Another mark.
Another inch of skin covered.
Lines of words in languages from ages past.
Self expression to fill the silence.
Skin to speak when words fail.
Black artistry turned orange with time.
Orange is brown and all fades to be remade.
To remake and recreate is to preserve with intention.
Bleeding henna breeds creation.
Inspires chaos.
Forces constant renewal.
A virtuousity that gives life to this mind's insanity.

Reprimanded.
Unable to contain the mess.
Of life. Of space. Of mind.
Mentally worn from consternation.
A parent's words harsh in truth.
Harsher still in lack of perceptivity.
Stunted in youth.
Emotionally... creatively.
A broken daughter.
Insufficient.
Too much of this and that.
Not enough of what's wanted.
Still incompetant.
A broken mother, lover, friend.....
Not enough of what's desired.
Too much in personality.
In emotion.
In sensitivity.
Too much of oneself.
Is change necessary to be mended?
Or is this mind irreparable...
this heart unlovable....
this self undesirable?
Is it too late.....
or am I just finally beginning?

I talked and you listened....
leaving your fingerprint smudges
on the pages of my soul.

Those pages erased as you
pushed me out of the door.
Choosing instead the lonliness
of your darkess and fear of what could be.

You left me blank, unwritten.
With only a title remaining.
I must now pick up the pen
and rewrite myself.

I must brave the ink stains that
will bleed into me....
I will be the author of a  new
version of my soul.

How will I know the right words?
They will come as all do for this
wordsmith of emotion.

Through pain and heartache,
my tears black as night.
But I will not succumb to the
darkness like you did.

Though my words stained in
inky black, my story will be life.
You made me want to feel for the
first time... in that single breath.

But I'll make myself want to feel for a lifetime.

They spin in circles freely without constraint.
Veracious or deluding in exuberance and despair?
Perchance a bit of both?
An ethereal reflective narrative.
Intangible substance.
Internalizing sensitivities.
Processing encounters.
Dramatic imaginings that breed creativity.
Fierce dejection feeds anxiety.
Exultant highs that reach the edge of space.
Traumatic rage to cauterize the soul.
A rollercoaster of words heard within.
Sensitivity.
And unregrettable struggle.
A prized element of this identity.

Under the witching moon, she chants the ancient song.
Singing to the twilight sky to bring a lover home.

A maiden fair had come to her desparate in her plea.
Longing for her gentle lad, who seeks his fortune out at sea.

"Bring him home!", she said, "To fill my heart and warm my bed."
With eyes glowing, a firebright, the witch woman spoke into the night.

"Caution, dear." In somber tone, echoing in the deeping wood.
"Pure, the love you have must be for this magick to do any good.

Should any other kind prevail, obsession will give way to greed.
Selfish desire turns passion to madness that will forever control the head."

"You have my word, this love is true." tears in the maid's sapphire eyes.
With one last word the spell was done and cast off into distant skies.

She watched as the maiden fair disappeared into the mist,
and looked down at a familiar face that arched and gave a reproachful hiss.

"I tried my best." The witch woman shrugged winking at her lover moon.
For she knew full well the lover's fate would begin with the rising sun.

A watery bed awaited the maid, her blood on the hands of the gentle lad.
For pure a love must always be if using magic to force fate's hand.

Into the darken woods the witching woman wandered on.
Shedding robes she tipped her hat, to dance bare under the witching moon.

What little traumas affect existance?
Sensitive souls destroyed by petty words.
Judged as wanting and paltry.
No arms to becalm the distress.
Hands brushing skin.
Moving to secret places.
A dark and ardorless touch.
Revealed in action and recycled in psyche.
Surprising kindreds found then lost without words.
First love led to intimacies wracked with devestation.
Cyclical defamation to the mind and body.
Kindreds remade and lost again.
At last, absconding from lingering tethers.
New love found and destroyed.
Too many little traumas repressed.
Too many left raw and open.
Too many affected existance.
Realization is the road to healing.

