usually, i see you in my hallucinations
when i'm too high to think about reality
but now, i see you all the time

during sunday afternoons sitting next to me on the floor reading the old love letters you wrote me

standing next to the fridge watching me how i make myself a cup of coffee to taste something else besides the taste of your lips

at night, you're even laying next to me and you're smiling at me like you used to

&' even tho my bed sheets were washed endless times after you've laid with me on them, they still carry your fragrance

and every time you appear anywhere by me
i start talking to you
i tell you how much i've missed you
i try to admire you as long as i can
'cause i'm afraid that at some point
i stop imagining you
forget about your face
that some day you become a blurry memory
inside my head
and that even the drugs cannot bring you back

stay

Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain; ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.

Published by The Chariton Review, Penumbra, Black Bear Review, and Triplopia. Keywords/Tags: Addiction, needle, veins, stitches, red, blood, ******, dreams, hallucinations, seams, darning, tapestry

seeing **** that isn’t there,
hearing **** that isn’t real,
memories can’t be trusted.
the shadow people,
that used to scare me,
now long to be dusted.
9 pills down the hatch,
9 pills swallowed to cure me.
they stick inside my throat,
“They’ll start to work soon,
Just be patient.”
as they write another note.
the doses start to increase,
my tongue starts to spasm.
my hands shake as well,
i thought these things
we’re supposed to heal me,
instead I’m in living hell.
“Benefits do outweigh
the horrible side effects”
is what the doctors say.
so I keep on taking them,
choking them down,
every night and day.
but the **** is still there,
i can see it, and I can hear it too.
its plain as day, staring at me.
it’s as real as me and,
wait. are you?

The sun sees through us, Star Eyes
Awake, I become dazed
Talking, they're speaking through me
Of monsters that they chase

Star Eyes, stuck in a blanket
The darkness never ends
Behold human perfection
Here sanity descends

Come find me in the ghost nets
Thoughts stinking high with "mur-"
Ignoring all the signs, let's
Harm all that is with "-der"

I try to forget everything and
Dissolve in my surrounding
I listen to different voices
Each voice has it's own role in my story
The birds chirping in the morning reminds me of the time
When we were holding hands in the dawn
The sound of traffic reminds me of the time
When we were walking down the street holding hands
The voices of couples talking reminds me of the time
When we used to talk to each other
I listen to your voice calling me
May be it's hallucination
But I just get up and smile
I listen to the voices and
Each one of them reminds me
The different parts of the incomplete story of mine

Year after year
--at daylight savings--
he kept moving his clock backward,
but never forward,
until he wound-up in the wrong century.

He then slept in masks,
his dreams repeatedly
disbanding and reforming,
as if in someone else's show,
but it was his hallucinating set-list, for sure.

He lived at the call of the void,
feeding off peppermint sticks
and clusters of chokeberry,
to help ease the pressure.

One phantom summer,
he read The Joy of Euthanasia
from cover-to-cover, over and over,
until he could recite death.

He poured his heart
into his new work
as an artist of tacenda,
--yes, he kept a lid on it.

And when the pretty young bees
buzzed about underneath
their brazen parasols,
he'd smile up at the sun
for her complicit glow:
the warmest days
always drew them out to him,
like honey on the tongue.

Now naysayers may keep
him out of Canton,
but one day, like most serial killers,
they will name a school after him
and his hijinks.

Is it sane to question your sanity
Sometimes I wonder what real is

Am I? Are you?
Are my words landing somewhere?
Or did I just imagine it?

How many people did I hallucinate?
Can I trust my thoughts?
Or my memories?

What if this is all a dream?
Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow to something else
What makes real really real?

Maybe reality is just us responding to our own imaginations