whites and grays and soft, soft sheets.

I'm curled up against his side. My nose is pressed against his clean white shirt and the world around us is full of whites and grays and soft, soft sheets.

"I think we're both too broken inside to really take care of each other." I can feel his words against my cheek.

"Do you really think so?"

The only response I get is the tightening of his arms around me.


And then it fades to white.

Free to good home: one life.

I used to feel pretty when you looked at me. But now I just feel like an idiot, an old friend who's standing in front of you with waving arms and a pestering smile, saying, "Hey, pay attention to me!" And all you can do is look around me--through me--to someone standing behind me: to her.

I am invisible. I've told you this before and you tried to slide around the subject but you breathe irony too often and your words felt empty. I just can't win. Why do I still exist? There must be someone out there who can fill up this wasted space so much better than I can.

Free to good home: one life.

That's how the ad would begin. I suppose potential candidates would question the quality of this life and I would be forced to tell them the truth: that this life needs repair. And I would lose their interest. No one wants a life that's on the brink of falling apart. Hammers and nails and lots of glue don't seem to be working anymore.

This life will fall apart.

such bloody guilty palms

You didn't break my heart because it was already broken, dear. It was made of glass, you see, and someone accidentally stepped on it. It sits in my chest, shattered and broken, trying desperately to reflect my soul as a whole but only succeeding in shedding little fragments of it at any given time. What you did was take your hand and shove that broken glass deeper into my body, crunched them against muscles and bones, and now I'm left to pick the pieces out, one by one, like a puzzle laid out on a table waiting to be put back together again. The problem, though, is that you pushed so hard and some of the fragments stuck to your palm--such bloody guilty palms, that make you look like some messiah trying vainly to rescue me. The puzzle is incomplete: now those fragments of me are stuck in your skin-in your soul, in your mind, in your body. In your heart. And that's where they're going to stay until you pull them out, one by one, wincing as each one falls, and you pluck me out of your life.

Harsh Kisses

You pray for someone to see it, whispering the wish against chapped lips and stinging cheeks. And when it shines too bright and concerned eyes are looking at you, your heart freezes up and you try to remember why you wanted someone to see it in the first place--this ugly jealousy, gnashing its teeth and sputtering false curses. This is too unfair but that's the way it is, darling, and there's nothing you can do about it sometimes. Just wait out the storm, feel the rumble of thunder in your arms and the rain pelting against your skin like harsh kisses in the night and know that storms don't rage forever.

You break time when you hug me.

Time doesn't work around you because you break time when you hug me. Clocks stop, watches shatter and Father Time has a heart attack. A week turns into a month, a month will be a year and a year will be a lifetime. Eternal love lasts only a decade, but its worth does not correlate to its length. The sentiment is there--stronger than you can imagine, pushing up through the weeds and cracks in the concrete, drinking the sun and water, fighting ruthlessly and ignoring the rules, because rules wouldn't dare go near you. Rules equal lost and you're too important to lose.

Lips Are Lips

We listen to songs that are familiar because they make us feel like someone. This song reminds me of you, a whirlwind of something or other that I can never quite grab. There's a fire that burns around your eyes and I really wish I couldn't see it, not when I worry that you're looking in the wrong direction. Eyes are eyes, but lips are lips and they wander too much in my opinion. I should learn to keep my mouth shut, because they don't make strong enough tape these days. Friendship isn't a word anymore; it's a feeling, an open field with fresh smiling daises in one corner and fried autumn grass in the other. Which one am I standing in?

Empty Hands and Sad Smiles

Must we fall into temptation? Let's play a game instead. Hold your hand out and whoever grabs it first belongs to you. Most cases you'll win, in some you'll lose because that person who grabs won't always follow the rules. So listen like a good little girl and leave such games to those who can handle empty hands and sad smiles. Laugh but don't you dare find the humor in the joke. You never found these things funny before. What's happened? What's changed? Those rose-blushed cheeks and kohl-lined eyes hold no appeal to them. Red, red lips are what they are looking for--lips that leave stains on their skin--and girls who are more like the cloying type of perfume that lingers where it shouldn't--longer than it should, and you were always too good at being forgotten. You don't stand a chance, little girl.

