The world closes around me like a noose,

quietly, until the fronds tickle my neck, but draw no humor.

I will fight.  I always fight.

Nature isn’t just bred, it’s born.

My blood is rife with fire, but thorns fall from my fingertips.

I wonder when the fire dies, the fight leaves, extinguishes,

will the world want me then?

…..

..

No.

Sometime last night, just as the world here closed and somewhere else opened it’s eyes, I lost something very dear to me.  The how’s don’t really matter, but it was accidental, and I was a room away when it shattered all over the floor and broke my day into a thousand jagged little pieces all bearing the stamp of my father.

I’ve never been one to keep little sentimental things.  I’ve always been in love with words, and those I horde, but things don’t mean a lot to me.  Nearly everything is replaceable, and beyond that, I don’t develop attachments to things, that can, for all purposes, be taken from you.

That, well honestly, I wouldn’t have thought that it’s destruction would hit me as hard as it has.  I was attached to that stupid little thing and seeing it gone into what amounts to little more then dust and rubble has hurt me.  I’m bothered by it.

I could explain why and what, but it would be only to help you understand perhaps, but your understanding doesn’t lessen what has been, in all sense, removed from me.  For now, the little pieces are in a ziploc bag, and look nothing like the whole pieces kept by other members of my family.

I’m so profoundly disappointed in myself for allowing this to happen.  It is illogical, I know, but it doesn’t lessen that either.  It’s gone.

The ghost of my father, who lingers always nearby, surely looks upon me now, more faded and with infinitely more disappointment.

The excuses and reasons stop mattering at some point.  They stop being important, or rather they stop having any weight to them.  One simply just gets full on the reasons why and why not.  Always there is some reason why you, I, they, didn’t get something done, or did something, or just sat back and watched it happen.  There are always reasons why things fell as they did.

I’ve often used them myself.  I’m neatly labeled a sadist so that I can, in fact, be mean whenever I want.  It helps get the niceties out of the way, I admit, because I don’t have to bother with social graces and chit chat about your cats, dogs or pet turtle.  However, in the end, it boils down to the fact that I don’t care.  I don’t care.  I was not born with that social grace that allows people to collect mindless data with a smile.

I enjoy being mean.  I like it.  You don’t understand?  You don’t have too, believe me, I am just as dumbfounded for a million other reasons about your life.

Now, if I love you, well, all bets are set aside for that.  I want to know every fucking thing about you (as it relates to who you are now…).  I want to know that you stubbed your toe as a child and that’s why you have a little permanent wave in your toe nail.  I want to know why you have a little scar on your thumb.  I want to know about Fluffy, Fido or George if they somehow SHAPED who you are now.  I want to look in your eyes and see the years of history that I wasn’t a part of and wonder about them.  I want to know your secrets.  I don’t always display my voracious appetite for your history, but I collect the little pieces of evidence in a mental forensic makeup of who you are.

Maybe it’s why I get jealous.  I don’t like people to know more than I do.  I don’t like anyone to have a secret smile related to you that I can’t decipher.  I don’t believe there should be ‘off-limits’ places in your relationship with OTHER people.  Between us?  Hell, sometimes it’s better not knowing a lot of my shit, I don’t know about you.  I often find that my life, such as it has been, changes people’s opinions of me.

I don’t like that either.

I sit down and I want to talk to you – the person I know, not the stranger you are pretending to be.  I want to see a familiar face beyond just your face.   And maybe it is my own shallowness that prevents me from seeing they are all a part of you.  And maybe I am not as complex as you are.  Maybe I am simply too stupid or ignornant to understand why you change, and why you don’t FEEL the same to me all the damn time.  Maybe its me.

But sometimes, every so often, I look at the people in my life and go…

WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

And it hits me, fuck, they must do that about me too.

I am a fucking mess.  Sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to make it another second, and sometimes I go at full speed for weeks.  Sometimes I am happy and sometimes I’m angry.  I am a fucking mess.  I am one big ball of emotional excess, and sometimes I am the coldest rock of a soul.

A mess.

I’m owning up too it.  I’m not going to make excuses, I’m just going to own it.

And, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you if you don’t like it.

(See, that’s my sadist…)

(See,  There’s my excuses.)

Whatever,

D

I sat on my deck and just watched the rain fall.

And I slept in awkward positions in the chair, and eventually in my bed, but hard… so that when I stirred finally in early dark, I woke to pain.  I hurt so badly, I couldn’t lay down another second.  It hurt to breathe, it hurt to move, it hurt to be inside my body.

And still it was raining.  In the gray dark I could see the leaves of the trees heavy from water and weight, the grass that lay down and sucked in the moisture until enough energy could be found to raise its head skyward.  I saw your face in the mist that swirled around my lake.

