the music did nothing
except send veins of pallid tears
down ashen cheeks that had forgotten
how to smile.

dust stole into our lungs
with spindly fingers
creeping like the gas,
killing like the furnaces it
escaped from.

i saw broken people standing
dead on their feet,
arms outstretched,
unaccustomed to the deep cavity in their chest
that their children used to fill.

there were no surprises in this life
except spare beds
that were quickly filled and emptied again
as often as bruises replaced by
faceless men patrolling past.

God was watching,
God was looking,
God was not seeing.





and still we were silent.

i am who i am.
not a name, not a number, not a reset button.
not hair or clothes or wordless things that
call to me from big cities.
i'm staring at hair and it's staring right back,
but you're staring at me and
i've chosen to look the other way.
trains rush by in the rain on slippery tracks
and i'm afraid they'll never stop moving,
rushing blindly forward in torrents of what
must be starving icy thunder.
we are the passengers and we're scared as hell.
but i am who i am,
going nowhere in circles and and
tracing petite diamonds with my fingertips
(sans sparkle, of course.)
down the sinkhole i spiral with no wings
to catch the air beneath me, but where is the bottom?
i was born without the remote: just another
Fast-Forward Girl floating too high off
the surface of her cereal bowl.
i'm stumbling out of bed on cold mornings because
the car is here and i've got to go somewhere other than this place,
somewhere with a big red X saying
"I am here" in the very center
of my universe.
i am who i am, and
maybe that will be enough for you.
you hold my hand and say nothing at all and somehow
that will always be enough for me.
i don't ask for your forever, i ask for
a finger, a tooth, a song.
give me a beat, a broken mirror, and mile-high windows
and i won't be lost anymore.
i'm up for sale, more or less: would anyone ever want these
small blue eyes that have seen so little?
she's gladly trading bottle flames for smashed headlights because
she takes what she can get.
i'm writing poetic so you can't make assumptions,
writing noetic because my mind is infinitely collapsing in on itself.
still, i am who i am, no future written
on legal pads
or pink Post-Its
or in the leftover foam
of coffee cups.
i carved my name into the piano because i thought it
belonged there, took a pen and busted it
to see what sour blue ink would look like on
the white concrete below.
i am who i am.
you are thinking i am just another 2-by-3 in someone's back pocket,
but in a life full of pins and needles, i am
the blue balloon with
the red letter trailing
sweetly behind.

don't think.

on the X i yell to the eggshell sky,
"I am here!" but no one is there
to catch the whisper.

so who am i now?

build the earth from nothing,
she demanded.

build around me a shield of green and
carve your cityscapes into my ribcage,
burrow deep into my flesh and
drink from my throat like thieves.
i gave you everything but the clothes
on your back and the poison
you stole from my name,
shutting out birdsong and brainwaves for rocketships and
buckets of red that stained my dress like the frost.
i have been bleeding, starving, praying,
but you've only
licked your lips and settled
more comfortably into the rabbit's fur like the demons you are.

an outcry.
we had planted her fingers and
eaten the roots
just as she had asked,
pressed the dark, rich earth between our toes
as blood seeped from the pores of our skin
and acid dripped into the lungs of the children.
we had stood in the cold shivering and knocking
but her door remained sealed
for still she was not pleased.

we had outsmarted her
once before, you see.
twisted glacial rivers and sent showers of sparks towards
the sky in a beauty more precise than arrows,
and by luck of the dice
had turned her pieces round.
but she had shaken us off her shoulder
as easily as a dew droplet or
the shedding of a second skin,
an empty shell that filled with rainwater
when left out for a night.

our punishment was one of unusual origins and
hadn't a fathomable end,
one we couldn't even begin to guess.
our question stands in a noose of gold and silver
and i've a feeling the jury will clatter their knees
to protect the guilty.

and who were we to speak the truth when
the snapping of necks deafened the loudest voice?

1.
a Picasso night,
laden with dust that settles on
my skin like
snow.
I'm sitting in the center of the room
with gooseflesh skin and
broken bones still shifting,
prodding my little flame with
singed fingertips
and all I can see is my childlike
reflection
staring hungrily back at me,
thirsting for an inkling of something more.

2.
the room is awash with yellow light from
the oncoming dawn.
I claw at the floor with
scorched nails,
digging my way out.
through the genesis, my little flame swells with
hope as my reflection shifts
into someone I begin to recognize.

3.
high noon. the roof is gone.
the sun beats upon me like a
drum
and i take the blows with my head
bowed in paralyzing
shame.
something is perpetually falling from
my eyes, but i've already refused
to cry.
the flame is shrunken and deteriorated to
a dull pinprick
of luminance.
i no longer wish to escape this
room;
i only long to understand the face in
the wall
that i know
is me.

i smash the mirrors.

4.
this sunset is all I could have
ever dreamed of.
I am an hourglass tunrned
inside-out and upside-down,
my flame flickering and beginning
to grow again.
I reach out,
grab the hands that have been
outstretched towards me
for what seems like
an eternity.
They will take me home.

Look at the colors, they say.
I know.

I know.

5.
a Picasso night
laden with dust that settles on
my skin like
snow.
I sprout wings and fly away,
stars exploding in my wake.

she was burning alive
day by day
the ashes dropping onto
his empty slate
like the snowflakes that
fell quietly onto the windowsill
that evening
as they talked.

she

made everything sound too
pretty, too
deadly
for words, but they
followed behind her anyway
as soldiers of the stone
and the brick.

(still, he tried his best to keep up.)