I’m a different person when I sleep

Sometimes when I wake up I feel like I'm pulling myself into consciousness from a different world, like I'm waking up after a long journey to a foreign country. I'm a different person when I sleep and waking up is throwing myself into a body that isn't really mine.

But am I really that person that I dream in? Am I the girl who's running from demons, being killed by them, sliced in half and burned for a sin that wasn't her fault? Who's kiss can make flowers grow and fruit ripen? Am I the girl who can charm those people with a quirk of her lips? Who's heart is held in his hand? And she can do nothing but watch helplessly as he smirks and throws it in the ocean--she jumps in after it and searches through the glowing fish and dancing seaweed but she can't breathe under water and she can't find the surface, so she chokes and sinks and dies with a startled breath. Am I the girl who can fly? Am I the girl who walks down the street with a red umbrella and white ballet shoes? Am I the girl he loves? Am I the girl he hugs and kisses and twirls around? Am I the one he can't--won't live without? Am I the girl who picks the apple from the tree and takes a bite?

I don't know . . . .

Carved Hole

I'm restless in this old body. Dry brittle bones cannot withstand your unknown jibes. It's this heart I was given too. It's strong and healthy, yes, but it was placed on the wrong side and does me no good. You aim at that carved hole where my heart should be and there is nothing to cushion the hurt, no soft tissues to catch the pain. So it hits me hard, like a plane crashing into a building. My chest catches fire and my eyes send salty water to extinguish the flames. It is then, perhaps, kind of strange how you who cause the fire, is the one who fights it the hardest.

If we were alone

I almost lean, my lips flushed and waiting, but the squeak of a chair reminds me that I'm not allowed to. If we were alone, I would go through with it though. I know I would, because my lips are raw from my teeth trying vainly to compensate for lost chances and I can't get his voice out of my ears, his image out of my eyes, his lips off my own, his fingers in my hair, against my skin, pressed against my back--

He is always wanted.

I am always lacking.

I am a silly little girl.

Grown men always look like children at their father's funeral. Grown women only look old and weary, warn by age and wisdom--because they know things, they know the feeling, the emotion, the regret and guilt, they know the experience and understand its necessity.

Perhaps this is a generalization. Perhaps this is the sad stereotypical truth. But, simply, this is an observation. An observation taken from my slice of knowledge, colored in by what I have seen. And what I have seen will always be smaller to what you have seen. Or at least, in your eyes it will be. I am a child. A kid. Not in body but in soul. A silly little girl who's so afraid of life that she doesn't live it. You scoff and say you don't need me and that it's lame to think that way.

But I don't care. Because I need you. Whether this is reciprocated or not, doesn't matter. I'm being selfish, I suppose. Taking what I can of you and not caring if it's mine to take. But I'm a child, right? A little brat, reaching out with dirty hands for something new, uncertain--yes--but too greedy to care. And I'm telling you now: I'm not going to get through this without a few temper tantrums. There will be tears and unreasonable accusations. You will get annoyed with me, probably wish you've never met me, that you can back out now but never doing so (and I will secretly hope that you can't because you need me as much as I need you, but you would never tell me that--thus the secret hope). But when it comes down to it . . . all that matters is that you love me--in any way you wish, just as long as it's love.

Pose For Me

To me you pose a problem, but questions are all I pose to you:

Where have you gone? How will I carry on?

And:
Is life supposed to live without you? Is blood supposed to flow? Is breath supposed to breathe?

Or:
Is the moon supposed to steal the sun's light? Are clouds supposed to hide the stars while they change into their sparkling gowns, or are the stars supposed to walk around in their naked splendor, posing their burning bodies like models in front of a camera--our eyes?

But:
Answers never pose themselves. They relax on couches and ignore you.
Remember that when you drown out the noise of crickets with your headphones and too-loud volume.

I'm sitting next to them, waiting for your eyes.