Trying to fill the empty spaces
with coffee stained pages
and the memory of a kiss on a windy night
when you were both drunk and under your closed eyes
there was only the illusion
of a different tomorrow
where birds would sing the music of your mind
where planes would take you
to a place where the roses never die.
You  fall asleep every night picturing yourself
wearing a nice shirt and a pretty **** smile
and in your dreams
her white dress dances around your body
in the shadow of a ****** red sky.

Is it hope or is it just a lie?

Eating crumbs of happiness from the pavement
won't turn you into a pigeon,
you're still a fish
swimming in a bowl of pain
surrounded by the smoke of the cigarette left burning in the heart serving as an ashtray.

And in the end you realize
that life is just a space between hellos and goodbyes.

She falls in and out time
Flys about like the winged feet of Mercury
Riding upon the flickering flame of consciousness
Navigates the chattering currents of light
She buckles down, leans into the wind
Only to finds herself host to a house full of ghosts
She dines with them,
Pours another glass of wine with them
All the while she feels the undeniable weight of their chains
Through their hollow smiles, she sees them crying,
Yet she says nothing...
For she cannot help but to relate.
All she can do now is laugh
At the absurdity of her quiet, casual observations
For time reveals that there really are
No greater demons
Than the ones that reside
Within the sum of her own reflection.
She dresses herself for the evening ahead,
Once again, she'll be attending the annual masquerade ball.
Everyone there wears a disguise of his own design,
Yet rarely is it one of his own choosing.
So today she won't be at the mercy of some unseen spectral stylist.
Today she takes a watchful eye,
And faces the shelf of faces herself.
Careful not to choose a mask that is too gaudy,
Nor too wild, nor too frighteningly cruel.
Because she already knows that nobody can leave the party until after midnight anyhow...
So she might as well dance.

She exits the door with apprehension
The push of their sorrows, their fears... their lonely hearts
Have become all but unbearable
She can't take the train these days without having a panic attack
Vague reflections dance across the window panes
The light rail careens down the tracks and into the mountainside
While she nervously chews at a hang nail
The precession of half remembered dreams begins
Flashes of color and scent and sound
Her first day of preschool
The Easter basket her mother crushed in a drunken rage
The bruise she was told to lie about
The feel of the cool sand on her feet as she sat by the river
Smiling eyes and lying hands,
Betraying her innocence
Countless nights rendered indecipherable by gin
Calloused thumbs and empty lighters and blackened pipes
Sorrows, rejection, rage, fear... emptiness
The smell of his milk stained onesie, his blanket, his photographs
The tiny, perfectly trimmed nails of his plaster of paris hand
That she keeps in a heart shaped box,
Along with a swatch of hair
The anger in her ex husbands eyes
The loveless torment of her mother's unending hate
Her father's misplaced indifference
The heat of her own silent tears
Become nothing more than the scars and stripes on her back
And the constellations of stars, seemingly etched in her eyes
Yet still,
She Endures.