I stood there, waiting for the medicine to make my bones, muscle and skin mine to control again.  The blow of air conditioning was on my skin and I wished it were the cool that precedes a spring storm instead of the hot thick air I knew would be outside.

I’d waited for the storm.  I had prayed for it for weeks now, feeling as if I’d been sucked dry, an empty husk – as if everything I had to give, had indeed, been given away.

It was upon me along with the realization that I was not empty, that pain was an ever-renewing resource.  I waited for the pills to seep into my blood, and I fell down into that black well, and started, once again, the process of hollowing myself back out.

Pain reminds me that I am alive and equally, makes me wish that I wasn’t.

Extend your raven wing lady night,

Darkness folds around me like chocolate melts on your tongue.

I don’t fear its grip, I don’t hasten my step

to escape, to flee.

Night is my companion.

Fight?  I have none left in me just now.

Time has worn away the softness of my countenance,

eaten the rock of my certainty,

and only the roar of water imbued with-

with what I used to be, remains.

Silver grass  now waves in the wind,

but rather that stand in contrast, it now fades into the unseen.

Extend your wing so that once,

amid the turmoil of my created life,

I can too, be unseen.

I do not fear you,

indeed I hasten my steps to meet you.

Hide my imperfections, my horrible flaws,

and let me be judged as a man,

not that I am,

but rather…

Who I long to be.

Take a walk with me, but don’t you think of our destination.

Sometimes, a walk is just that, a quiet tour of location, accompanied by the sound of your footfall on the gravel and the high hiss of the mosquito intent upon you.

Just a walk.  Not a dream of the future, or of the past.

My hand grasping yours to help you up the slope, the bump of your arm against my side when you steer too close, the way my feet hesitate so I can watch you walk ahead of me…

And see the heaven in your body.

Breathe my light, paint my shadow.  Just now, as sweat beads and falls slowly, the trees whisper around us, a canopy of life pierced by beaming rays dappling the stone.

A time when less is more. When hesitation and insecurity and doubt are eaten by the slowing of time itself, eviscerating the poison.

I think of kissing you right then, when you aren’t at your best, when the makeup has melted away, and your hair is damp from sweat, and your lips are parted from your breath as you suck in the too humid air and heat… just before I start to worry and drag you home, I think of kissing you… and how your lips would feel.

I asked for your life.  I asked for your company.

And right now, I am alone, and all of those beautiful images have faded, and I am nothing more than another person, lit by the glow of my screen.

filthy lies out of dirty mouths,
its a wonder that you trust them.

your weakness is in believing their truths,
and denying your own.

What is passion, constrained?
What is reason without its walls?

Batter down, batten down,
the sinkhole is forming.
The tide of sediment drags your reason into the sea.

sediment on the distant beach,
a forgotten, unspoken protest,
the roar in a shell amid a million screaming voices…

Asking why, why did I listen?

Shhhhh,

Deep breath,
for it is upon you.

This is a new take on writing for me, taking this perspective. Let me know how I’ve done, would you? I don’t usually write the female role, just pulling it out of the air.

This is written specifically for “a creative collaboration” combining the talents of several writers using one main theme as their inspiration. If you’ve not checked it out, you should. Their talents far exceed my own. Happy reading.

The story? …terrifying shit really.
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I wonder just how much I can take.
How long will the eaches will continue to make a whole?
Each strike of the hammer, just chips away little bits of me.
Fracturing, the cracks spreading in my bones like, like, like,
- quake scars upon the earth.

I fill them in myself with little bits of sediment,
paste, glue, spit, dirt, mud, clay.
Rarely do they hold, always waiting for something else,
to fill in the tiny gaps.
to keep me from simply crumpling to little pieces of dust –
A lost prophet, an unrealized idealist, a self-important failure.

I wonder these things,
I cause my own scars.
And I fill them in, haphazardly, unevenly –
sometimes painfully.
Hammers shaping the iron, breaking the bone,
and hollowing out the man.

I whisper myself into your ear,
and with each breath I grow weaker.
It is an act of trust, the exchange,
the hushed breaths,
the parted lips.

I whisper myself into your ear,
and with each syllable, I am less.
It is with love, that I offer myself,
scribbled notes left on the closed door
leading to your heart.

I whisper myself into your ear,
and with each word, the wind claims me,
Divides me slowly, fractures me upon the rocks.
The stones that weighed me down, gone,
the heart that held me close, frozen.

I bellow my rage into your ear, listen!
but you cannot hear me,
long have you been deaf to me,
you shut your doors, closed your heart,
and set me into the wind.

I no longer whisper into your ear,
the wind that screams howls my pain,
everyone’s pain, that dared to trust,
dared to hope,
dared to believe,

that someone (you)

would whisper back.