Sad now because sleep was gone. The iron rabbit foiled by the paper tortoise. She woke up the ant and told it to begin foraging again. As if food were scarce. Because it was. Always hard to come by lasting meals. Genuine salvation.

God wasn't looking as she tore off a piece of paper from the tablet. God wasn't interested that the ink her pen had run dry. Calculations came in failing concrete. In dead birds of prey. Everything was small except for the numbers. The heels she wore to make herself tall.

Little girls in grandma's closet draped in lies she must've worn. Wondering how long until they'll fit.

All gods lie.. Once we learn this what is there left to worship?

Consuming herself in doses. One disease to quiet the next in a tireless cycle of killing herself to live. Toothless lion biting antelope necks. Gaining nothing except perspective.

The truth of tomorrow is that it knows us before we do it. A womb from which we explode. Born over and over again until there is nothing left of from where we came. Children of nothing making gods from the voids in ourselves. Creating heavens from the seeds we were not patient enough to grow.

I don't have a garden anymore. No expectations. I never wake up anymore. It's just sleep interrupted. A dazzling spectacle of skin scrambling to cover what I don't want anyone to see.

The cure betrays.

Small doses of disease become too much.

The whisper an accomplice to so many crimes. Broken briars like useless fingering trying to grab. Bits of skin still uncooked after we've left the on the heat too long.

Cold!

The dishrag in your grin makes it impossible to see. Look like I still have eyes long after I've let the vultures have my sight. Seeing isn't enough.

Burnt. Bits of caramel thoughts lost to the heart. THe sugar turned to black. Like the rush of lies to the forefront of my heart. It stops for a second to draw pictures no one will ever see.

The tragedy of humanity is that it needs us. People pretending to care.

Open lips on a kiss that isn't coming.

We're nothing. And it's terrible. Because everyone wnats to be something. We're nothing. And it feels right. What else is there for us to be?

Dark stairways travelled down in moments of weakness. Flags flown high enough that any god can see we don't know what we want.

The bed didn't care whether she slept in it or not. It stood there empty either way. All her sleep hostage consciousness. All her rest found in quiet tornadoes. Picking at the dead leaves with fingers made of glass. Too many reflections to decide which one is accurate. Climbing the barren tree trunks in chokes of touch. Too many corpses to know from where the ghosts originate.

Trying on her last few pairs of eyes she looks at what she knows isn't there. Trying to imagine what something so unreal could ever look like. If she were the girl she was then. Who would be the woman she is now? Would it matter if she never were.

Chasing the cold with missing skin. Lost in the irony of her predicament. Each minute like chewing gum. A taste only. No nourishment. So many impostors tell her who she was. But none of them know who she is.

She lies to herself. Lies to everyone. Says she doesn't remember how it feels.

The dog was talking to the cat wondering why it didn't understand. The cat was listening. Scared it'd couldn't hear anymore.

The cruelty of language confronts our skin. Glimpses of knowing what the other has said make the game go on for that much longer. Tongues spilling out words these bodies cannot pronounce.

I'm old you know. She said. Louder than she ever talked. I'm old because I waited too long for things change. And they never did. Like the hopeless often do. Only I never knew I was hopeless until the waiting was over.

That fact that no one was listening didn't deter her. All the world was guilty as far as she was concerned. Of stealing bread to feed itself. The kind of crimes that make us better people. Or at least able to discover the victim in the criminal.

Watch my tail wag the dog said to the cat. Try to catch it. You never will. They played that game for years without a winner.

Now I'm the one who can't love and you want to be. Now this skin peels off in little bits. And you don't know what to do with it.

We waited too long to hate each other.

We waited too long for everything.

Now it's forgotten us.

Looking for god on the one night she imagined, if he could, he might appear. Adjusting her compass for the magnetism of so many miracles she decided to go ahead and buy the Jesus toast. even if I'm not saved, at least i won't go to hell hungry.

Don't bother me, she shouted at the ringing phone. I'm busy forgetting all the people I never knew. I've been advertising my pain all this time. Obviously, no one's buying.

I've been selling myself in these rags so long. Why is naked only now occurring to me? So many clothes to choose from and I'd rather be ignored. Than noticed because of what was concealing my skin.

Wanting. Who doesn't want more? The mortgage of life is a voracious beast. Hungrier for more with every taste.

I'd like a miracle. Of course I would, but I'd rather have the truth.

