Crystal Balls

I can't peer so good into crystal balls,
There's too many shifting images.

All I catch is a flash of leaf green,
your laughter fills the air.

Warm winds bring out the dirt between my toes,
Someone clasps their hands around my neck.

I lay back on the couch, clouds descend,
I think you're in this vision too.

What's the point of standing up again,
We should just float away.

The path they've chosen leads straight to hell,
I'd far rather wander the wilds.

So how can I be sure these things will come?
After all, at the end of the day.

I can't peer so good into crystal balls,
There's too many shifting images.

Beatrice

She had a hole in the left thigh of her tights where pale, white flesh shone. I thought all day about touching it. 

Arterial

I know what to do now, step back three paces and shut myself in. I worked so damn hard to feel again I forgot just how much it hurts sometimes. But anything is better than this. Better than watching myself make one big mistake that I can’t seem to keep myself from making. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to hurt and confuse but both those qualities run through my veins and when I bleed it’s arterial. Arcs of pain and longing spurt from my mangled neck, drenching those around me in the sadness I spent years trying to cut free. 

Poisoned Paradise

Fucking bloody murderous hell. I’m doing it again. I dropped black ink on the white sands of paradise, scuffed it with my toe until it was streaky and horrendous. 

All I wanted to do was admire the picture but I knocked the puzzle off the table and all the little pieces flew under the couch. 

I’m a rag doll flung into the air. Limp flesh tumbling through grey sky. Arms wheeling, hair floating, at the pinnacle of my rise, preparing for the fall. 

I need to stop but how? I’m pumping the brakes but I forgot I cut the line and called it personality. I’m heading for a crash, a big one. The sort where the paramedics arrive and look at the bloody streak of asphalt and say, “Not even a seat belt would’ve saved her.”

I shivered when he touched my arm. 

What If?

What if? What if I go and find you and hold you and be with you? Then, when I have to leave once more and there’s no next meeting in sight, what then? 

What if when we try to talk every day it just gets harder and harder, kind of like it is now? Was it was easier before, without a date and confirmation that we would see each other once more? 

What if I just Built you up in my head to be something that you aren’t, but instead something I really wish you were? What if you aren’t my second chance, my next attempt at having feelings? 

What if this is just me getting hurt again?

Mucus Memory

I cough up words with no meaning and no end in sight, 
I lift from my sticky brain the meanings of everything and life, 
I wonder at the brassy tips of each toe, 
When will I get to where I’m going? 
And is where I’m going something I know? 
I am plagued by a swarm of buzzing ideas,
Destined to never see the light, 
Oh to be young again to have the code and the use that many covet so, Oh to have the wisdom of the old,
With that stoic achievement between each wrinkle 
And a sheen in each eye, 
Cataracts only the scourge of the young. 

From Years Ago

I'm not sure what holds me together. I feel like one wrong word will cause my body to burst and my atoms will shoot in a million different directions to be formed into something far more useful than the shape they take now. Or perhaps I'll collapse into dust that's carried away by the wind. I'll travel over seas and continents to settle in the lungs of some girl like me who doesn't quite know what she wants and probably won't ever fully know. Or maybe I'm already disappearing. Slowly bleeding out with every melancholy day until all that's left of me is a withered shell that's even emptier than I am now.