They sat across the table from one another. One girl staring at her notebook. The other’s eyes fixed on her classmate. On the broadside of the table sat a dark haired woman, the only smiling face in the room. The shy girl’s crimson hair hung out from under her hooded sweatshirt as she sketched axes on the front of her notebook. The other girl’s golden locks hung in curls around her face. Her beauty was undeniable, as was the disdain in her eyes.
“So, can one of you two describe to me what happened today on that stairwell?” asked Mrs. White, the guidance counselor at Jacob Grimm High. Despite the gossip floating around the school about her, a smile was always plastered on her face. Most of the children found this unbearably creepy. “Nothing ma’am. We were just having a friendly conversation, when that pig came along and insisted, very forcefully, that we come here,” the blonde said, sarcastically, her eyes never letting go of their gaze on the other girl.
Mrs. White chuckled “That’s not how it happened, Goldie. C’mon, tell us your side of things.” Goldie rolled her eyes. “Well, Mrs. White, it’s like this: my bio class was just letting out, and I was heading down to calculus. She comes flying UP the DOWN stairs, like a maniac, slamming into my shoulder. I hit her, she hit me back. Now we’re here.”
“Is that true, Ms. Ridinghood?” asked Mrs. White, turning her head to the other girl.
“Not entirely,” she answered, finally joining the conversation. “Ms. Princess here was going up those stairs before I even got to them. To be honest, I was zoned out, just following the sheep. I’m not having the best day, so a friend gave me something to take the edge off this morning. I was following her up the down stairs, apparently and she turned around and started coming at me, shoving my shoulder as she walked past, then got offended – like I did something wrong – and hit me. So I punched her back. We wrestled for a minute before the rent-a-cop came and broke it up.”
“Hmm.” Mrs. White turned to Goldie, who was looking down the floor. “Goldie, why were you going back up the stairs?” ,
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“So you did go back up the stairs and come down a second time?”
“It was actually my third time,” Goldie admitted, embarrassed. “The first time I went too fast, the second time I went too slow. That time would have been just right. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder . Go ahead, laugh it up.”
“No one’s laughing,” Mrs. White assured her. Although Red was a little, until Mrs. White turned to her. “Can you tell me why it is you needed to be ‘zoned out’ today?”
“None of your business, that’s why,” Red snapped.
“I have read your file, I know what day it is.”
“Then why did you have to bring it up?” Red was now agitated.
“For Goldie to hear. So you can better understand one another.”
“*******! What kind of understanding am I to get from this preppy ***** with a silver spoon up her ***? I’ve spit puddles deeper than her!” The two girls rose up, over the table. Mrs. White was able to get in between them.
“Now, both of you need to just calm down and talk this out like civil adults. Keep in mind, this is your only alternative to expulsion. “
Once everyone regained themselves, Red spoke again, this time directly to Goldie.
“Six years ago, today, my grandmother was murdered.” Goldie began to see Red with new eyes. “Remember The Wolf
“That guy who went around vandalizing houses?” ?”
“Yeah. He was hiding out in the woods. I was going to visit my grandma, who lived out that way. I saw him. He’d shaved so I hadn’t recognized him from the news. I told him I was going to my grandma’s place, dumb idea—I know. He suggested a different route, said it’d be shorter. By the time I got there, grams was gone. He was in her bed, dressed like her, waiting for me. His eyes…were so…big. If it wasn’t for Larry, a woodsman working nearby, I would be dead too.”
“I heard about that! That was you? Wow…I’m sorry. ” Goldie shook her head in amazement, then added, “Didn’t the woodsman chop off his head?”
“No. He shot him. Larry carries a gun when he’s working in that forest, because of all the dangerous things that happen there.”
“No doubt, that place is freaky. I got lost in it once, when I was six. I ended up at this cabin. I thought it was abandoned. Imagine my surprise when the family came home. I was sleeping in the kid’s bed, and I’d eaten their food too. I think I even broke something.”
“How’d that play out?”
“I did some time in juvy for property damage and theft.”
“Wow…that’s so messed up. At least you learned your lesson, right?”
“Oddly enough, no. When I turned eleven I started breaking into people’s houses. I mean, I didn’t take anything, just slept in their beds, or watched TV. I never got caught again.” Goldie sounded mildly disappointed.
“You know,” Red interjected “we are a couple of freaks, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. Hey…where did Mrs. White go?” Goldie said, finally realizing that Mrs. White had made an escape somewhere in the midst of their discussion.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh well…did you hear she has seven midgets living with her?”
“That’s just a rumor,” Red said.
On that note, the bell rang, and the two girls left the room giggling like old friends.

Society detests innocence
Often shaking hands with ignorance
Exchanging phone numbers with bliss.
We hate it cause we’re jealous.

So we send loaded words their way.
Our mouths, like pistols
shooting bullets full of hate.
Someday we shall see the error of our ways.
Until then,

******.
We call him.
He who has yet to be used,
Or more so, use another for pleasure
******, and then leave a woman and a ******
on a Hotel’s bathroom floor,
alone and broken.

Square.
We say
To she who has never felt the itch.
Needed so badly to scratch it
and get her fix
that she steal from her two month old daughters college fund
so she can fly away and forget….