Tell the universe I'm not afraid. It can bully me all it wants. I won't give up my lunch money.

There is no tree tall enough. Nor candles that can burn so long. To make the world less dark. But it's still pretty when they fall asleep with the lights on. People bleeding through to the other side of the page. Like they won't be forgotten when Christ is gone.

Christmas is every day.

Goodbye always betrays us. Calendars of skin counting off until we're over. Endless autopsies on the heart reveal a kingdom of killers.

Too many last chances later. We remember, but won't ever know. Who they were or we were to them. Empty cellophane. The candy tasted. Eaten.

Then shit back out.

We try to give. Like to pretend that we can save, if not ourselves, someone.

Celebrating what isn't there.

Wrapping paper. Torn off of pretty packages.

Only to find empty boxes were all that they hid.

Empty chimneys. No reindeer. Or fat men to blame for all that was missing.

Just people. Mostly ourselves.

What mightn't have been doesn't comfort me.

Riding the carousel she thought the horses had the advantage. Moving so many without having taken a single step.

It always took days for her clothes to fit and by then she had to take them off. It's no fun being dirty all by yourself. It's no good being dirty if there's no one who wants to lick up the mess.

She made an omelet for herself. Out of all the foods the refrigerator had left in it. It tasted like the last time she remembered having been touched. Empty, but her still wanting more of the nothing.

She took a sharp knife and dew her pictures in the onion. A teary coloring book foul with pictures undone. She sealed the envelope and almost put the stamp on it. Letters to no one. Carousels still spinning. Long after the horses are dead.

It was easy to be her she thought as her skin fell to the floor.

I was always just pretending that I wasn't alone.

The frenzied metropolis between her legs was going in so many different directions. Ants all over her picnic. The police of her frown threatening its protest. Pesticide in her smile. Mayonnaise skin.

Empty bread.

She'd never had a life, so she borrowed some of theirs.

She didn't know what to wear. So she wore nothing other than the world between her breasts. Empty trench coats to camouflage the hurt. Birthday candles on stale cake.

She closed her eyes, blew hard.

And waited. For her wish.

I was doing laundry. Attempting to quantify the ratio of suds to clean. Or dirty. Absolved to the sovereignty of the stains. Content to be ruined.

I was waiting for the world to stop. That diabetic coma that occurs between sex and words. The poetry of soiled skin missing its meter.

Thinking about the mediocrity the ritual had become. Soluble Satan's and corn syrups gods baking their afterlives in cookie dough and caramel crunch. The rotten sweet of heaven too much. The saccharine sepsis of hell my only alternative.

It's not ours. Nor does it belong to the dead. It's the realm of disenfranchised saviors. The almost sons of gods sweating their crosses in bits of candy too hard to bite. So we just suck on it.

Until that familiar candy shell is hollow again.

It's over. This is my gift to you.

Plotting his course with the aid of a broken finger. He kept going back to the beginning. Hundreds of trips to nowhere.

Wrapping the packages with bows left over from gifts not given. The cataracts of sex impairing my vision. I'm blind at last. Nothing to see except what I can remember of before the disease was a factor.

She's Star Trek. Captain Picard. The Enterprise. Lost in a rift in the space/time continuum. She's talking to herself from the past. From the future. The disparity of timelines spinning her like some lonesome dreidel. She's data. Unable to feel and yet aware of all emotion present. She's the dominion. Everyone is an alien. She's a changling. Neither person nor object. Searching for what to be next.

Sad gifts are given. Wings pulled off of helpless insects. They are dropped, but don't break. Skeletons on the outside. Skin underneath the crust. Burnt apple pies still leave me with the craving.

The people I know. Or thought I did. Reruns. Old cliffhangers forgotten. Corks ripped from curing hearts. Reality TV. Shitting faces caught on tape. Wiping asses chasing toilet paper dreams.

Sad gifts. Some not given at all. Champagne waiting to burst. The wires pretending to they can contain all that rage. Children subtitling their daydreams. Assuming the world to be as pliable as them. Silly girls with pink underwear making a trail of menses for random men.

Organizing the hunt in stitches of wedding dresses. And the names of children they haven't had yet. Strangling the semen in preemptive abortions. Following the juice of the apple as it drips.

The laxative of mutual skin shitting out everything inside.

I can see the future sometimes in the slivers of light that escape through the window. I can hear it in the wind as it fights the buildings for dominance. Specious gods looking for a microphone. Or any way to make us listen.

