Sparkle

Heat licking up the dried wood, eating away at the green meat in the middle, the heat has been hungry, traveling for so long without the green to keep it sustained.

Traveling across desert, mountain, swamp, and grassland, searching for the greenest of meat. Aspen is smokier of the four, grass tastes of dew, and termite invested oak of Christmas time and almonds, white spruce fresh pine and toasted cinnamon.

Filling doesn’t last long, my fiery tails and body engulfing the green and drying the wood. The green never lasts long; my snake flames poison the ground, dusting it to ash. Exhausted I slither to a stream and wait for the water to quench my thirst to digest slowly with the green meat of trees.

Cloud Spinner

I can’t find that star that gleamed so bright. Momma says the stars decay the body so that the soul can

 fill the gap between the skies, even the smallest of gaps can hold the biggest of souls.

Beneath the clouds and above the trees the souls sparkle that shade of orange in a sunset, the purple of 

dusk, the white of morning, and the azure of high noon. Souls each peak down from their peephole, to

 be the inspiration for those that have yet to live.

The blue that filled the sky today is the grey of clouds; baby brother has joined the masses that starved 

under the pasty sky. His gap opens into the cosmos, revealing a window so some other dimension.

Perhaps another soul looks through waiting for his return to when the gap will close behind baby 

brother.

A different shade, indigo, cerulean, navy, turquoise; souls live amongst the mortals- the eyes of a dying

 star.

Choice

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…