles.
Flickers in pockets for the darkest days.

Autumn came quickly this year.
The skies tinted themselves gray.
The children were suddenly
under three layers of clothing.
I noticed I drank hot tea
instead of iced coffee.
My summer dresses
were replaced by my favorite
grubby sweaters.
Scarves flew in formation
to guard my neck from the cold air.
My music playlist went
from rock and roll
to acoustic.
I promised this autumn,
sadness will not strike.
I promised to leave
summer paralysis
back on the beach.
I was not to fall off
like the yellow leaves
from the oak outside my dorm.
You met me on my way to lecture.
You were cowarding
under three layers of clothing,
eyes tinted gray.
You were giving off
the scent of exhaustion.
You said I looked as if I were out to conquer the world.
You said I was armed with my algebra textbook.
I said you looked in harmony with the weather.
You laughed.
I believe you meant to stab me with that laugh.
To remind me how in August
your blue eyes did not want me.
But it's October.
And I'm detached from the thirst for you.
Autumn came so quickly this year
it made you irrelevant.
October turned your blue eyes
a negligible splash of gray,
made you fall off
like a yellow leaf
from the oak outside my dorm,
blurred you with the backdrop.
Autumn came so quickly,
October painted my green summer eyes
a fiesty, burning yellow,
a flame in contrast to the tinted sky,
made my footsteps soothing
like an acoustic guitar,
made my lips taste like hot tea in my own mouth.

I could swear I felt the sting,
as you injected yourself in my bloodstream.
In my defence,
I was high for the most of it.
I was drunk on all of that
your sparkly wings offered back.
And your melancholic gaze
I've only seen in fiction since.
I'll admit to my arrogance
to assume parasites were mostly worms,
when I know there are still songs
about pretty, magic, folk.
And I can feel myself both host and feast,
and all you see is just a treat.
And if I had soul, it's now ablaze,
and now all I do is waste my days.
And at this point in space and time,
your words occupy my mind.

You start a baby doll,
a small doll,
a good doll.
You are raised
a smart doll,
a big doll
that takes care of herself
from the earliest age.

You know how not to ask for much,
since your parents argue quite a lot,
and your father is a bit afraid,
as if you are about to break,
and your mother seems a little sad,
and maybe just a bit too sharp.

And no one seems to know
what they should do,
so, you, the big doll,
decide,
it’s up to you.

You learn to be the perfect doll.
At three you speak like an adult,
polite and poise,
you never scream,
you rarely ask for anything,
you curtsey and you learn to sing,
you lie about well…
everything.
You never mind
where you will go,
you never stomp
and whine a ‘no’.

Whenever should you want a thing,
a lump of guilt will make it sting.
Whenever you will want to cry,
you’ll learn to keep it deep inside,
because good dolls never cry.

And for your efforts,
you’ll get rewards,
they will give you golden clothes,
they will crown you as the best
and never check if you’re distressed.
In diamond shoes they’ll make you dance,
and as you prance you’ll start to bleed,
and it will be your secret thing.

They will shake your parents’ hands
and happily they’ll nod their heads.
They will lift you from the ground,
hold you,
tell you, they are proud.
And that is true,  
though it does not reverse the hurt.

You will be the perfect doll,
perfect figure, pose and all,
and should you fail,
even once,
even just a ‘C’ in class,
your back will break,
you’ll be exposed,
that you have never been a decent doll.
They’ll discard you,
throw you out,
because no one loves a fraud.

Should you keep your perfect look,
you will catch someone on your hook,
and you will never know what you should say,
for you have thrown your tongue away.
You will lie, to you and him,
about every
single
feeling.
You will never say,
that you never loved them anyway.
Perfect dolls don’t act that way.

You will never get what you want,
because you’ll never say it all up front,
you will chip and finally break,
and there is no other way.

Us, perfect dolls,
we’re built this way.

The skin on your lips
is the type
of magical MacGuffin
that makes you believe
in enchanted forests
at midnight.
They swim
in the reddish blue, velvet mist.
And after all
isn't magic getting something for nothing?

I told you I dreamt
of plum colored butterfly wings.
You bared your teeth
in a warlock grin and leaned in
to kiss my fingertips.
You drew mystic symbols
on my bare shoulders
and you whispered spells in my ears,
softly.
I vaguely remember
the purple steam around us
before I was way up in the air.
And you said you wanted nothing
but to leave the mauve
lovebite on my hip in return.