People have all the gods they need. real or not. People have a monopoly on suicide. Or rather needing a reason not to die and why it'll be alright when they do.

Gathering her bed sores into neat little piles she considered the future of the blood she had spilled. What is skin without friction? Just a heavy sheath for broken bones. What is blood without blisters? Just a fancy map to places we'll never see again. What is sex except the illusion of heaven. A shorter path to gods we've never believed in, but still wish were real.

A circus of frailties that try, but can't make us whole.

It's like trying to reason with the wind. It doesn't care what you want.

I saw the gods plotting us. Tiny colored trapezoids on a giant game board. Risk. The dice our decisions. The continents our whims. They were bitter because we'd outgrown the worship. They were bored because we weren't that interesting anymore. Just fucking. Making more of ourselves. And paying too much for gas because seven seats are not enough. Even when there's only one of us.

I saw the devil watching. Smart enough not to interfere. He can finally relax. Evil doesn't need him anymore. He loves us, just as much as god does. They both want our souls. Just for different reasons.

I wish they were real. Then I'd have an excuse. For everything. I could turn off the light and pretend that I can't see what I know is there.

I'd worship the devil if I thought he was real. He seems pretty cool. I'd praise Jesus if he'd actually been the son of a god that doesn't exist. I'd love to have heaven to fall back on. I'd love to have a god to blame for all my shortcomings.

But it he were real, I don't think he'd like that.

You're a pretty snake. As far as snakes go. Your apple is shiny. Your fangs are sweet with nectar. I'm not tempted so much as infatuated. How often is it that we lie to ourselves this well?

Pinwheels stuck into the heart. Quiet. Waiting for the wind to blow.

You can come and find me when you've hated yourself long enough to consider loving someone else. Until then, I won't be waiting. You free to love me once you've exhausted all your other options, but I'll be gone.

I'm just not that good of a person. And even if I were, you don't deserve her sympathy.

Pinwheels stuck into each other. Dull knives wearing pretty dresses. Empty vagina's weighing gods in the shadows of testicles. I could blow them and be done with it. I could close my eyes and find the men, but all I want is the illusion. Pinwheels. Lazy gods waiting to be spun.

Love is knowing when not to save yourself.

Delirium has its insights to offer. I don't smoke. I burn. No one sees the difference anymore. It's just a disease to them either way. They kill themselves arguing with the symptoms. Ignoring the illness any way they can. It's so much easier to hate what's happened than to consider why it has.

No one wants to solve the problem. They just want someone or something to blame for it.

They don't want to love. That might hurt. They want to be loved. Or get laid. Whichever comes first.

Don't make me feel. Just make me feel good. In that shallow way that never matters after I've forgotten your name. I don't know you and I don't want to know you. I just want the symptoms of our mutual affliction.

Play the tortoise to my hare. I don't mind losing for the right reasons. Be the Christmas for my many ghosts. Drug the clock and teach me what I should want. Give it painkillers and break its hands. Give it Demerol to make it stop counting. Wake up Tiny Tim and tell him I still haven't learned how to live again.

And I'm sorry.

Ask me after I've finished translating my vomit. It's too cold to be humble. I'm sick, but not sick enough to be saved. Or rescued. Or anything that makes it easy. The mirror shows its reruns until I grow tired of myself. The grapes gang up the vine. A fruitless anarchy overcomes us. We are governed by suspected truth. We are victims of pleasure. The gravity of skin pulling down until our bone are exposed.

The enemy is anyone too near.

That was years ago. The last time I spent the night with my face in the toilet. So many years ago. When I could still get drunk. And regret it. That was secret. What I told him. when we ere pretending to be other people.

Little spiders constructing giant webs. The overture of her thighs symphony enough. I always want there to be words. Something to say in all that listening.

He could be the anvil and I could be the rope. Or else we have always been. Looking for excuses to undress the doll. Give it name it hasn't had yet.

Ghosts. The subtleties of addiction creating stores where there are only words.

Alice wasn't listening to rabbit as she shrunk. Her clothes threatening to drown her. Alice wasn't looking when the world left her. Like a balloon giving way. It drifted. The other end of the string still tied to her wrist. A limp needle all the drugs gone from it.

It went away. And she knew that it was gone. Dead. Sold to some tomorrow she has no intention of living.

The rabbit was pouring tea for everyone. Lighting the candles on her cake. The darkness was deciding in explosions of skin. How old she was. How young she'd ever been.

