I can't live in the darkness or the dance floor anymore, because every eager hand turns into one of yours, and I can't take it.

It's been weeks and I still can't forget.

Let me paint a picture in your mind. She's sitting at the corner table, alone, holding a cup of tea to her lips. She's wearing that pink coat, the one with the brown band that runs across the chest and back, around the upper arms. She's in her glasses, and behind them, her eyes are vacant. She's dead.

You walk by and time slows down. The table has all her books, her food, her stuff. her backpack is by her twined ankles. She's there. So present in physical form.

And you want to hurt her for it.

But you don't. Not this time. Because you're older now. Older, slower. Wiser, maybe, and more treacherous certainly.

But what really stops you from doing anything is the pain on your palm. Ghost pain because it doesn't even hurt now when you touch it. You've begun to forget. Pain doesn't matter anymore when you can't feel it.

If you gave your palm to a nonbeliever, he'd never find proof. It's all healed, even to you, who knows what to look for. Where to look. The only difference is texture. Scar tissue so well disguised as to be invisible.

One day you want to see him again and hold out your hand. Maybe smile. And ask, where's the proof we knew each other? You don't know me.

Maybe you never did.

Laugh, because in that moment, you want the past eight months to have never been. You want to close your eyes and wish it all away so the things that have changed you don't exist anymore. You want to be unbroken, again.

You want your life back, and all the self-hatred to just go the fuck away. You want to dance again, alone in the darkness and not feel the hands of some stranger like waking nightmares against your skin.

You want to kiss again where the taste of ash does not invade your mouth like a burned down house. You want to be free again, of your skin and the constraints of reality. You want to go back in time where The Outside was the most beautiful aspect of the world. When people where magical creatures. Where belief and faith could move mountains and passing doubt only made grassy hills.

When he touches your hand and looks, with fingers that trace the palm, you'll dissociate for an instant, long enough to see the sky black again, long enough to protect yourself because hands mean hurt. And when he lets go of your hand, asks what's wrong, you'll step back, step away and wish you had it in yourself to ask for help and healing but you won't, because he didn't want you dependent on him at all.

He wanted you free when all you wanted was chains. And now that the chains have been forcibly attached by another memory, you won't ask him to help you escape. You've learned. You know you can't trust him.

You gave up the wrong bits of yourself, until you were warped beyond recognition, and he called it flattery to his ego. Said he was insecure. You believed him, back then. Over time, though, you've come to realize that steel has no insecurities. Just many forms, no feelings. None compatible with your own.

You learned too late, maybe.

Or maybe soon enough, since you learned before you saw him again. Since someone else saw fit to teach you. Miserable, dependent idiot. You let it happen. You wanted to feel again. You wanted to be important again, to anyone.

You fell in love with your own mental anguish and that's why you let yourself be destroyed. You are a useless, despicable, pathetic excuse for a human being. You wanted to be destroyed, but you forgot that there's no such thing as a serving size of agony.

When you see him again, and you're laughing, leaning out over the pier, you'll be looking into the water, wishing you didn't know how to swim. All around you, prisons. Dry land, water, air. And you will never escape.

He won't know. He won't realize, and for old time's sake, for idiotic reasons of your own, you'll let yourself become less by letting him touch you. Arm around shoulders. Hand at hip. A kiss on the lips.. Maybe you'll even let him fuck you again, since it's been that long.

Except it hasn't, and you'll close your eyes - or turn the lights out - so you can imagine being safely somewhere else in your mind. So he won't see you cry when you recall how other hands did the same when you couldn't move.

And probably it'll be different, so you won't have the burn of the carpet against your face and chest. You won't inhale the dust bunnies and the old sock smell of a different floor. You won't have to remember as vividly as you do now.

It will hurt. Maybe that'll be enough to explain when you can't hold back tears since you know "so happy to se you" won't work. Maybe "so happy for the reminder I'm no longer human" will. Maybe he'll stop long enough to kiss the back of your neck, and you can wish for the end of the world to appear.

Out on the pier, you hang onto the railing like it can save you. You wait until the silence hurts and then you turn to the boy-man you loved - still love - and you lie as hard as you can that things have changed. That you are someone else now, and things won't work. Because if you can't be dependent in a normal way, you'll turn him into a constant source of pain, until the day when you can forget everything and jump.

Paradise Fell.