It was exactly her 54th birthday
when she told me she had superpowers.

She was  sitting cross legged
doing her make-up.

Her bleached hair was in a ponytail
and eyeshadow dust was falling on her tracksuit.

She smacked her lips and
looked me dead in the eye.

She said she was Reality Woman
because she could mold reality.

She said once she found out
she practiced everyday.

She would yell everyday in the mirror
ever since she was 14.

She would yell she was wonderful
in the morning and evening.

And after it became reality and people told her so too
she would continue.

The fish bowl is yet to make sense.
I’m that little red fish
at the bottom of the glass aquarium
you barely remember
from that childhood cartoon
that maybe never existed.

I’m not a pretty fish,
let’s at least admit that.
I’m not a goldfish,
or a rainbow mermaid,
or a toad the prince could kiss
to turn into a princess.
I’m a red pufferfish.

I’m puffing up and I poison these waters.
Like all scared pufferfish,
I dread facing up to my insecurities.
I never trusted my mind was whimsical enough,
that my skin was pretty enough,
that my spikes were safe enough,
for anyone to love them.

And what is a scared pufferfish to do
but to retrieve to the comfort
of painting the pictures of who they want to be?
What am I to do but to lie?

So, I, the pufferfish, lie.
I lie like my life depends on it,
I turn trickery into art.
I become such a good liar that soon,
no one, not even me,
can tell the difference between
the real situation,
and the fantastic tales I tell myself.
Isn’t it a tiny bit ironic?
Being so afraid of the sting,
that the pufferfish resources to clouding the water
with poison so much
that she poisons herself and doesn’t know
which way in the bowl is up.

The trap of the lying pufferfish
is that not even in lies may she succeed.
Even in lies she loses the game she tries
so desperately to cheat.
You see, it’s a little bit like this,
if you are a pufferfish,
and you don’t believe they’re interesting enough,
and you paint them to look like dolphins,
because everyone loves dolphins,
the pufferfish ends up feeling like an impostor.
No matter what lies she tells herself or others,
she’s smart enough to know in her gills
that she is, in fact, a pufferfish.

However,
should you hold up
the fishbowl
to the light
you’ll see that
underneath the layers of paint
and red skin
my little lying pufferfish heart
is transparent,
in a way,
clean.
I swear,
in all the honesty
you shouldn’t trust,
that I mean no harm
and never had.
And please,
little,
transparent
pumping,
scared heart,
believe yourself,
when you say,
that you are trying
as hard as you can,
at having a fresh start
in the poisoned waters.

Lackluster hillside
A many, ideal sheep sleeps
out of jewelry

Skin a salmon shade when she laughs.
The curly strands that frame her face
are the color of the red apple.
Her contact lenses are a bright fuchsia.
Her lips are brick red.
Her stories are tinted carmine.
Her grief is bordeaux.
She blushes in violet
and smiles in rosy pink as she
stretches her hand for a shake
and says her name is Ruby.

Should the lights be dimmed,
should the night be dark.
should I ever break
or claim to fall apart,
should my blood run cold,
should my tears run dry,
should I stop believing
that light in dark resides,
turn my face away
from the blackness of the sky,
twist my wide eyes back
from the lands on which I walk,
rip me whole from all of this
I have claimed to have disowned,
and then I'll burst to dust,
and then in light I shall explode,
and then I'll burn alive again,
then I'll be once more a whole.

Snowflakes                                
                                             daintily

                             floa t

     s    p    a    c        e       d         o     u   t

        in  the cold
                           bone - biting  air.
Little dots
            .       .       .       .       .       .
                        drifting     eerily
               to the steamy pavement.





Don't you wish you could melt?

As his limbs stroked along the bottom
with all the power he held, in slow motion,
there was a case to be made
for the existence of the magical and the occult.
Kaleidoscope webs covered his back
in what looked like infinite rainbow nets
each brushing against a bone or muscle
unseen in the plain light before.
His hair was softened by the absence of air,
each strand fainting at a different angle
begging to be touched
right before being pulled in one direction
of precise yet strenuous motion.
All neglected now was illuminated.
Rarely things burn their way into memory
the way a face can be filtered through transparency,
distorted by liquid out of proportion
yet still so charmingly calm and surreal
all you can do is look away
and then stare again.
And what bottomless greed it is indeed
to wish to posses a moment like this for eternity.

Ihaveliquifiedintoanicecreampuddle
leftonconcreteinthesun
Iamtran­quilandI'mhappy.

