Cutting Corners

I want to stand on the edge
the space between the point of no return
and comfort zone.
I want to stand on the edge of the world
a place where the horizon is blurred
and clouds scrap the ground.
The edge os the sky
where rolling thunder treads across
no man's land and
the wind dances amongst the moon.
I want to stand on the edge.

Over my Head

His chilled fingers press ardent roots of recall into my past memories.

Azure eyes gaze back into mine. Mirroring a twisted smile with a crying whimper.

Lucca, my stepfather, was scary when I took and used his time, even if it was his idea. A slapping sting turns my face from translucent and sickly to a flaming red.

The Ghana vase’s reflection is ceramic ice and reveals the truth of my abuse. Bruises across my collarbone, back, and arms, scratches and gashes from a starved dog he kept at the back of the house, cigarette burns between my shoulder blades and on the inside of my thighs, my bones protrude at odd angles from fractures and lack of nutrition.

I can’t eat, this is my choice, it would still be my choice even if my jaw hadn’t taken the beating for me the night before and the week before that. But, that’s not what I call it, neither reward nor punishment.

The vase shows the teeth of keys, lots of keys locking windows, doors, and chains. I used to hear sounds of a car, and the garble of employees discussing the office. I heard them, but they failed to lift t heir eyes to my screams or my crying when I was little.

They were always too absorbed in their own lives of money, relationships, and work to help a neighbor or save a child.

I wanted to fight back but parting is sorrowful and useless, I don’t want to fight what I can’t avoid.

I won’t know how much trouble I am in until he starts weeping blood, weeping it cold and frozen down his cheeks, the day he regrets how he took my childhood away, but never being able to stop

Even now…

Silence is the Loudest

Only when the buzzing, whirring, and commotion stops do my thoughts become a flip-book of noise. My mind remains jumbled and the pulsing behind my eyes grows stronger and stronger. Making even silence uncomfortable and loud. The loudest sound in the world. All the thoughts running through my head all at once and never stopping even to sleep. It's not about tuning them out or turning them off but distracting yourself long enough to fall asleep.

Backwards and Upside Down

It's frustrating as Hell that after all the trials, mistakes, and uphill battles that they still see the selfish, stubborn, horrible person I used to be. I have been trying to change the person you hated and despised. Sadly, I realize I have met too many people that fragment the shadow of the person you were, the person you are. I had way to many people break me they way you did, the way you twisted my words or turned my words against me or the way you used words to make me feel small. I don't like feeling small when my world is way too big.
 I was wrong to seek you out, I realized all too soon that you haven't changed and because of the people I met after you....I want to move forward not backward.

Lullaby

I like this part of the day, when the sun isn't quite over the mountains. The time of day when people are still sleeping and all the ideas aren't taken yet. When I can just let my mind wander to those ideas and come back with pages and pages of a story. The pages are stored in the old cookie tin from Scotland, it's not just stories but letters as well.  The pages are kept safe and like Pandora's box they escape slowly and all at once when opened and read.

I like this part of the day, when the sky fades from black to blue and the world is still asleep.

War Hero

He doesn't do it for the money or for the glory. He is providing for my future and the future for our family. An American soldier, he knows the sacrifice because freedom doesn't come cheap or free. He will were those colors and salute the flag with pride and will make it safe tonight. An American soldier. Always fighting for the weak and giving strength to those that have none. He doesn't fight because he is filled with hate for what is in front of him. He fights because he loves what stands behind him. Fighting foreign or domestic on the front lines so that I may sleep tonight with no fear. He's an American soldier.

Never Growing Up

We stayed up late, late into the morning and late into the evening. Believing it was our way to stay forever young. We sang to songs we didn't know the lyrics to and kissed boys that were nothing but strangers. We traveled around our small college town and looked for trouble. Rebels in our own right and looked for ways to stay forever young. Falling in love every other weekend and heartbroken on our days off. Here's to never growing up. Friends and enemies in just a few hours but we always have each others' backs.

Those people were so drunk on coffee and cocaine that they could barely see straight. Dancing so that they looked insane.  Once on a high and once on a crash.

People were her Passion

She believed herself to be an artist, I believed her at one point. How she was able to paint flowers and sunsets, and people. People were her passion. She painted the druggie who sells sex for a gram of cocaine, and the old man who drinks his coffee black at the local coffee shop on Sundays, and the little boy with autism that plays with the purple ball at the park, and the boyfriend that abused her canvas with purple smudges and scratches.

I believed her to be an artist, until I found her canvas bleeding and broken above a splash of red paint. Her canvas was damaged and she was dying. People were her passion because she wanted to be them and not this. A broken frame with a broken canvas. The canvas once white and covered with art is slashed and torn and this time it can't be put back together again. The red covers everything and I thought she was an artist.

