I often fear
That I am an odd number.
My parity being
So that I cannot exist
In a pair
Without serving as a disruption
To all involved.  

I am a five
Drowning
In a sea of eights.  

Sometimes I wonder
Why I do not etch
Five fresh tallies
Into my soft, lonely skin.  
Watching the five new rivers
Run in red rivulets
Onto my bare, thirsty floor.  

Or use up five shiny, new rounds
To decorate my already cold body
With brand new holes –
Ones people don’t need
To understand to see –
Until it is lowered into
A sixth.  
My wax face
Made to look
As if I was put together
Rather than breaking
Into pieces
Scattering in five directions.  

And then I remember:

Pip One.
I promised,
While huddled in the dark –
Enveloped in the decorated arms
Of an angel
Forsaken by most –
To stick around.  

Pip Two.  
I promised
My brother,
Barely finished
Being a babe,
To teach him
All I knew.  

Pip Three.  
I promised
A boy like me,
Only brighter,
I wouldn’t leave him,
Like everyone else.  

Pip Four.  
I promised
A boy
I don’t even like
I wouldn’t
If he wouldn’t.  

Pip Five.  
I promised
Myself.  

Sometimes being
An odd number isn’t too bad.  
Sometimes.  
It gets better,
At least that’s what
Everyone seems to believe,
And maybe
I want to believe
It too.  

I am not a five
Drowning
In a sea of eights.







Rather I grow
Into pi,
Stretching past
The ****** sky,
And the eyes that try
To look beyond it.  

Just like everyone else.

Sometimes I don't know if

I'm a lamb, an amorphous white cloud
Drifting across dry, green oceans.  
The bringer of dreams, of peace
Woven in my wool.
I live slowly, softly
Until I don't -
And that's okay.  

Or a wolf, a sleek slick of oil
Running through thick trunks
That I smear with blood
I've stolen
Because I can't help myself.  
I cry at the moon
And I live like a falling star.  

Am I hiding beneath sheep's skin?
Wolf's pelt?
Am I nothing
More than a collection of both?

How could that be!
To be both, to be both is impossible -
                                                 Tenderness
Exists only in the absence of
                                                  Ruthlessness. ­ 

Yet here I am
Stealing your dreams
With my blood covered wool
Crying at the moon
With a slow, silent bray.  

                                                        ­                                                           Perhaps...
                           It would be best
                                                            ­                                                       I not exist
                          No, not at all.

The thief, the usurper
She rides through the black
With her white robes
And dusty, pale hair.
She calls
Minstrels and men, vagrants and virgins;

Singing to them about light
That is not her own
With dulcet murmurs, lofty promises.
Her children hide behind her
Luminescent skin like moths
Hiding from the blue nighttime-

Mother!  They cry, their tears streaking
Through the sky onto the Earth,
Leaving behind iron and fire.
This vagabond, she does not suckle them,
For she is lightless, left with only
A hard, round face

Full of silence and fear
Leaving men and me to reach for her,
And she, she spins away.
Umbridged is the king
Who reigns bright beams upon those
Living on the blue skin of his sister-

Ah, his sister, a lady of green
Dotted with poppy jems and violet jewels.
She is forgotten when the larcenist shows
Her hair.  Lost and lonely, it is made fair
By the light of the king.  
The pilferer is made to feel whole

And beautiful.  The green lady,
She is wrathful, spitting fire, spitting ice.
Still the **** is unknown,
Unknown to all the land
And the lords and ladies that reap it,
And the king whose crown stays lit

And warm on his sister's rough face,
And the Lady Green who curses and weeps
For the capture of the thief that creeps
Throughout the cold, cloudless night.
A reward for any who can catch her,
A knighthood for any to tame her.

Unbeknownst to her admirers the damnable ****
Is nothing more than a mere handmaiden
For the Lady Green.  A lonely *****
Hidden away during the light of morn
Til darkness descends and
The royals' house is torn.

May she continue to steal their precious
Gold and eyes and praise and skies
With her bright pale hair,
Long when the day ceases to be.
One day the king shall burn his sister, the blue *****,
Freeing the lonely handmaiden forevermore.

All's turned to ashes
And they say that's good -
That flowers pop up from death
Like stars
And there's talk of a bird
Made of red and orange and yellow
Made of fire
That rises up
Covered in its remains
New.

But I am no Phoenix
No flower
No tree
I'm not even the wind
That blows the ash onto
You and me.

I am a girl
In a world of hot white, grey, black
Destruction
Left to taste the things they say
And they taste of ash.

In a golden glade a woman foretold
To me a farrow tale where I grow old
And yellow like books a breath's brush away
From becoming a dust so fine and grey
That even the wind, with his silver hands,
Will not carry me out to sea from land
Lest I demand it with my empty throat.
Ha!  Laughed the lady, then she took her leave,
Violet light now falling from between trees
As I had nothing but my mind to cleave
And my skin to scratch free of biting fleas.
I left soon after, hearing her last words:
You are not alone, I collect all herds.

I'm not scared
Of a great nothingness
Ready to consume me
Like a gust of wind,
Nor do I fear
The void in the sky
Telling me that what I do
Is as pointless as the rest.

I fear that it matters.
That what I have done
That what I will do
Matters.

Because if that's the case
Then what am I to do?
I can't simply go on
Breathing and blinking
Like that's all there is to it.
I can't exist without some greater calling,
Some booming voice that stretches
Past my lovely, infinite void
Telling me
I'm not enough
And I never will be.