I cut my heart with what's to come.
Adapted for inevitability that has yet to evolve.
Space is untold.....
I granted it.
Wits twisted, past traumas.
I no longer surive apart from them.
Lost, alienated from insight or control.
Infinity is felt in no time at all.
I plunge into internal torment.
Bleeding unease.
Tears salty with rejection.
Insufficiently digesting distrust.
Rage like broken fireworks.
Contrition then crowding the soul.
Percieved inevitablity is not certain.
Waiting for space to shift.
I feel....... lost.

"Time will tell."
Artfully said, to skirt rejection.
To become a ghost, cyclical in thought.
Ruminations of hope.
Guessing.
Trusting.
Aching.
Craving to turn it all back.
Can time repair what has been fragmented by haste?
Can it legitimately parent hope?
Or will it forgive the ghost?
I suppose it will tell.......

Hello World.
Bright lights, flashing signs, busy streets.
Loud and boisterous, fun and full of life.
Ever racing to the next, biggest brightest, best...
Do you see me on that lonely road? I know you do.
I look at your beauty on full display.
I know you ask, no... demand I join you.
To jump into your center.
Hold my head up, stand tall, don't cry....
Heartbreak isn't worth tears.
But your bright lights hurt my eyes.
Your flashing signs overwhelm me.
Racing on your busy streets feels like a dance with death.
But look over here....
See these woods? Deep, black, overgrown, hollow.
Dangerous you say, full of monsters and pitfalls.
Too risky. You, World, would never venture there. No light.
But I love those woods. They are my home.
You see, I can navigate them.
If I trip, I can pick my self up.
I can roar right back at the monsters.
I am senstive, but that does not mean I am weak!
These woods... They have such beauty.
You just have to brave the dark to find them.
These secret places my kindreds and I discover.
They are ours.
Here we can be us.
We can laugh at nothing, cry at everything.
We can dance our little jigs, without you, World, looking at us with that....face.
We can have our oddities, those things you snub.
We can revel in them.
We can love so freely without restraint, because that's our way.
We have no walls. We are vulnerable.
We can even love the monsters, for that's what we are... right?
We aren't like you.... never like you.
Sometimes we venture to you... wanting to show our love.
But you, World, make us anxious. That toxic thing that lives inside.
A relationship that can't be severed when we are with you.
Constantly telling us we are not good enough for you.
That we don't deserve you. But we ARE good enough.
But to you we are like that priceless vase. Broken countless times.
Constantly repaired. Too vulnerable for your hands.
We are put on that top shelf, away from your warmth.
No flowers to feed our creativity. Just admired from afar.
But you don't really admire us anymore, do you?
Because all you see are the cracks.
I am sensitive, but that does not mean I am weak!
You, World, have to build walls to guard your vulnerabilities..... I don't.
You were once like us, you know. Free.....
Free to live, laugh, love, and just be unrestrained.
No walls, no fear, no need for those binding entities.
We flew.
But you wanted better things.
You found the ground and raced towards the future.
Looking ahead to evolution...to the next advancement.
Leaving what's left of us behind.
We are so few now... nearly forgotten.
So we stay in our secret places, and wait.
We wait for you World, to come to us.
Because we will love you with no restraint.
We adore you so desperately... those parts of you behind your walls.
We love your broken pieces, your scars.
They are those little reminders that you were once like us.
So my kindreds and I will live, laugh, love, and be us unreservedly in our secret places.
And we will wait for you....... but we will never change.

Everytime I'd say I'm odd,
you'd say I'm not.
When I'd say I'm weird,
you'd tell me otherwise.
I'd tell you I'm crazy,
you'd always contradict.
You said you liked listening,
but you never really heard me.
Those were not insults
borne of self doubt.
They were praises of the highest order.
Born of a desire to live free
from the small minded.
To fill my heart with all of the
things normal fears.
I know you chose normal,
it's a safe place to hide.
That false claim...
it will trip you in the end.