Summer,
I love it when you melt me.

Give me the melancholy
of clear skies
in moody March,
and the joy
of scorching sun
in mid October.
Give me the elixir
of blooming trees
in festive May
to put me into
somber slumber.
Give me earthy,
muddy leaves,
woven into soft rugs,
to walk on with
gloomy November.
I want to be fitted into a calendar,
into comfortable routine
so that I roll my way backwards
in near perfect opposition.
I want to rewind the seasons so as to match my mood.
Maybe then I'll be in sync with time.

Quite the weirdest sensation it is.
Ordering a table for one.
Sitting alone.
Not talking about anything.
Just reading a book.
Hearing the woman from the opposite table
say to her friend
that it requires a lot of courage
to eat alone in a restaurant.
Why thank you!
I practice my courage everyday.

My body is sacred.
More sacred than the holiest
of the places
I've posed in front of
with my family
in photos.

My bones carry a structure
with a bad posture
from never having been
completely held up
in a proper position while reading.

My muscles are working
with the vitality of a young person
who does not enjoy working out
and keeping fit
unless the burden of pressure
is eased by the water
I enjoy to swim in.

The organs which keep me alive
are damaged somewhat
by my unhealthy habits
but are still
keeping the holy magic
of being so painfully alive
going.

The tissues that cover me
have been a curios decoration
for my life's entirety.
My skin has felt the eyes
of the people that tried
to turn it to a commodity,
the eyes who have tried
to call it obscene and cover it,
the eyes who have tried
to fetishize it,
the eyes who have never noticed it.

And my body's an abbey
where only my cells are allowed
to live in permanently.
And for as long as that's so
no one can shame it.
Or me.

Ecstasy wasn't found
in the bottom of the bottle.
It was subtle yet sudden
folded into the wings of the napkin.
You smuggled it breathlessly
under the bridge of your tongue.
I cupped it in the soft chalice
of my curled lips
behind the bars of my clinking teeth.
It crawled its way to my spine
and evaporated up your nose.
A minute or two.
And I remember opening my eyes
drugged by the way I had forgotten
what it had felt like to be wanted.
And the colors around me burst into laughter.
And we laughed and laughed along
until the steam of ecstasy was all around us.

You have to see Titan
(though there are no sirens)
from where I am standing.
(Vonnegut lied.)

When stars up here burst,
they don't just combust,
the shrapnel gets tangled
in your hair.

If you stretch down your feet
it's a pine's top you'll hit.
All the trees are so tall,
and ever so green.

I like the view from up here,
where everything's clear.
Where the days are so long
and nights are so warm.

Should you wish to visit,
forget about physics,
hop on a bumble bee,
and fly over to me.

T all grapevines entwine with the
O verhead wires and lead to
U nwilling leaves now home to a
G iant green guest with the
H olographic horrifying eyes.

T roubled dreams the bug is dreaming.
I mpossible luck keeps it away from
N earby spider webs and
Y ellow giant villains.

T angled in untangled thoughts of
H orrid dreams of hope
I t sits on its green leaf and is
N ow watching flowers bloom.
G ratefullness swells its tiny heart.

Milly laid out
brown paper bags from the delli
opened wide on her doorstep.
Ivy put plastic containers
with the lids off
on her windowsill.
Milly told me she was catching
the last rays of sunshine.
Ivy said she was collecting rainwater

My senses unwrap
like brown parcel paper
tied with a string.

They absorb the smell of
coffee beans and turmeric
and the light of warm brown eyes.

I am home
in a home
which is not supposed to be my home.

My skull cracked open
is a messy endeavor.

Everything makes its twisted sense.
You poke at the laziness,
you poke at my refusal to work,
and you stumble upon
the fear of criticism,
poke that and you find the narcissism,
you poke at the narcissism
and you find the screeching fear,
that I'll never be enough unless perfect,
poke at the fears and it will make me scream.
Make me scream
and my skull will crack wider.

I will feed you love
from my paper cup hands
everytime you are starved
for sunny days.

I will put your frozen hands
in my pre-warmed woolen gloves
everytime you may fall ill
from the chill outside our doorstep.

I like me
when I'm around you.
I like my body
when it's with yours.
I like your body
when it's with mine.
I like me and you.
And I like you and me.
I like me & you when we are in proximity.
I like you&me as close as we can be.
I like meyou conjoined.
I like you when you fuse with me.
And I like it when it's we.