The ice queen attempts to be more fact than fiction, but her eyes are covered in placenta. She can’t see through the burden of her mother’s expectations, the pompoms and Bible shoved down her throat at an early age.
The ice queen attempts to be more fact than fiction, but her eyeliner is smeared and so is the world. She’s always loved women, and hated herself enough to be with men. She’s always drowned out the protests of her own mind with liquor, finding refuge in the ability to ignore.
The ice queen attempts to be more fact than fiction. Is unsatisfied. Disgusted. Displeased. Dear Academy, for your consideration, would like a new self image.

Grey areas like a giant black vortex, ******* in everything; nothing can be classified as right or wrong. I turn away, sobbing, and you kiss me on the cheek, as if everything will be okay. It will not be okay, so long as I’ve tangled myself in this web of indecision; this chasm between what is right and what is wrong. I imagine the *****, burning it’s way down my throat; my esophagus has turned to ash without my consent. I’m in a dark place, and I can’t find the light switch.

The sunflower dreams disintegrate, leaving dust. I see you there through the plexiglass wall, and wonder if you can see me too. The wax drips from the tip of the candle. Five spots, six-seven. Nine. I burn for you. The red runs crimson down my thigh. I reach for you through my condemned klonopin haze. Once again, I was too weak for you. The pressure builds, forming cracks in my psyche, making me wonder who I am or where I’m going.

Blank spaces. The canvas between white and black, the words that don’t fill the spaces in between I love you. And I don’t know what you want me to do, so I sit outside and chain smoke and listen to the birds who are confused, because it’s raining. I’m sick, you say, as if that straightens out the jumble in my mind. We’re solving the world’s problems one puff of nicotine at a time.

My rib cage is parted, a bird's nest inside. The
pebbles and sticks guard my lungs. Sparrows
peck at the hollows of my heartstrings and
feast on aortic valves.

I ****** up. I know that. Guilt comes fast, asking what I was thinking. I was doing it for me, but mostly, I was doing it for you. I wanted what I wanted and what I wanted you couldn’t give me. So I let you give me something else, and I tried to be present, tried to accept it graciously, but my head was elsewhere. Guilt rolls down my back, coating it like tar. My head floating around in space somewhere between “do it for her,” and “this is not what I wanted.” Guilt sits down and pours me a cup of tea.

A glass shatters. The shards multiply and scatter beyond
the scope of the human eye.
We sweep the broken bits away, but leave
fragments, waiting for an unsuspecting heel,
ready to make their mark.

Actions are like shattered glass. A mistake
is made and the aftermath ripples and
ripples across the surface, touching countless
lives in ways we never could have premeditated.

Does that, however, mean, that we should
never act at all? Hardly. Faith without works is
dead, they say. Life without action is execution. But
we must remain conscious of the ripples we cause,
the actions we take, and the decisions we make
for one day, they might impact the one we
hold dearest.