god stood by me, he hid in my pocket like a piece of amethyst
when i ran he turned into the forest to envelop me
his spirits became soft grasses, scented woods and colorful flower



The elderly woman in her garden in the early morning before the sun rises too high. She never sprays chemicals to get rid of the snails, instead she works and plants for and around them. This garden is to celebrate life, not to take it away. The wooden fence bordering her property is low and unoffensive enough to allow through woodland creatures who are never shooed away for taking a walk or a bite through the herbage. Perhaps she is atoning for a life of death and destruction. Or perhaps she is a saint.


They enjoyed things like making forts out of sticks and blankets and cardboard boxes and dressing up and going to the opera.


Memories, fresh like a wound.

Sometimes something so small. Going to the post office. A slideshow of post offices in my life. The disinfected paper smell, the lines of people waiting to mail a package, the solid colors of the interior, gray, black, white. A scrubby short haired black carpet, well worn.


I turned into a set of wings made out of crayon or colored pencil markings. As if pushed and pulled by the wind I stunned through the air, waving in the sunlight, pencil dashes of red and blue and purple. Like an animation from Reading Rainbow.

Thrown and tossed about like a lightweight wale in the sea. An enormous behemoth of grey and blue leaping like a kitten among the waves. It should be terrifying and would be if its teeth were any larger or sharper and if there was not such a happy gleam in its huge eye.

It's safe in daylight, you know.

I drive through my crumbling suburbia
Over all of its bumps and cracks
And feel so small, yet so
Infinite.
Feeling loosely connected
To every signpost,
Every stray cat,
Every filled and vacant house.
Part of a chain that runs its course
Across the entirety of existence.
I am a spectator, an observer of
Humanity though, admittedly,
Not quick to a level conclusion of it.

Yes, days are safe. They are familiar.

But it's dusk where the malaise sets in,
A disturbance that unsettles the muscles
Under my skin
And has me toss and turn for hours on end.
It's night where I trip barefoot
Over every folly,
Every small tick in the course of my life
In a path strewn with broken glass.

It's where the realms between your sanity
And where your demons sleep
Grow the weakest,
Churning your head with static and poison
And constantly reminding you
How easy it is to find your own faults,
How difficult it is to say,
"I love myself."

I wonder most nights when this all started.

I wonder every night when it'll stop.

I am the silent one.
The one who watches
all the terrible things.

Not a sputter
Shall escape my lips.
In search of a cordial tongue.
For mine is cold
like the skin of ghosts

Vacant to this scourge
In the moment
on a dead moon night

I am the silent one
The one who watches
you do all the terrible things.

They strung me up.
Not by the neck,
that would be
too quick.

No.
They intended
a slow torture for me,
bound one foot,
bound my arms.

I heard a voice:
Escape is possible
if you want it.

And I was alone.

At first I struggled.
Swayed back and forth
from the wind, and the weather and the
pain,
to no avail.

But eventually,
I learnt to just

Stop.

If this was my life,
So be it.
I was not going to provide
a show of my misery
to any God.

I saved my energy,
learnt to live with seeing the world
pass me by,
learnt to see things
from a different perspective.

Torture?
This was nice,
relaxing even,
I could hardly feel the pain,
could block it out
almost entirely.

Perhaps this is what I wanted
all along -
an eternal break.

Fool that I was,
I failed to realize
the torture was not physical
but mental.

Slowly I grew bored
in contemplation,
in limbo,
in apathy,
in atrophy.

I remembered the voice:
escape is possible,
I remembered
everything I wanted to do
everything I still yearned to do.

All the beauty and the goodness
and the possibilities of Life
made me ache,
and I could not block it out.

Suddenly I saw:
this was not torture
but a test.

My time of suspension is up,
These are but ropes,
not chains.

I know the way out,
and I am not afraid.

There is work to be done.

Everything was so simple.
The drive was there.
With excess in the tank.
The world would blur by.
Melding.
Faces and hours.
Until time was nonexistent.
A plethora of empty bottles and bags.
Strewn across the vacant sky.
With friends like stars.
Casting a light from so far off.
And as present as such.
Routine restrained me.
Trained me.
Becoming more helpless with every misguided night.
Chasing a freedom that I dreamt up so long ago.
So many left turns.
Sirens chastised the fragile hope I gripped so tight.
And as it turned to sand in my hands.
Watching it all fall away.
I couldn't help but wonder..
Why.
What did it matter.
With anger surging from the deepest part of my blackened soul.
Did living turn into surviving.
Then into apathy.
So I unfastened the harness.
Turned the volume past maximum range.
Flipped the switch to overdrive.
And readied myself for the next collision.
The only constant I could ever rely on.

Holding hands to cross the street
Feel the sand under my feet
The way you twirl me, like a cotton candy man
I feel so girly as you wind each curly strand

When I'm growing up too fast
And the world demands a lady
You remind me of my past,
Though it often might evade me

Summer days and autumn leaves
Wading through the endless trees
The way you hold me when I just can't sleep at night
I lay there coldly as you slowly soothe my mind


After all is said and done,
So thankful you're the one
To bring back the daughter in me