If Paradise falls
I'll be in chains
laying down in
Purgatory while
angels
and clouds
rush around trying,
failing,
to get it all sorted out.
I'll be laughing
chained against a
monument to the Testaments
both old and new -
a huge book carved of stone
only two pages showing
only one message seen
growing after taking root in the
hearts and minds
of people who were my kind
before this mess.
But after Heaven falls, what're
you gonna do?
It's like the hard kick
some ancients get, and
suddenly they're pious,
right on their death beds,
begging god for mercy
after how they've fucked
over their fellow humans.
That kind of conversion at least made sense
but pledging allegiance
to a place
that caved in,
got destroyed -
fuckers, where's the sanity in that?
But I guess they figured
since god's hidey hole was real,
the Big Man might be the real deal
himself,
come out of the sky,
thunder lightening,
raising Cain, and maybe poor old Abel too
and I lost 'em
all those sinners
destined for high end hell mutinied
no more - laughing with the sinners,
'stead singing with the saints
and somebody had handcuffs, too
not sure how the whole
fire and brimstone
aspect of hell planned to work out in those;
not even sure exactly
who had them
maybe some corrupt police officer
or a convict
who didn't manage to escape them
when Judgment Day came around
riled up quite a crowd,
let me tell you.
So my loyal followers
fell off the bandwagon
until it was more of a one man deal,
and began singing
like song birds begging for their freedom
or declaring mating wars.
Loud and raunchy
if you know the language,
almost pretty if you don't.
Then something or other
clever and rhyming
happened
(can't be bothered to decide
what exactly)
and it all ended,
I was free,
and whoever I tricked
into letting me go... well, he's
a trifle richer now,
so move out of the way,
and let me head north -
I'm on my way to cause
mayhem,
of course.

Revenge.

This is when the potential for destruction is the greatest. When I'm angry and when things just aren't falling into place. When it's a little too warm out and the earth tilts as blood abandons my body. This is when I want to hurt people and when I'm angry about what it means to be alive.

I want to show them what pain is to balance the pain inside. I want to see them hurt back. And then... Oh gods. I want to make them burn. Bleed. Scream in agony.

In the waiting room.

Do you know how terrifying gold on black can be? Gold lettering on black nameplates...that means fear. Feral. It's a threat. That's all. That's all.
I'd like totalk to you, but I don't know how you'll take it. Do you want to talk to me?
No.
Why not?
I'm only here for one reason. Her name isn't yours.

Welcome to the dark side. We don't take words at face value. We lie and steal and in the end we laugh because there is nothing more pathetic than a man who wants to do something and can't.
Unless it's the man who never wanted to do anything and died for lack of breathing.

This is truth in fiction.

The way your lips felt. Like smoke against my mouth. Like I couldn't even be certain I had been kissed. Like perhaps it was pure imagination. Like maybe you weren't even real. You and your smoke lips, your cigarette kisses. And your high eyes.

Are you even real? Or am I imagining again so that I won't be trapped by the real people around me? Their rock hands and accusatory looks.

Do a trick.

Prove you're worth it.

I'm not.

And they prod anyway. Demanding. Prove it. Like a mathematical solution with no way back. Prove.

I can't.

I'm not.

How I'll go.

I try not to tell people
I'll be dead before I'm thirty.
I don't want them to worry
or treat me any differently
(enough people already do that)
I don't tell them
my life's been one long suicide
starting from when I was born,
continuing to present day.
The first time I held my breath
until I passed out
was me trying to figure out
asphyxiation.
And every time I step into the sun,
I'm sending out invitations
to skin cancer.
But learning to swim
might have been the best touch -
I'm not afraid of water,
and when they hear I've drowned
(if the cancer doesn't get me first)
they'll assume it was an accident.
Not a death
for curiosity's sake.

I miss your touch
the same way
I miss the kiss of fiberglass
on my bare skin
when the red lines begin to rise
micro specks of glass
digging into my skin,
hunting blood beings,
hurting.
Comforting to know
I think of you as pain,
isn't it?

"Like" it.

It wasn't like I woke up with the idea that today was going to be the day.

It wasn't.

I swear.

Promise.

It wasn't like I woke up and knew -

because honestly, I never even went to bed.

I've been up since before the dawn over there.

And it's past belief where you are anyway. So it could be any time here.

Any time at all.

Or no time.

I've been wandering, see,

down passages and hallways

and maybe a mind that once upon a time

wasn't as confused and as crazy as I'd like to believe.