19

Those nights they talked like confetti and too much coffee.
All at once and way too hot.
Those nights they talked like tattoos and heat attacks
Terribly painful and DEAD serious.
But they didn't mind because the world was their own.

Just like the Moon

She was just like the moon
a part of her was always hidden.

She hid from the things that were meant to make her strong
She hid from the things that were meant to bring her down.

Her pretty side was always bright and full of moonshine.
Her dark side was twisty and tangled
just like how she felt.

You help. You help so much. When i wake trembling and cold your warm hands bring me back to a stable reality. Where you are my husband and I your wife. A place where you love me for my flaws and protect me from my past. I love you. The nightmares fade away and you help. You help me fight the fear and everything is ok....everything is ok, you promised and it's all true.

The nightmares are back, it's been awhile. I thought things would be better once I moved away and you stopped your merciless eye stalking and people please flattery. I knew you haunted the past I once lived, but I never thought you would return a ghost. Making me relive every horrible moment that you hurt me. I cried that night, the night you bruised, battered, and broke me.

Do you remember me crying? I couldn't make it to my class the next morning, I couldnt climb all those stairs. It hurt to breathe. You didn't see it, purple, black bruises mapping my skin like a blueprint, roadmap. I wore long sleeves to mask the ones that tattooed my skin in your fingers pinning me to the ground, or the ones under my ribs where you held me down and stole my breath away, and jeans to cover the ones on my thighs where you thrust them open with your knees, or the ones on my hips where you threw me to the ground, or the red lines where your nails left rivers of blood and forever scars where you tried taking off my clothes. You said i deserved it, and that i liked it, but my body betrayed me in its most carnal state. I threatened to scream, but my chest was too labored from holding your weight and you threw my bluff. You tore something inside me, as you fished around for arousal. I couldn't walk straight for days. You didn't mind or notice, you just ate with friends and tore me down to fit their bad boy -mean girl lifestyle.

Now i find myself waking in the night, smelling the sweat you plastered to my clothes, and your hands grasping me and touching places you never should have been. I said stop remember? Remember? I wake in the night gasping for air the same way my lungs looked for air that day when you strangled every scream out of me. I was tired for days, you told me enough that it was my fault and i believe you now. I'm not strong enough to fight you in my dreams just like i wasn't strong enough to fight you then. The bruises are gone now, the scars aren't and I am too afraid to tell anyone that for the longest time I thought 'love' was supposed to hurt, that 'love' was something tough guys used as a weapon, that all males used as a weapon. I don't sleep much anymore, cuz i still feel what happened that night. You say you aren't the same person and that i should stop by sometime.....but you still haven't apologized and a small part of you still feels it was justified. I hurt everywhere now, and i was stupid to think you couldn't stay in the past for long, that's not how you work.

Sky

I'm not mad, at least I am trying not to be. My body is pushing away the feeling it hates the most trying to change it into something that can easily be fixed with playing loud music in the car or eating a bowl of chocolate chunk ice cream or just standing in the shower letting the cold water send goosebumps down my skin. I don't want to feel hurt.
I can't feel that way because it makes me a hypocrite. Addiction is a deadly killer, best compared to a disease, no Contagion. It tears people apart and spreads doubt like a plague. Hurt like this doesn't go like the sting of a paper cut. Instead it's like a piece of blue sky on a cloudy day. At least I am trying to be positive, I always will have his back even when i am unsure. He didn't stop loving me and it's not my nature to betray him. I'm hurt and it's deep, deeper than i thought.

Running Texas

I never saw a sky so wide that it touched the ground and kept running. The kind of blue that runs into the greens of the trees and turns into the murky browns. The kind of blue that starts azure and turns white. It's a pretty kind of sky and I like it better that way.

Untitled

I don't care much for hospitals.
Hospitals are places people go to be poked, pinched, and plastered back together again.
Hospitals are hollow and empty, no souls linger there, even after death. The dead despise them as much as I do.
I never went to see her, not that I didn't want to. I desperately wanted to. But, not there. Her soul disappeared into the morning air and never looked back. Hospitals are places people go to visit the shells of people they once knew or loved. I suppose I really didn't want to remember her that way. Hooked to machines, to keep her breathing....kept in a medical induced coma--as if that made things better.
Hospitals are places people go for handouts on organs, the same as the government dependent people expect handouts from their reps who try to pass them off as independent people. A line of people wait on a list, expecting organs, organs from her...
Silly of me to think that her death could be less rushed. Barbarians. I hate hospitals. Hospitals are places people go and never come out of, they are dissected and repurposed for someone else.
Hospitals scare me, and I can't help it, I just am, no matter how irrational that is.