Sorry about last week
That wasn't meant for you
Tar escapes from between my teeth and lands at unsuspecting feet
It's a slow drip, you understand?
That wasn't meant for you,
It just took so long to come out-
you happened to be there
Passing a car wreck on the turnpike-
You're the wreck and I am doubling the speed limit to his house

A note was sent:
"Wait on the corner of Sumac and Freeland."
I had hoped to be intercepted,
Perhaps my tar would drown the intended instead of the incidental-
But upon receiving my note,
He placed it in his shoebox labeled "demons from the past"
He was not there waiting for me,
And so the grandest "I love you" I could muster, has stained the wrong shoes

I. '88 dakota

mondays still ****. granted i don't get up at the crack of dawn no more but around noon i always feel the need to leave the rest of the day behind me and take the big red monster out and go to the beach and contemplate my life for hours, so i'll reach into my tattered 35 year old prada bag for a lanyard that says "nirvana" on it (like the band, not the stage of buddhism), but then i remember that gas guzzler and i got 337 miles between us, no more, no less.

II. whidbey

on wednesdays i feel like i've shifted into an alternate universe where there are things other than evergreen trees and dirt roads, where the view when i look out the window is an interstate and dagger-like icicles that are as tall as me. maybe it started when they took down the texaco star in freeland and maybe it started the day i left, but i'm not sure if i can remember what home feels like anymore.

III. you*

i still miss you on thursdays, sometimes saturdays. i know, i thought i woulda found someone better by now too till i realized that i'd been giving myself false hope this entire time. no one will ever be you. no one's teeth will curve the same way. no one will ever love the home teams as much as you. no one will ever smile as hard when i give them my last kit-kat in a strip mall parking lot at sunset. they drink to dak prescott and spit wintergreen griz more than you ever did. i thought i would find someone better until i walked into the coldest part of heaven with some crinkled twenty dollar bills and a carharrt jacket.

*-z. vega

Escaping into fantasy, her mind is
at ease there,
she can remove the blunt knife of
reality, that endlessly stabs
her right in the back
repeatedly, no success, replacing its
blunted edges for something
real and sharp
blood pours
the deeper the red, the faster her feet
take her to her dream land
wonderland
freeland
freedom lies, in the swampy
depths of her mermaid life
fiction and fantasy, blur with a
softly tinted reality, pour another
know each sip, takes the edges
fades them, and pushes her further
to a place where no one or thing
can touch or reach or hurt her
in this place, she knows only
each and every dream, the lover she
so craves, to be realised, unfazed
it is safer here, for it is all she could


                                                        ­            literally,
                                                                ­                   dream for
                                                                ­                                     and more.

© Sia Jane