I've got the words in me somewhere, even if they're trapped -

slightly -

by the time of day

or morning.

It's still dark out, and god damn,

god DAMN

but it's dark out.

Like the angels, I'd say.

Like my angel,

but that's making assumptions

and even though I'd want him back

I can't say what I want to

because it's in the words

I swore not to say

until the imagery goes away and lets me walk free.

It's just a little death,

but not French,

just myself, and free, the way I'm not.

I'm still chained up,

by the hour and the eyes

and I keep recalling the way it felt to be somewhere

with someone's arms,

but I can't shake the feeling that something's wrong

because whenever I remember, now

I'm looking down on the scene, like it's an out of body experience,

like I died

and get to look back

as I get bent over.

And fuck if it's not like I'm watching porn made of you and me.

Except really, I'm not looking at me.

It could be anyone.

I'm looking at you, even though you've still got all those clothes

on...

Even though your eyes aren't on me anymore.

Even though you're too far away.

Because the Mississippi is far too long,

and it feels about the sky

the same way I feel about you.

Maybe.

I can't tell if it's just obsession now, just habit

but I still know I get that twinge

like some bottom fell out of some world -

maybe even mine -

every time I see something I'd want.

And I get to be glad I didn't know about it at the time,

because it would have fucked up my world.

Not that my world's been much of perfect anyway,

and I'm tired as hell,

not to mention dead alive,

but that's something for the record books.

The way this weekend was.

And I don't know if you know what that means,

or even if you care.

Can appreciate.

"Like" on facebok doesn't begin to touch

what I'd Like to say to you sometime.

Maybe even face to face.

But the songs take the words away from me

and don't make the mistake

of thinking I don't mean them when they're part of my statuses.

It's only updates, sent by text,

but damn, if they don't all apply to you

and maybe even me.

I'd like to think I'm telling the truth

and that maybe you'll read this, one day

like I mean you to. But that's a hope that'll

fall through, won't it? It's just imagination,

some station left to rot. And I'm still too

far away to care - or not. Maybe too close to

choose to escape. (Hard when there's three

songs playing in my head.)

Inadequacy.

I will never write the way I hear you write.

I don't know if it's your voice

or your words

but there's something different

about the way you kidnap letters

and force them into submission.

Almost makes me wish you'd do the same to me.

But it doesn't matter

because you don't know I exist.

I'm not in your world,

where words and mistakes

remake again

and again

and

again.

I hear you read your poetry and I freeze inside.

I can't write that way, and I know it.

I sit down and try to compose,

but all that drips out of my fingertips

are pale imitations

trying to be you because that's the only way I can get close enough

to feel like you know me.

The inflections in your voice, and the way you don't look up

not always

and not often--

How hidden you are even when you're most brazen

picking up admiration like you're picking pockets.

There I go again.

Using your voice, your metaphors, your similes

and smiles

in my writing because I can't do it alone.

There was this other writer who knew I couldn't do this alone.

He told me it was okay--

that all the best steal from their betters, until they steal from themselves.

I stared by stealing from myself.

Now I'm at the low end of the ladder,

taking the picked-through scraps off the

compost

from the garbage

from the dog bowl

from the poor man's meal

from the servant's part

from the manservant's portion

of the master's leavings

off the master's plate

from the master's meal

at the master's table

in the master's hall

of the master's palace

on the master's land.

I'm not the master.

I'm battling with rats

over syllables that don't go together,

a jumbled mess.

Try sounding out

oo-ah-ee-mn.

It doesn't mean anything.

I'm beginning to learn

neither does what I steal.

Don't take me to task for calling myself out.

This is no case of

an author's her own worst critic.

No.

See, I'm my own best fan.

I think I make the sun rise in the morning,

and bring out the moonlight in the evenings.

I think the moon fades because too much exposure

makes her jealous.

But she keeps coming back for more because I'm so addictive.

I'm all the types of illegal street drug that won't kill you,

just maim your brain cells until you forget why you're taking me

in the first place.

But after spending an hour listening to your voice

and your way with words

I'm regretting ever putting pen to paper.

I'd give up the craft entirely if I didn't need it for my sanity.

And even that's wavering, I think.

Maybe if your creations can keep me sane

I'll forgo the paper, and the creativity

and sink to my knees to worship your artistry

because you've trapped me inside your majesty

and I don't want to be anything but freed.

This is a story I still can't tell without starting over a hundred times to tell the good parts again.