Try as we may, we never forget
How it feels to fall from the sky.
So, we know how to make a mockingbird cry.
We know how to make a mockingbird cry.
And we know how it feels
to **** one

There once was a man
So hopelessly in love
that he cut off his ear.
No one knows what to take from this.
I guess, it’s just that love
makes you do crazy things.

That being said,
it’s not hard to believe
that there once was a man
So hopelessly in love
that he stowed away on trains
riding them from Ohio to Arizona
just to barge in
on an ex-lover’s wedding and scream

“I OBJECT!”

There once was a woman
so hopelessly in love with another man
that she left her husband at the altar.
Although that’s not the woman at this altar
in our story.
This woman tossed champagne
in the man’s face
and screamed that she never wanted
to see him again.

There once was a man
with a heart so broken
he once considered suicide
but then he read something
about this painter
who cut off his ear
and mailed it to this *******
that he was head over heals for.

Today, there’s a shell of a man
in New York City
with a stub
where his ring finger used to be.

And somewhere in Arizona
in a box she never opened,
is the rest of him.

Sometimes I wish for power to go out.
Be it a down power line, a blackout,
or simply a bill that wasn’t paid on time.
That way we would have an excuse to break out
those scented candles I got you for Christmas last year.
The apartment will fill with its fruity aroma
and I’d know why you never lit them.

We’d laugh, as we re-learn to navigate our living room,
half-arguing over whose idea it was
to put that table there.
I’d knock over that hideous lamp your mother gave you,
insisting that it was an accident, and that you didn’t really like it either,
So now, at least we have an excuse to trash it,
‘Cause I know how much you hate to throw things away.
That’s why I’m still here.
Not that I’m complaining.

We’d make up games to pass the time,
like “Would you ever?”
“Would you ever kiss me in a dark room?” You’d ask.
I’d find your lips in the abyss and show you my answer.
A few hours later we’d play “Where’s my pants?”

Once dressed, we’d stumble our way over furniture
to get outside,
where we’d lay next to each other in the grass
which is a little wet, but we don’t care
and enjoy the stars without the distraction of the city lights.

We’d fall asleep this way,
I’d wake up in the morning next to you,
with my shirt on backwards,
my frown upside down,
and you still sleeping, sideways
with my head on my chest
and your leg wrapped around mine.

Electricity? Who needs it?
We make our own.

Nobody knows the boulevards
and back roads of broken hearts
better than he who has been there
too many times and counting.
He loved to get lost in this neighborhood
practically growing up there
seeing his fair share of roads in need of repair
bridges built up and burned down
and train tracks leading everywhere
and nowhere.
Exactly where he was going
before he was distracted
by a pretty girl with a flirtatious smile
in a pink Corvette passing by.
Occasionally he’ll come to his senses
and head for the city exit
but before he’s home free
some dame, with a dangerous name convinces him to stay
and play cat and mouse.
Nobody know the boulevards
and back roads of broken hearts
like he.
and he still gets lost
in familiar territory.

I couldn’t tell you when I started doing it
Or why.
As far as I know it’s always been a part of me
My parents were certain it was a phase.
That this, like my nonexistent terrible twos,
would come and go
and the people in supermarkets would stop staring.
I know now how odd it looks.
I don’t blame them.
Imagine a miniature me, burning a hole in the floor
pacing back and forth
Hands clenched around an action figure
Mumbling nonsense to no one in particular.
Perhaps, they’d assume, to the toy in my hands
that my eyes were strictly fixed to.
“Talking to myself”
They called it.
Like I was crazy.
“Quit talking to yourself!”
My step mother would slap the toy out of my hand.
“You’re a big boy now, stop it!”
Maybe I would have if she took time to talk to me without screaming
or if my father were home enough to see how much she hated me.
How she Isolated me from her children,
the very ones who grew up to hate her more then I ever would.
But to me, it wasn’t something strange or crazy at all.
It was – is – kind of like watching T.V.
only more interactive.
I would tell myself a story.
The action figure, or whatever, was like an actor – a template.
For anyone I wanted to create.
The world around me would melt into static,
and I’d play both audience and performer
Putting on shows full of fantasy and magic.
Adventure and romance.
Tragedy and madness.
My own private little theater of distractions.
The older I got,
the smaller my actor,
and more private my performances became
until my action figure became a pair of toenail clippers.
Small enough to be hidden in my pocket
If I had to descend into the real world without any given notice.
The way I acted,
when someone walked in on me
You’d assume I was doing something naughty
and maybe I was.
Maybe it was wrong to indulge in the imaginary,
to live for fiction
but I didn’t care.
It was the one world I didn’t have to share.
I eventually would,
But I liked that I didn’t have to.

When I started writing these crazy stories down on paper
English teachers took notice,
and saw in me,
an apprentice.
Someone who could live their long forgotten dreams of being…
I don’t know.
I don’t think they did either.
They taught me the mechanics,
Putting names to the concepts I had known and used for years
that’s how I came to writing and to poetry.
How I became what I always was,and never will be again:
A little kid, telling  a story,
with indifference to the audience,
or lack thereof.
For no other reason,then to escape everything
If only in the moments when no one is watching.
Every now and again,
I still like to slip away from the crowd,
pull out my toenail clippers from my right front pocket
and see what’s playing.
I know, I may look and sound crazy
talking to myself over here,
and maybe I am.
But at least it’s not a boring conversation