She hides her smile
behind black lipstick.
Her voice is low
and in between.
She smells of loneliness
and cigarettes.
She sings for me
when she is high.

She gets me higher
than I can go.
She takes me low
and in between.
Her heart's on fire
when she sings.
Her voice is smokey,
full of pain.

She sings of loneliness
and broken dreams.
Her dance is low
and in between.
She gets me high
and lets me down.
She kisses me
with black lipstick.

r ~ 4/29/14

She was an evil stepmother.
In her old age she is slowly dying
in an empty hovel.

She shudders
like a clutch of burnt paper.
She does not remember that she was evil.
But she knows
that she feels cold.

Slowly as if on a dying breeze
She walks through hollow leaves,
just a beacon of who she
use to be and all of creation
hears her simple melody of
life and love and things in between.
She throws danger off with a shrug,
and dances to only the summer sun.
Only life knows her story but
it is untold. Just a memory -
a slow rising defeat. On the eve
of a dying reason, she walks
out to the ocean and falls asleep.
To be reborn in rabbit's skin
and dragonfly eyes.