There were so many people. The pandemonium of alone was almost high enough. If only she could be big again. Like she was. Instead of little like she is now.

There were x-rays to take in places only radiation could see. To search for fractures. Though she felt no pain. To find discrepancies between the action and the consequence. Her skin thudding like the skin on a beaten drum. And no one there to dance.

There were heels to whet on young men's hardons. The ambulance of touch stuck in traffic. While I waited to be rescued. Visualizing Christ in empty apartments. The desperate quiet of humility. Saying goodbye to people I've never met.

Alone in my tradition of remembering words deleted.

Alone in my obsession with asking the question to answer.

Betting the moon. Over an empty pot. It was the wager she wanted. Not the win. She asked the genie to wait. Knowing it would spoil her wish. Taking the doll by the rake of its hair. The yarn all but, thread. It's dress was pretty, but falling apart. It hadn't a bad mother. Just one that never meant to have so many children.

Finally, she made her wish. The genie listening carefully for any flaw to exploit. I want. I'd like, she said. To be able to know what the world would be like had I never existed.

The genie laughed. Silly child, that's hardly a wish. It would be exactly as it is now. It wouldn't be any different.

Now...

What do you really want?

Santa Claus, she asked, Why did you bring me this?

He wasn't there of course. Because you never see the man who leaves those kinda gifts.

She stared at her new face in the blank TV screen. Tentatively touching at her cheeks to determine it was actually herself she was seeing.

This isn't what I wanted.

I'm not someone else, I just look that way.

Something answered. No jolly man. Nor obese, red-suited angel. Just a voice in her ears that seemed to come from everywhere. The loudest of whispers. You've always been someone else. It's up to you to become her.

This is what you asked for whether or not you actually want it. You're just sad that you've finally gotten it.

You're beautiful the voice said. She looked and she was. You're beautiful when you look in the mirror it echoed. You can see this. Why does anyone else need to?

It's what you asked for. You never specified who should see it.

She was occupied with to solving the maze on her thumb. Checking the mannequins for belly buttons. Sealing the envelopes with nothing inside them. Trying to be like everyone else. Thinking there's still time enough to be that person.

The maze of her thumbs took her all over the small universe of her hand. Little touches and big ones. Words never written on paper. The solution was obvious, though hardly welcome. Be content where you are. No need to know its origins. Don't go looking for exits you'd rather not find.

Such is the nature of listening. That we hear things we'd rather not have. The artist too high to stop the brush. From telling his secret. The man explaining himself to no one. I'm not that high because if I was I wouldn't be able to see the bottom.

There he was like a rooster. Shattering all that darkness. Microscopic megaphones of skin shouting heavens in our ears. The buttons falling off of shirts we've worn too long. And me, not caring what shows in their abesnse.

I'm not dixie you fucking moron!

Issues anyone? What the fuck is wrong with you? I think dixie is hiding from you for a reason. Cause you're a crazy motherfucker.

Go - keep searching for dixie and leave me the fuck alone.

I hope for her sake you never find her.

Sleep me. Solvent skin smoldering with a calamity of touch. Far away and staring at little gods in their torn dungarees. The street outside her window. Broken crayons in crippled hands molest the paper. Memory is the cruelest kind of love anyone can give.

The streets are a secret she's never told. Pathways converge in rabid jousts. Take the door off. No lock can keep me out. This numbness. It makes me strong. It makes me weak. The darkness spreads its leg to give birth to another dream. But I'm still here. Awake. And searching for my dignity.

Trace me. Like a corpse. I'm almost there.

Wearing each other in this cold remorse. The anarchy of a thousand orgasms invading my judgement. Leeches. Sucking. Vigilante lovers build their forts under my skin. These little wars keep us busy.

These little wars become big ones waiting on a winner. Snakes without venom still biting.

Find me in doses of infinity. Discarded panties hung like curtains over our eyes. The smell of rainbow we can't see penetrating skin we never knew we had. Find me in an ed suicide. Some stranger you almost met vanishing. Leaving you burdened with their life . Silver spoons dishing cold soup. Scorpions being watches buy desert men. Ready to be stung. Ready yo be sink. If only to recover from the poison.

The life written in permanent ink. The skin all colored in. Her touch a rainbow after the drizzle of her kiss.

Find me in someone else. A lie I'll never admit to telling. An infinity of skin. A million colors all looking for the source.

Tell her. Before she stops listening.

