I dreamed a dream,
A beautiful dream

That was a dream of love, of passions coming straight from the core (of my heart)
Of emotions, that would never go sour

That was a dream of care, of devotion and prayer
Of feelings which will make the eyes full of tear.

A dream of courage, of getting rid of the saggy evil wreckage (of my mind)
Without becoming my inner demons hostage
A dream of gratitude, coming out of the shell of solitude

A dream where begins the end of solitary confinement,
The journey of all new excitement

A dream of endless emotions
The eternity of its mystification

A dream where you speak your heart out
Even when you are in crowd, you just standout

Once the eyes opened,
The whole thing shattered with a scream
And that was the end of my beautiful dream

Turkey and bread
fill our stomachs
almost as much
as laughter fills the air.

Sitting at the little kid table
for a large percentage of my life,
and seeing distant cousins in college
bring their boyfriends to dinner
seemed so far away
and intangible.

This year, that is not
something that will be
beyond me.

Butterflies are clouding my thoughts
every time I think about the dinner to come.
I'm sharing the bustling city of Chicago
and my most cherished family members,
with the man who is coddling my heart.

And for this, I am thankful.








*CVT

We speak through closed doors
and are muffled by white walls.


Avoiding eye contact
we briskly walk to the kitchen
to grab our plates in silence
only to retreat to our sanctuary.

Muted shouting always seeps through,
but I tell my brothers to ignore it
while we stare down
at our bleak hamburger helper.

Daddy is getting louder
and I hear mom crying again,
so I turn up the volume
and we try to focus on Spongebob.

After pushing my food around my plate
through a couple episodes of this,
I tell my brothers to stay in our room
while I go figure out why it's quiet again.

Mom is talking on the phone to someone
telling them what dad was wearing,
and she keeps looking out the window.

I sneaked onto the couch and saw
dad walking down the street;
a policeman stopped him
and took him away for a few days.

Mom starts walking over to me
and tells me to go to my room,
to play with my brothers.


They were too young to remember
how bad it really was.
Only now do I, myself, realize
these were not things
I should have had to see.





*CVT

Nobody deserves that.
I don't care how bad you are.

This is an equivalence to
Ripping out a heart,
Stomping it out,
And then trying to put it back.
It's broken.
It's a pulp.
Yeah it might still beat,
But it's not going to work right.

What you did is wrong,
That's not going to help anything.

I'm screaming inside.

Why would you do this.

Well you don't even care how I feel,
You won't even listen.

Manipulative.

You deserve better

I'm at the end of my rope,
I'm hell on heels.

How many hearts were broken
in the wake of her beauty
how many young hearts
shattered from lost desire

Her grace a perfect concert to behold
her limbs always loosened to suitors
she, with the smile sweet as an angel
a gift from the gods to nearly every man

She left a trail of ruin
this was Lela's Legacy
and I could not believe
I would fall to her charms

Yet in the warfare of the heart
the mind falls so quickly
and I had became
part of Lela's Legacy

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

No matter what way it goes
I'm still broken.
A piece of me had been taken each time.
This time,
It was a huge piece.

I'm walking with a bag,
Filled with those little pieces of me.
I'm trying to put them together,
But no one will help me.

Am I broken beyond repair?
I feel like I'm already gone.
I left such a long time ago and I never came
Back.

It's just a swirling mist inside
My mind.
Nothing makes sense to me.

I see myself in the mirror and I sob.
Who is this girl
God I feel sorry for her
I don't know who I am anymore.
I don't know how to feel.

Was it all for nothing.

I retrieve the chunks of myself,
Spread out across the floor.
They're much heavier than last time.
I open my bag and spilll them in.
I walk the lonely road,
On and on again.