He holds me
And tells me I smell of the sea
Like new birth, and death, and decay
That my hair is tangled with enemy flames
He tells me my body is an abandoned war
and the forgotten weapons pierce him

When his lips meet mine
Our teeth clash and spark like gunfire
He tells me my tongue tastes of blood
and my breath fills him with ash
but he presses closer all the same

I am young and small and hiding
Following sunbeams with my book
Chasing stories of knights and dragons
While my father spits fire in my dreams

I am blooming and tall and climbing
Clutching books on a tree limb
Running with wolves in dappled light
Well out from the reach of grasping hands

I am awkward and shy and growing
Curled under the bed with a story
Losing myself in heartbreak and happy endings
Tucked away from raised voices

I am shrinking and silent and trembling
Standing next to your car
A suitcase of books and clothes in hand
A new chapter thrumming in my veins

We are flawed and tenacious and alive
Living life with novels in our skin
Filled with dragons and wolves
With heartbreak and happy endings

I ate your dreams one night
To live your life for awhile
But dreams are fleet footed
And cumbersome flesh and bone no match
So I slipped away
A shadow of a memory
Waiting for a misstep
And the familiar horror of deja vu

We wear our bruises like collars.
Like tags,
We wear our bruises as marks of ownership,
On skin that is not our own.

I run through the forest of the night
Wolf paws beating my reckless flight
Bones crunching with sweet pain
Wiping clear all thoughts sane
A scream tears from my throat
As chestnut trails weave my coat
Primeval cries rise from the night
My hackles raise ready to fight
Silver bullets scream through the air
Searching for my skin to tear
Cold light simmers in their eyes
As evil as their blood thirsty cries
Chasing me with skill and speed
Trying to quench some insatiable need
Bullets spilling my crimson blood
Shallow puddles in the half dried mud
And as my reign fell in the forest of the night
My last thought was of dawns first light

Cast from Icarus peaks
You tumble from your pedestal
A fading fallen phoenix

The flowers are all crying as they drift dying
Past the cold oleanders gaudy blooms
You sleep deep in the fallen petals
Of love wrapped in barbs of good intentions

Golden chains clasped round your aching body
Binding you to the sanity of your grey entrapment  
While colors dance in dizzy spells across the gilded links
Reflected in the eyes of  blind prophets
And the gossamer bars of  existence

You dance in my darkness
Your moth wings burnt and charred
You fade my fallen angel
And all is grey

Your name tastes wrong to my tongue
A bitter familiarity that confuses the senses
Making all other names lies to lips
That no longer remember yours