Broken shadows cut
against the corridors

A hand extends up
poetic, delicate, curved

She is leaning against
rigidity, structure, ancient

history, poised like
swans linking necks

In solidarity and confinement
a thin layer of water

is disrupted
by the pitter and patter of children’s

feet
Arms extended out

to catch the wind,
disappearing into the steam

whispers are just words in black and white,
so let your voice fill my ear with sepia-tone
paint my skin monochrome
let your words tint my blood with white-out
and my skin with ink.

touch my hair
and rub the colors of your heart
onto my split ends
like hair dye from a discount store,
stain my face
press your dyed fingertips
into the hollows of my cheeks,
because they lack color.

let your gaze
cast honeyed light on my shoulders
let it warm my freezing fingers
let it thaw my frostbitten lungs,
make my elbows lighten
with the heat of your palms
imprint the spaces between my ribs
with the marks of your fingers
like puzzle pieces, meant to fit together.

It was all white
Bright, ceaseless, full of possibilities

Then it turned just black for you
Nothing, too sudden, an ending

Now in the gray area
Here I still remain

Behind closed doors, there's something more; deeper than her personal art and healing heart. She's left only to herself. Her head that once was held head, fell and reality shook the room. The roar of laughter echoes and her insides shatter. Flaws are what make us whole. But for her, that's not how the story unfolds. Color leaves her eyes and she's no longer alive deep inside. The photograph that was once painted in color, faded to grey. -c. n.

There is no dust to settle,
Two days from land and we are not ready,
The whole year to prepare- poppy seed afternoons
6:00p.m. morning drunks to corroborate nightmare memories.

Where are the aches and the sick bending bone-like threads of
This corpse who romances sallow and pallid warlocks.
Interior flesh ministries unveil festering ****** horrors.
To not go out means chain smoking reds inside.

Plaster the monster over my face so I cannot breathe.
Then the unabashed words can take to the road with pitch forks and
Long, drawn-out misunderstanding. I eat salmonella for preference.
Ashes and soot and dirt and history sew its film atop every surface.

This is not what I thought they meant by life on a deserted island.
There is only me and I am still curious to see if I am advantageous.
Finally they do not wont of me. This is the sorcery I have been executing
In poor forms until this precise moment of lascivious loathe.

If you cannot understand this I am serving the greater good. It is worse to
Misunderstand than not know at all. Let your small hands to the sides of My face and your eyelashes rest atop my head. Lips inside hair.
With precision I extract pearls from your saltwater tomb.
I set the peas to our bed.

"my mind may be filled with dark thoughts and every turn may be hiding a new demon. and everything i see may be in black and white but it's not my choice. i try to make others feel like the universe is a beautiful creation exploding at the seams with color and concentrated happiness.i may be sick but at least i dont make others feel like the only way to see the world is in black and white. and the only way to treat people is to assume that everyone is a lying ******* and that everyone wants to steal your heart and stomp it into the earth . i may be sick but i'm not sickening."

when mad girls are gone singing love songs
a lonely lass
whose eyes and lips dead shut
lost in a big fat gigantic mess

she lit a cigarette up and all is born again
to put up with the thing she's done
to remind her of who she was
and to take her mind off
like an ocean takes the ***** sands
like an empty bottle takes the rain
like an nuclear bomb takes clear air
like the scars takes time to heal

the world seems to drop dead
mad girls are gone to hit the road
a swift wind from the barley caresses her body
all the stars go waltzing out in black and white
and all the odds left within

I am going to buy a billboard
in the middle of some city
Big white words on a ******* canvas:
"Stop romanticizing love."

City people in their white city shawls
holding their black city umbrellas
will stop and laugh or take a picture
City people will walk on by

I tried every piano key and
the door to your heart or soul or brain or
whatever, just won't open
One part of me wants to try my shoulder next

I'm going to start a support group out here
We'll play chess and read old newspapers
A circle of lovely, miserable silhouettes
Complaining about our animal instinct.

It is far easier this way.
It is easier to believe the stories.

We do not know just how wrong we are
But we are vaguely aware.

Someday I'll think back
forget your name for a sec.
Until then I will enjoy
Watching you dodge my gaze.