I ache for something, this longing.
I don't know.
It's there, but I can't reach it.
This knot, a pit in my chest.
I can't breathe, but yet I can.
My mind spins to the stars, but lies in a fathomless nothing.
I want to break these bonds, yet I crave them.
I sing them in my sleep and dream them when I wake.
Lost yet here.
I cry my words to the sky, but my lips are glued shut.
My dry tears fill the night to sleep with the stars.
My mind spins apart, while I deal with the day to day.
I don't know this need, yet it is as familiar as the sun.
I laugh as it burns.
A glee surrounded by..... something.
I don't know.
Am I human?
Or something else.
Am I even here?

To think in narrative, is a living fairytale.
Not of those read as a child.
But of extinction and squalor.
The raw ache of a love nearly told.
The wreckage of damaged goods.
Lost minds a casualty of defective desire.
Shredded particles of tenderness withheld.
A gleaming crypt in the sunshine, while life posesses the shadows.
Interminable woe in an aura of bloodshed.
Rare is the "happily every after."
A dismal epilogue the usual reiteration.
Slivers of a daydream shines through the blighted dusk.
But the narrative insists on the fairytale.

I don't need to protect this heart I am.
Courage instead is my shield.
The courage to be vulnerable.
No matter how many times I am beat down.
No matter how many times friendships die,
or I cry in my car at a certain song.
To love and lose, and still be able to love again.
To laugh at nothing and cry at everything.
To rage at the sun for shining sometimes.
To be unabashedly me in every way.
It's about time I became that heart on the outside...
Don't ya think?

You are enough.
Your broken bits, I don't need you whole.
You were whole when you were young.
That's a you that I don't know.
The you that I recognize is more than enough for me.
The you now is exquisitely scarred.
Not plainly unmarred.
The you now loves with forethought.
Not imprudent action.
The you now is reticent and reflective.
Not boisterous and carefree.
I prefer the you of today.
Always enough.

A penny for your colors, please.
Your eyes when I catch your gaze?
Your skin exquisite in it's hue?
That which you favor most?
A penny for your sounds, please.
Your sighs in those secret trysts between us?
Your laugh, a most delicious exception?
The lilting way you say "My dear."?
A penny for your touch, please.
The precise brush of your fingers across my arms?
Your lips against my temple?
Enveloped in your embrace?
I only bid a penny, for those things you cede so freely.
For your musings, your emotion, your yesterdays, your tomorrows, I propose my soul unconditionally.
To scale the wall around those most prized entities merits my entirety.
A penny for your colors, please............. until you are ready.

Sunkissed summer breezes begets memories.
Ponderings of shivering, cool, spring air.
The soft crunch of gravel underfoot.
Wandering down favored paths.
Clasped hands and flushed faces.
Unsurprising intelligence tells of expertise.
Soft lilting speech soothes with butterflies.
Gentle eyes smiling amused.
Inquiring at the process within.
A distant vision embraced in warmth.
Surrendering caress to nervous smirk.
Long talks among flashing scenes.
Ponderings of memories lost to spring.
Lost to sweet, cool, shivering air.

Little hands reaching out.
Wanting what? A cuddle?
A mindset bent on keeping busy.
Sweet hands, pushed away.
Another time.
Boisterous voices.
Questioning, always questioning.
Bright eyes, excited smile.
Too much. Too loud. Too many questions.
Beautiful voices silenced.
Another time.
Defective? Unworthy? Unable?
Love is so deep, but the mindset locks it in.
Chained by what?
Turning away. Another is desired. Wanted.
Little hands reach for the spare.
Sweet voices cry when taken away.
The unworthy desires to be more.
To be better.
But emotions locked, shut down.
Trauma from the past?
An insufficient upbringing?
Defective?
Thoughts for another time......