When we were new
I made plans
grand plans
for you
for us.

So young with
caramel fingers and toes
plump and soft as pillows
I held you close
and sang to you those
songs I loved the most.

And now you’re older
stronger, wiser
off to set ablaze the world.

And I am old
those plans full grown
and flowered rich
with promises fulfilled.

You are beautiful.
I stare into you
allowing myself to fall
diving deep into those dark pools
burrowing fast between your ears
so that all you hear is my voice
that all you see with closed eyes is the imprint of my face
and with each breath you take
you smell and almost taste me.

Born from death, he breathed his first.
Seventy-five years locked in the good night.

The memories of his past life flittered
past him
as he clawed his way through his grave.

First his hand touched the sweet air,
the wind dancing between his fingers.
He could feel his dusted veins flow
with the blood from his now beating heart.

His skin in places had rotted away
and he,
like the living dead
walked again on the earth
that he was never meant to tread upon again.

He stumbled into a small chapel
by the old graveyard
now over grown with wild flowers and pine saplings.

Walking in he saw people;
for the first time in years his dried eyes,
nothing but prunes in their sockets,
moistened and began to fill out.

His vision became clearer as he dragged himself along.

What a miracle this was, he thought to himself.

He was awed by the sights he saw around him.
The play of the sun
as it filtered through the stained glass windows
touched his heart so
that in that moment
he thought he would collapse into himself.

Was this truly real,
or was it simply another trick
played upon his imagination
as it often times did during his eternal sleep.

But it couldn’t be, could it?

Was this fantastical phenomenon happening
to him
or was it simply that he,
Andrew Taylor
had in fact defied the laws of nautre.

Again he took another step
and felt no qualms or aches of soul
while the people shied away from him
thinking him to probably have leprosy!

The very idea made him laugh,
the crackling sound
that voiced from his hole ridden lungs
surprised him and terrified them.

What a day this was.
What a life he would live.

He would see things,
know the sweet flavor
and exquisite touch of a woman again

as he felt his body filling out,
his hair growing to that same thick luster
that it was before he was twenty five.

The decay melted away
revealing new skin,
as a child would have.

The feeling of ecstasy humbled him
to his knees as he felt to pressure
of a heart and a stomach
of even his spleen that he could barely look
towards the hallowed altar
without giving praise and thanks giving
at another chance to relive his meager life.

He closed his eyes for an instant
and opening them again he saw the top of a coffin.
The satin lining that he knew so well,
the holes
and even the sprinkling of dirt
that showered between the cracks as people walked overhead.

His eyes yielded no tears.
It was a dream.
Like so many he has had before.

“*******.” He murmured a cloud of escaping his decomposed lips

He closed his eyes again
and slipped into that world
that was his second life
until the final Day of Judgment.

The sun had hid behind the clouds that day.

All else was quiet.

I lay out spreading my fingers
along the wheat like grass that covered me entirely
as I stared up towards the twilight;
wishing that I had only to jump
so I could soar among those bright dots against the cover of the night.

If I closed my eyes
I could almost taste those bright metallic drops,
like warm milk spilling over the brim of the morning pal.

That fantasy I harbored
to lay on the cresent moon like a hammock against the night,
only to have it dip me into the slosh of the Milky Way.
That’s what I long for.

Anything but here.

All I ever wanted,
all my dreams
lay nestled between those stars,
and as the morning sun peeked out from over the horizon,
as the dew that covered my body
rolled down gently
to form tiny shimmering impressions against each blade of grass,

as the first bird began to sing its song
to welcome the heated smell of lilies
and the fading of Pluto before the dawn,

I felt as if I would cry.

I knew,
when that sun shone
in all its concentrated rage
that my life would go to hell again,
as it did every day of my life.

Daddy would wake up.

All would go to hell.

I sit here, now,
on my porch faraway from that place that I had called home,
away from the hate,
pain,
and depression that had festered inside me.

But I sit here,
also faraway,
from the smell of the sweet honeysuckle
that would grew savagely on the wooden fence.

I sit faraway from the shimmering dew
that I so loved when laying out in the open country
for acres and acres that was my backyard.

I sit faraway from the luminous sky
that had so often taken me as a lover would in its never-ending arms.

I sit here in Long Island, New York
with a husband and no children to fill my ears.
I say now to myself,
a woman of twenty
that I only ran from one hell
to become so trapped within another.

Chad.

That’s his name. My husband.
We ran away together when I was seventeen
to New York so we could become husband and wife.

How was I to know that life would turn out like this?

I bet your asking yourself, “Does he beat her?”
No.

No. He doesn’t beat me. He wouldn’t dare.

But instead he does something else;
he hurts me, but in my heart.
Just like my daddy did.

I never thought that I could love someone so much as I love Chad.
Every time I see him
I can feel my heart skip a beat.
Its as if I were seventeen again when we first meet.

He flowed through me
like molten gold
running down the gutters
of a sacked Jerusalem.

The heat generated
that fire brewing and bursting
crumbled the stone I had placed
around my heart.

Only if for the night
when you peer at me through heavy lids
I don't mind getting lost
losing my senses
my "good senses"

to carry with me a memory
of you, and I in this place
no regrets, no solemn words.