In the preschool basement that smells of stale animal crackers and sweat Sabrina leaned back in her chair.  She rubbed her eyes but the misery would not subside from them.  I pitied the woman nearly to tears, even when she laughed her muscles contorted with anguish, the misery shining through.  
    I feel so intensely for the boy who relapsed, speaking to the room referring to himself intermittently in the past tense.  He has such a reverence for this disease that he has aspects of his life squared away in the event of his untimely departure.  He pleads with the room, with the universe "if I don't stay sober I'm going to die. I don't want to die." He repeats the last words, first with a somber tone then as a warning, as though he surrendered within those few moments to becoming nothing more than a horror story.  I wish I could shake him out of it, convince him that need not be anything more than a bad dream.
    I learned early on we are all in pursuit of our own personal Eden.
I watched on as my brother found his Eden in reading, my sister found hers in art. My step dad found his Eden in my unwilling body, my mother found her's in him staying anyways.

And I found mine in a little white powder, sometimes rocks, nearly gem stones.

Every morning I'd dread the singing of birds, how they'd mark the beginning of a new day and usher dread into my body.  Drugs turned out to be a vengeful woman, our lover turned sour.  She chewed us up and made a bed your brittle bones.  I'm sick of the stinging, the acid spit words, how she stands ahead of the sun and tells me it's night.  An anchor of a woman, her barbed wire chain! How she clings to anyone and drags them down just the same.

    One day the birds ceased to sing for me.  They’d gather at dawn to tease, mock and pry:

“She takes a hostage a year
  Now she’s setting them free.
  Afraid of both Stockholm syndrome
  And of watching them flee.”

We congregate at rock bottom, the **** of the earth in a ******* contest.  Sometimes the ground opens up and swallows us whole like a bear trap buried in wildflowers.  


I'm ashamed I could step out of my skin like a cheap suit and into another persona. Ashamed I spent years of my life playing dress up. So consumed even I thought I was being myself.

    She's woven of angel dust and spider webs.  She seduces you into letting you near and makes you her prey.  I pull out her vile string that runs through my body. The string that made a marionette of me for years.  I spit on it, bury it out back. I say to myself I am not my addiction, but I lost control for years.  I was vacant but my body lived on causing hurt. No matter what I do I still have the catches for that string embedded in my skin. Making a marionette of myself is always within reach, all I have to do is dig up the string.

My fathers skin conspired with the sun to poison him
It was rumored he was so warm Apollo himself grew envious

He left us in the dead of winter, wet wood on the fireplace.

And my mom, she hasn’t been right since. She missed his warmth so much, she began to feel it around her.

Her curious gaze melted into hurried looks, a chorus of false accusations and “I know I smell smoke don’t you lie to me. It’s all burning down.”

I’ve trained my voice so soothing as water. I am the only firefighter accustomed to smothering illusions.

Even on the good days, the ones she’s entirely there, dread makes a marionette of me. I secretly plan her funeral “what flower do you think smells the sweetest? Was it that Louis Armstrong song you said felt like coming home?” “Do you really like it when I sing to you?”

I just want to get it right because she will be attending it, in body not mind or self.

A going away party for the woman she used to be- the one that raised us, who never forgot a face or a Sunday service.

They say it spreads like… wildfire
Ain’t that something?
It’ll make a faulty narrator of her senses overnight.

What’s left is vacancy
A whisper of a woman
But a lingering presence
A sour aftertaste of my entire childhood

Don’t take it personally
When her body holds her hostage and she becomes a flight risk
a danger to herself around pen caps and shoelaces.

Don’t take it personally when her maternal instinct loses the arm wrestle with the disease and open doors and arms turn to barricades.

Don’t take it personally, it’s frightening to live in a world of your own.

Mom, had you suggested even once that an arsonist is what you need, that if our world matched yours you’d feel even a moment of peace .. id set hell fires up the coastline to kingdom come.

I still carry matches on me just in case.

Abscond you sons and heirs! Back to your arid origin. No longer will I settle scorching lips to skin, I will be immortalized in the hopeful realization, the possible but unlikey.

She's faded oil paintings and Venusian vengeance. Soft to the touch, a voice that bends and bows with the valleys.  She'd exhaled the netted veil draped carelessly over mankind's volatile roots. From gallows she'd dissolved like the last breath of autumn soured bloom. Apollo danced in her tendrils, across fragile bends and swinging limbs. No longer did the bath house run clear but crimson. The gods welcomed the divine feminine incarnate. Cast her radiance over Luna, echoing laughter to the forests and fae. Save soul for a later form, an epochs holy dole.

You wear my patience thin the way wave breaks aimlessly carve in high tide, no reason for the cruelty but natures tendencies.  Bedrock and aversion therapy can hardly meet us halfway so set up shop where the pavement ceases to crumble. Fingers crossed.

My two year sentence has come to a close. To the titanium tether I had clawed, gnawed and hissed. Only upon a simple request would my captor untie me with strong words and steady hands. Weightlessness set in like a rush of blood to the head as I drifted ashore on the raft of duct tape and raincoats scavenged from the halls of Alcatraz. On the black beaches I mark each of those I love lipstick stained red, hellos and goodbyes and silent understanding. I set off for a new life. Mausoleums echo no more with my ill willed commands but airy laughter and whispered hymns. Behind me lingers the scent of dragonsblood, my guardian angels lend a day to every hand I choose to hold. The girl who cut her fingers so that you may drink of the cactus. The steady hand in the neon night and guiding force in the silk shops of china town. My funeral will be one of low attendance and high emotion. Red evenings and ****** mysteries will stand in for a headstone. With grace and steadiness my memory will fade and with the souls of all forgotten lovers I will sleep my last sleep and rest the final rest.