Dearest Reader,


My name is Margot Dylan, and I'm a pariah.

On the 16th of April, I told my mother that I was gay. She threw the clay mug that I made for her before she found out I was gay, against the floral, peeling wallpaper mess of a wall, in our kitchen. The decaffeinated peppermint green tea left a wonderful aroma that almost cleansed the room of the stench of 'lesbian'.

I met Dylan Dunham a few days after that, and, a few days later, she was the first girl that I ever loved.

Dylan wore a red flannel jacket, and was a butch and sometimes a *****-but I loved her even at her tomboy cruelest.

Dylan smoked a cigarette that smelled like lonerism, and she looked at me like she didn't care. My heart skipped a beat, as cliche as it sounds, whenever she would remove the cigarette from her mouth, exhale, and look at me as smoke traveled up her face. I looked at her and knew that she was everything that I wasn't, and everything that I wanted.

Dylan was Dianne, before and after school. Dylan was Dianne, who wore floral dresses and lipstick and who ditched her butch clothing in her locker before leaving. Dylan was Dianne, who was straight and who thought Tyler Wesson, from church, was cute. Dylan was Dianne, who had a short hair cut because of track and field, because she explained that she ran a faster time with less hair. Dylan was Dianne, who didn't associate with me before or after school because her parents knew that I was gay.

During school hours, the only thing Dylan did keep from Dianne was the lipstick. I was envious of the cigarette because of it's burgundy stains. We would stand in a stall, as she looked across from me, after each drag. She frequently offered her cigarettes, but I refused because I only let love **** me. If she ever brought alcohol, sometimes she'd kiss me. I told her that I loved her and she said, "I know."

The only thing that Dylan kept from me was my heart, before she started to smoke cigarettes in the bathroom with Annie Way.


I wish you the best moments so they can overcome the worst,

Margot Dylan

By walking between certain trees,
Sometimes, one has an odd feeling,
An unusual tingling sensation,
Not scary, but mostly appealing.
Katalyn passed between two elms,
And entered into ancient realms.

Excitement prickled Katalyn’s skin,
Trees here were wide and tall,
Then from a sun-splashed clearing,
There came a strange animal call.
Creeping closely; peering round a tree,
Katalyn saw unicorns, roaming free.

Approaching slowly, heart beating fast,
Katalyn could not help but smile,
As the unicorns gathered round,
What grace, such poise, cool style.
Not thinking, Katalyn touched a wing,
There came a whoosh . . . so dizzying.

Without knowing, how or why,
Katalyn soared above the trees,
Holding a slender unicorn neck,
Laughter escaping on the breeze.
They dropped into a sudden glide,
With a thrilling rush: what a ride!

They winged across grassy plains,
Between mountains capped with snow,
Katalyn neither knew nor recognised,
The wild land, passing by, below.
Another world; another dimension,
Kept secret by; magical intention.

Then Katalyn was suddenly walking,
Back where the adventure began,
Passing between two old elms,
Returned to the world of man.
Now feeling as happy, as you please,
Knowing unicorns lived, beyond the trees.

© Paul M Chafer 2014

Her eyes are in the skies
of the town I grew to despise
The appetite of the mind, seems sublime
but over time...
it all faded, and so the mills stopped turning and like so many machines in the lace houses I too became a sedentary one

The gentle hum of railway hydrogen bombs bicker over sounds of birds in the morning beams of a British summer morn
but along the tarry scarred roads of every little town lay a thousand lonely suicides aided in deeds of governmental scorn
and the requisite notions of sanity are held only to the regards of glossy magazines stacked high in a disappointed dazed newsstands and corner shops
where young kids once stole *******, and snacks, and milk
where lonely old men buy scratchcards and lottery tickets
where the mothers of the young hide their bruised faces in soup can solipsisms
and where the working migrants use ticker-tape guns to price the worthless and mourn their homeland

I saw you, walking lonely as a cloud
William Wordsworth of the wonderful beard
and I saw them laugh and point and deride

I saw you too, in vagabond virility
stalking the girls in summer dresses
down on bended knee, at the bus stop in the heat

I remember the old car, burned out shell
under the bridge near the shops
that I passed before school

who was it too, that I recall
stood by the wall
with eyes to sky, and in some cosmic free fall

and you, who read Proust by the canal
listening to birds twitter
and the gentle wash of ducks paddling nearby

I am all your faces, divisible by none
when the exasperated winds of some folly of the season
comes rushing through the alley by a brick house
and in some provincial moment in time
I believe we are the same
I see you as myself in simultaneous existence

but soon we leave, and in the proverbial ether
my soul will forever be intertwined

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines