There once was a girl. Goodbye was the only word she could say. Her parents eventually got used to it. And her friends, she'd never have any. But she. She'd always thought it was a wonderful affliction. Millions of words in her head. An endless cascade of dominoes falling down and standing themselves back up again. No secrets betrayed. No lies to be discovered nor truths that were better left untold. No anything except the end.

It's a fairy tale of words. Or lack thereof. Of kittens' claws on shag carpet. Children who want to play, but can barely run.

There once was a boy. Hello was the only word his lips could manage. His parents had given up on him. His friends, he'd always had too many. People whose names he couldn't say. And didn't remember. Meeting. Always meeting. Never seeing each other again. But he always felt the beginning was underrated. That people change us most in the first few moments. He had to believe that.

It's a story of frail coincidence. The kind that turns linens into love affairs. And the lack of words to advantage. Of course they came to be together. Of course they were happy. Because words never got in the way.

Oedipal reactions turn on the black of the tuxedo. I'm asleep. I'm mother and child. To the men I've let love me.

I'm awake and listening to the sound of you forgetting me. The chirp of crickets after the rain has subsided. Stray dogs pissing on a passing funeral. I don't know why I'm lost. I only know that it so. I wake up and can't see anything except what is gone. What was never there.

Lives like dominoes spilling into each other until no one is left standing. A hungry wolf with more to prove than to say.

These fairy tales shooting us out of their cannons. Those moments all too prepared for our impact. Like we were always lost.

And never knew it. Until we found ourselves there.

Verdicts sublimating the accused. The drape of her lips in the zipper as it tried to close. Judgements and victims one in the same. The puzzle of her skin coming into focus. Numbers crumbling into equation's tornadoes. I can't add. I can't subtract. All I can do is walk away with what I have. And try not to worry about failing.

Who do I think I'm fooling? No one.

The shadow of the condom like cheap lipstick tinting her smile. The earthquake of her piss as she waits to wipe herself. Not clean. Just a pause between resurrections. Or deaths. I'm not sure if I know how they differ. Except I hate myself a little less when I'm coloring their halos in.

Little men in big swords. Vagina dragons to slay. Little men in the armor of women gathering their apples. A little poison is all we need to cure us.

I like the tortoise, I do. But I don't believe he's the real winner. Or even that there ever is one.

Spiders talked in the corners of her sobriety. Stitching together stockings. Naming the gowns after geometrics. Crickets chirped in the foreground of her eyes. Stories she was writing for selfish saturdays. Toadstools tall enough to see everything. The cure for everything she thought, too obvious. Just learn. Or pretend to have learned that it isn't over.

Earnest ghosts. In their cardboard chains. Quiz the attic on what it still holds. She fold the clothes. Assuming her underwear is willing to move. As every teddy bear will admit. If you ask it when it's drunk. That children are not to be trusted. And adults even less so.

Repairing the blanket as the pillow floods her ears. She assumes sleep is losing consciousness. She's not wrong, just misled.

Gathering the buttons from his vest. The needle short. He remembers the child who taught him how to sew himself back together. He remembers how she lied. Said she still knew his name.

The beauty of lies is that they want to save what's lost.

Like we all want to do. Given the chance.

She had a clock upon her chest. Dividing sex arbitrarily in names. Decorations sagging under the weight of heavy lights and gifts not wrapped.

There were dark blue stones in her bracelet. True or False? There were photographs taken of skins she'd never wear again. The closet sinking like angels with wings made of paper. Dancing to the perpetual sigh of gods unwilling to save us.

That's what I rememeber.

It was raining. Gods were deciding if the hurt was real. It was cold. It was freezing. Skin was choosing sides.

Ours was losing.

Little holidays from the heart. In brown sugar hats and gummy bear gloves. Dancing as though alone isn't a monster. Inside her closet. Under her bed. That no one sees, but her.

Deciding who was gone. In the braille she wrote her thoughts in. The blind morality of trust reading what she'd never touched.

Like every liar claims they had good intentions. How every lover says hello with their dirty teeth. The pale pantomimes of girls in search of men.

dismal vaccines cure her of only her desire to overcome.

Big pots of soup make little stains on her spoon. As she tastes what the ingredients have become. Big dogs in little tails. Wagging. Like there's something left to fetch.

She was a pencil. Smudged and self-conscious. She has an eraser at one end. But she's never tested it.

She's a woman. Of course she sees the irony in the men she's loved. All those apples she counted not realizing they'd already been bitten.

I call it intent. Others maybe circumstance. The single artery in all that meat. Her tongue negotiating with her teeth on how to swallow it. That moment when something living becomes meat.

It's life. It's death. It's what makes them the same.

I'm just playing scrabble with one letter. Letting the words make me up. I was always ignoring myself before I started ignoring them. They always took it for sarcasm when I would allude to the truth.

Fairy godmothers with their early curfews make her gown vanish in the middle of the ball. She looks for the lesson in her humiliation and finds hope to be at fault.

Too many princes have dropped that glass slipper on the way to find her.

Too many condoms flushed between friends.

she flushed. desdemona to his othello. only damper.

she saw the lies in his strangle, but they were stronger. Juicy turkey and warm stuffing like the threat of family too eager to know her. Little birds outside the door hungry for more regurgitated worms. so loud. like breathe under the covers. afterwards. feed me. vomit again.

oh poor iago. so mistrusting. assume betrayal and make yours preemptive. count your thoughts in decimals of pi. befriend the equation. your pain as infinite. keep going. until you're thankful to have been fed. even if only by their throw up.

at least you're not hungry anymore.

The small cancers in her smile were grotesque, but for the most part benign. She could write a novel with just the still of her lips. As they antcipated lazy eulogies of sex. If it's dead, she thought, I cannot have a funeral for it. Because it was selfish of it to die first. If it's dead, she reasoned, let it be dead the same way that it lived. Unnoticed.

The eyes talk to the lips when there's nothing else to do. Each thought a carbeutartor in her head filtering the exhaust. Poorly constructed costumes betraying the illusion. Diaperless babaies drowning in their own shit.

She factual in the lies she wears. Frenetic evening gowns court their heavens with a wealth of sequins and a good dose of cleavage. She sighs that it's close enough, determined that it isn't.

Her cancer comes and goes as it pleases. Perhaps with the weather. Her lips suffocate in the words. Her voice has amnesia. She reads their faces. Like she would any petition. Let someone else struggle to save what is already lost.

She was a tortoise once in an old fable. She doesn't remember. How it turned out.

God laid down his hand. The Devil had won again. Even Satan has his triumphs. Even God has his failures.

I may not be real. Neither of us is, but I'm the one they love. When bad things happen it's you they hate. But when someone is saved it's me they worship. That world is all theirs. It doesn't belong to either of us. We're not real until they're frightened. Orphaned gods still shitting in their pants. Wanting to be changed.

They crawl toward the parents they've never had. The guidance they lack. From a universe too cold to care for the children it has birthed. They cry when they are bruised. And hate because they feel abandoned by the parents they've never had.

There's just children. Lost in learning the art of empathy. Doomed to fail without us. Though we're not real. They're just helpless gods sweating heavens from every pore. Soliciting angels with big bills on dark corners.

They'd rather be saved than do the saving themselves. Were I real I'd say I am the only excuse they have left.

And I haven't known who to save sinc that last episode of Star Trek.

If you're hungry I can give you something to wear. If you're cold I can tell you what to say. Cause I know both of them better than I should.

I don't remember how I old I was the first time that alone made sense. I just know it was too long ago now to argue with. And that I'm all for ending a sentence with a preposition if it means someone will remember.

You can say what you want about various gods, but I think they're misunderstood. Used condoms of angels bursting on mortal dicks. Poor lubricants for the painful sex acts we use to make us human.

Grim fairy tales playing poker with what's left of sobriety. Big bad wolfs and quivering piglets. Each with their own reasons to hate. The stories we've culled from their hardships.

I'm never drunk. But I'm never really sober. They'll name their saviors after themselves. As if the world knows they're there. A butterfly in the cup of their fist. Wondering if they'll ever let it go?

I'd like to say I've changed.

But I haven't. Not yet.

God said kill yourself. But he wasn't listening. God said I don't care. And for the first time I believed him.

In the box. With all four sides missing. No entry for the worm or the poison. Just dirt accumulating where the joints are weak. Torn envelopes humming like women in heat. The blood of little girls percolating between their legs. Millipedes and scorpions in fairy tales about the men. Charming princes and valiant villains all too sour for dessert.

In her bed. With dead arms weighing her down. Those tiny monsters so heavy. So strong. Like first words. And last ones. Or everything in between that makes either matter. Telling the stories in raw alarms. Woken up to nothing. And everyone. Broken metaphors. The pencil too close to the paper. The moment too deep inside her. They're gone, but still there.

Prominent fables turn lessons learned back on the teacher. Saviors with hollow hands try to catch her.

She finally stops counting. She knows there's skin enough even without the bones.

Sweet sausage tongues conspiring in the vagaries of dismissal. The foolish kittens with loud claw scratch out the exclamation point. She tells the teddy bear to be patient. She'll sew its eyes back on some day. But until then. Try to see without them. Scolding the mountain with chastity belts for which I've long since lost the key.

Strange how we ask those questions like attack dogs. Content with killing what we want and cannot have. New leashes. To choke me. New fences to dig under. Give us splinters for someone else to extract. As if it would matter if I could toss that coin again. Make a new wish.

Pretending I've never asked for anything before. Or been in the position of denying someone happiness.

Blindfold this darkness and sew that smile onto the face of the doll. in maps made of skin. we were never lost. it's not our fault that it's taken life all this time to find us.

it's not our fault the drugs don't listen when we tell them we found ourselves again.

Beautiful irony.

Ironic beauty.

The darkness calculating the sun. In the dense bones of flightless angels.

I never saw it until I stopped looking.

With soap still under her nails she dug little holes. In smaller ones. The hours thick with fat. Tasty angels with their wings to suck on. The smell of sober making her nauseous. Knowing over doesn't wait for the right time.

It just happens.

Clean. Curious liars imagine the truth as it would suit them. Loose fit utopias name their charities after their victims. Trying them on with the price in the pocket. Without underwear. Or any reason to ask if over is near.

Love is suicide. Or life is and I get them confused.

A ripe watermelon waiting for someone to spit out its last seed.

Submitting to the X-ray she assumed they'd find nothing inside her. Blank organs in their powdered wigs. A map to nowhere. A round world pounded flat to fit inside tight pockets.

Drawing the window with an empty pen. Trying on the Devil's nightgown while walking in God's slippers. There are pictures to make to dampen the thump of the future pounding on her door. Songs like wars fighting over crippled moments.

Seeing the bones she thought of how hollow they must be. To fit all that marrow inside and still have room for movement. She pictured tiny Shakespeare's in plays culled from unripe fruit. Green apples on the ground like clocks with dead batteries.

She writes in wine knowing it will age with her. She's practical in a foolhardy sense. She's ready for life to start and waiting for the world to end.

It hasn't been long enough, but it will be soon the skeleton insists. As she pulls it from the closet in a cloud of dust.

Ready to be ill.

It's so fulll.

And so empty.

She's blind so you must forgive her for not seeing. Favors of the tongue bargain with the structure of vision. For little shits of sight too small to stink. Too big to flush. In the child there is knowing. The end is close. In the woman there is the execution of memory. Colorless palettes. Dry brushes. Still pretending to paint. Failed portraits. Life was. Is. Shall always be. A cancer. To be cured. A tumor to by cut out of the pale terminology of skin.

She makes braids. Thick ones. She folds one hair into the next. Until there are none left.

She assigns each orgasm a name. She's lonely. And she knows it. To make them real. She sweatss. Surere still. The lies aren't untrue. She makes them last. When it's done. And they're not there to blame. She colors in every outline. As though they never left her.

Promising the fairy tale she won't betray it.

She tries them on. In lying mirrors. That make it all look beautiful when it's not. She wears them. As small as they are. She likes how tight they fit.

They all go away. As sad little girls with their torn dresses about their ankles. Raped by their own expectations. Admonished. Then resurrected. As women.

Authority figures in forgetful pants. Lost faces she'll never see again. Eyelashes. Tiny specks of art drawing on her cheeks. In wishable losses. The tornado of her eyelids debating the merits of destruction.

They all go away. Drugs wear off. Condoms harden. Flesh exposed sours. Even quicker once bitten. Her fruit gathers in damp baskets. Her fruit grows in her panties and so it dies there. A hush of parachute wishing it knew when to open.

She's already fallen. That far.

She's doesn't want to be caught.

The habits of angry men are her fortune in a lottery of wasted skin.

She's stubborn. As stubborn as any lover is after years negotiating loneliness.

Let her fall.

She doesn't want to saved.

Deciding happiness by the weight of feathers. Hunting dogs with blood on their breath take off their collars and surrender to the hunted.

The slope of solitude like a queasy metaphor about to vomit. She was there with them. A doll without eyes. A god without disciples. A snake without an apple.

She was as whole as she'd ever been with nothing inside her.

Falling. Not wanting to be caught.

Her tits were soft cooked eggs. Her eyes were sausages. Trays of skin. Stacked. Plates breaking. In accusations of skin. Dirty enough. Don't you think? Cans of bacon grease on the counter. Pretending she was there. In theory. Or practice. Or anything she could call constant.

Little gods on their totems. Drawing the dot. In puddles of meat. All the dead things that make us alive. Empty pens like Used condoms on the carpet as the words fail her. Little women. Littler men. The abstract. The conditions of seldom like paper cuts.

Open. Unbleeding skin. In need of nothing but time to fuse it back together.

She said she was over it and started counting the days until forver. Like any one hurt must do if time is to be their compass. She started walking away from where she had begun. Trusting the advice of broken men. Because who knows better what not to love?

Red riding hood tells the wolf to wait for her, but she won't be eaten by him.

I don't know anything. That is my strength.

I know everything. That is my weakness.

I don't want to change my name. You do it instead. I don't want to be someone else.

The oregano scent still potent in the armpits of her fingernails. The sausage flavor on her lips far from dissipating. She cried from the onions. Tears she never knew were there. Sniffly and weak. Her sleeves pushes up paste her elbows, still falling down into the muck at her wrists.

Raw pork. Pin chicken. In heavy cuts of marinade. Like sex. Like undressing. Like tasting genitalia for the first time. The hint of piss that makes it easy to swallow dead things. Easier still to spit them out.

The evolution of sanity in burps and giggles. Insomniac princesses fretting the mattress. The apple. So sweetly poisoned. The faiarest drug is our ignorance. Mosquitoes without their wings still find a way to bite.

It's not the stinger that itches. It's the way we pull it out.

Barbarians in tweed suits. His words as silken as his argyle socks. The devil wears slacks. God wears jeans. The distorted politics of capricious humanity. Because orchids bloom at night. Like love would. If it were real.

Her dolls all have crew cuts. Scissors in empty hands usurp the ugly. Sorting the blood from the raindrops. She closes the blinds and looks away from the window. Certain her choices are the villain. Not her.

All her drawings are of women. Strong in their weakness. Menstruating in power ballads. Failed pneumonia's of lust slipping into infection. The rising interest rate on mortgages of beauty are foreclosing. Stray pets everywhere. Children too grown up to love trading their diapers for some place to live.

Because we all like the smell of shit as long as it's someone else's.

Skin like diarrhea.

I'm ready to go. Upside down. Arguing with salamanders under her tongue about the duality of the sun. The crisp of baseball in young men. The salt of peanuts thawing her fingers.

I'm not there. In that nightmare disneyworld. Of beauties awakening. Vapid decathlon fueled by credit cards. I can't wear that. Turn that spit into sex. Like we did when we were still secure in our solitude. That it wouldn't betray us.

It's not where. Hanging pictures. Hammering nails in with our thumbs. Until all the walls are covered in our blood. Now it's home. Or something similar. If I could remember what that was.

The apostrophes hiding their fangs from a dungeon of words. Timid vampire. Feeble as they claim to be. Shadows of faces barely visible as her insides traces around them. Buckets of bait. Without a jury. Without their lawyers. Just accusations. And pleas. Random mosquito bites on her lips. While she waits on the virus.

Servants of pleasure polish the crown. Potent orphans create the ladder she falls down. Away from the fire they tell her. Away from the flames. But the costume fits better in this inferno. Its skin becomes mine. Seeds exploring. Harmonies of skin. Pales symphonies in the operas of my life. Cicero's composing their women. Cyrano's pretending to know them.

It's like every fairy tale. Happy endings in stern resolve. The war to win the battle. The Hero unwilling to eat the apples on the ground.

We are the bible. Eden undone. We are the beginning of the world. And the end of it. Like every song wants to be.

The commas in her bra punctuating sentences he'd yet to speak. The colon in her pants waiting for someone to finish the thought.

She's just a woman. Lost in a sea of men. Swimming toward a shore she'll never reach.

Children. With stolen names. The counted raindrops on the window's screen. Little scraps of skin stitched into the face I try to wear. While I wait for the new one to grow over it.

Long toenails pulling away from the footprint. The staircase in her throat deciding which way is down. Considering whether there is a difference.

(The)n(or)ever

She found herself. Dirty water all over clean dishes. He said why be so hard on yourself? The world will do that for you. She began to explain about clouds of thought dense with rain, but she stopped herself. In time to notice he was trying hard, but failing to care enough. So she just told him she had to be sure she was in the world, not just it in her. Those tiny cliches of skin multiplying until I'm just another no one.

The autumn was soft. Colorless. The train tracks were always empty as she drove over them. People like right turns on red. Double dutch. Leaning. Bobbing. Jerking. Trying to find the opening in. The outcome in fortunate distillations of the beginning.

The short films in her head. Amphibian hearts. Positing the advantages of selfishness. Little lunges change the toad quickly. She prefers to do it slowly. Find the man. Bury him after.

Turn the leaf over on the fairy godmother to find her blowing Jacob Marley. Turned on by his chains.

The truth about ghosts is that they're always there. Laughing at the burden of bones. and the folly of flesh. Pitying the living for the tiny world they're lost in.

What you need to know about women is that they lie. They say it's over when it's not. They say the lion is full just before it eats them. They say so little in so many words. Especially when they're lonely.

Counting on those sexy skirts to offset. All the knots they can't undo.

Like words only louder. Strategies of surrender contemplate attacks. Breaths of gunpowder pretending they have bullets left.

Tell me there's a nightclub where we can go. Where all this violence isn't only metaphor. All this sex not just hyperbole. Is there any place at all like the one in my head? Where once it's dark it stays that way?

When the ghosts visit, they don't take me anywhere. They just ask where I want to go. And I say the future isn't something I want to see. And the past isn't something I've forgotten.

Can you take me anywhere else?

There you are. Simple Satan's gambling my skin. Stray saviors painting white sheets red. It's her prom in liquid eyes. Dancing like rain upon the missing glass in windows. It's tomorrow already. Too late. Too soon. Wasn't. Won't be. Juggling those apples with so many missing fingers. Won't be tasting them at all. With all those bottomless baskets playing attorney to my death sentence.

I'm not a seed. I can't grow it. I'm not soil. I can't nurture. I'm just the weather that decides if either will matter. Everything else is just the folly of circumstance. Long overcoats left without anything to hide. Naked hangers laughing off the clothes we're in. The lottery of condition calling out numbers no one has picked. Warm legs on the carpet memorizing steps to dances they'll never dance with anyone else.

I'm a meal. Meant to be consumed. Dirty dishes waiting to be licked. I'm an appetizer. Meant to accentuate the hunger that is there. High heels for the heart. Soften the curves of that ugly muscle. As if it has anywhere to run.

They were close. Junkyard's dogs protesting. Drooling novels of touch. Chewing. Gnawing. Discarded flesh. Like aliens examining their discoveries. The universe laughing at us. Because the glass is just us.

My fortune is that I'm lost.

The terminology is sketchy sometimes. The rationale of testicles is hard to follow. Their faces like grim tuxedos in sweaty lapels. Dead flowers about their necks. Searching for the refuge of filthy handkerchiefs. High school proms minus the punch. And the condoms. And the makeshift abortions. Daft gods polishing their thrones with the blood of disciples. Tiny doll faces. Their lipstick wearing off. In callous revisions of stories I've given up on writing.

No words. And too many. Upon the crucifix of friendship. My love. My poison apple. Poised to meet its fairy tale end. The needle dancing thoughtlessly in the crook of her elbow. As she converses with gods most will never know exist.

She's as pretty as any lie is. A ladder in a fire. A window in a prison. The illusion of freedom.

I know them. The kites on the beach that no one's flying. The wind in her hair that makes sex easy to forget. The little people I find in big questions. The blank checks in their eyes that always bounce when I go to cash them.

I'm richer now that they're gone.

Gnawing on the feet of old barbie dolls. Her skin too close. Too pliable. To be any kind of metaphor for my life.

In her journal. In her words. The hint of a woman. The crease of gods ironing the sheets our bodies wrinkled. The circus. The insanity of the clown. Thinking I would ever laugh again.

Her pussy like a tackle box. Full of hooks and lures. Determined. Precious. Devoted to the aftermath. As every stray must be if it wants to find a home.

The worms didn't seem to care that she was using them. Her past was not there during roll call. Tardy, but not truant. Making her boots from the footprints she's saved. Dirty Polaroids try to be the people she thinks she can remember. When it's dark. And the walls are doubtful. Arguing the strategies of victims with their nightgowns open. With their slippers under the bed.

Each drug making the the lost moments mine again. Naming those graves with persistent chisels. As if they were there in the stone all along. And we're digging. Scratching with broken fingernail for the names we know are in there.

The beauty of loneliness is that I don't need. Don't want anymore. Whatever it is that makes us pretend some one's still listening.

The disappointment is. There are gods for what you wish. But for what you desire there are only people.

Gravity is such a liar.