Turn her over. To find abundant stereotypes of woman. Her vagina the toll booth on a long and winding road. Turn her over. She's not such riddle. Pieces look for each other when you turn way. The riddle is if they will stay together long enough to become something.

The dragon breathes fire. The little ant carries the coals. We are small. Like the universe is. We are large. Like our thoughts. The ladder whispers it's truths to climbers. The same truths is shouts to those fallen.

We're not trying to be found.

We're solving the riddle from the inside. With each new question and old heaven comes apart. So we make new ones, but they are too young to know what we want.

Turn her over. Dissect the dress until animal is all that's left of her. Turn her over. Fuck her from behind. So she can't put a face on the villain. What would be the fun in that.

Turn her over. Coax the riddle out of its hiding place. Like every solution it loses something going from the science to the skin. Turn her over. She doesn't look that different without her face.

Cold. The mud sweats. Heavy with the weight of her skin. Dark with all she's kept inside it. The fairy princess flaps her wings to diffuse the storm under her dress. The wicked witch waves her wand to summon the charmings. From the conveyor belt they tumble. Their smiles not quite set. Some ship with horses. Others with only glass slippers. All are backed by a whine if you want to guarantee.

Oh cinderella! What have you done driving your pumpkins and wearing mirrors on your feet. What did you want to find. In those whore parades of the rich. And what of it have you? Escape. Blame. Drugs. Martyrdom. The claws under your skin slowly poking out. Shy portraits of faces you only wear alone. Don't you know the only evil is the kind we bring upon ourselves. Don't you wish you had wished for something else.

The dish finally catches the spoon. But it doesn't work out. The cow finally jumps over the moon, but no one believes her. the story's too late. The child has already fallen asleep.

Happily ever after is too sober.

All these fairy tales are useless to me.

Bragging excuses bored with themselves. Becoming me. Ginger snaps. Radishes. Bitter. Tart. And sweet indiscretions know me better than I should've allowed. Casual lovers make the best enemies when a villain is needed to negotiate the questionable contracts with the past. present. future. All of it colliding. A kaleidoscope of moments. Vigorously swallowed up by and shit out of each other. Nothing. Patterns absorbed.

No one.

Details absolved. Time gnaws. Dull teeth turn the meat to dust. Remove the skin. The muscle smiles. Eat me. I am strong and you need me. The cells dance a sub molecular samba. I wish I could see, but I can only feel them forgetting where they are. If they are close enough to each other to hold us together.

Her mood is euphoric melancholy. Her future is blank. Her excuses are gone. Her skin is missing, but the meat is still uneaten.

She was wearing the mattress one person at a time. Like a borrowed lollipop. A giant condom. Herself what was left in it after everything else had been done.

Glad it was over.

She was undressing. As carefully as she could with such an audience. The future frowning. Disappointed at what she'd done to it. The past apologizing for what it had let her become. She was swimming. In little pills she liked to call coping skills. She was drowning in trying to live. And she was doing it so well.

She was watching television. Imagining herself in people that she had never been. Manipulating time like some vindictive addict. More Kirk than Picard as she told history to go fuck itself.

Turning it all. Every lie to her advantage. Erasing the moment with a dose of something stronger. Or at least a better friend.

People. Like shoe laces coming apart. She could bend down and remake the knot, but it would only come undone again. She could try to reason with the jesters. But it's their job to make a joke of us.

her broken nylons were restless. as she argued with the slope of her knees. it's too difficult to get in. too easy to get out. all her panties were red. all her lovers were judges.

guilty.

of wanting to be someone else.

Counting the sunsets. Peeling their clothes off like candy wrappers. They melt in your mouth. And in your hand. Disappearing into folds on skin. The treaty of touch resolving the wars I've lost. The breath of gods tired of listening to what we can't do for ourselves. No more angels for us.

She opens the window. Inviting the night to explain. Why she's still the same girl after so many years of playing the woman.

Counting the itches in her underwear she can calculate how much sex would be required to stifle her depression. Gain herself control anew. How slowly the flower dies after being plucked. The thumb of the clitoris writing stories in places no one can see. Touch like a stone sending ripples throughout so much stillness. The skin of the water cut. Letting everything in.

Counting her emails she can estimate the last time she had sex. And with reasonable accuracy if she ever will again.

Picking seashells. Eyes of ocean. Fingers of sand. Sorting fragments into reasonable bargains. She was ready to pick the apple, but it picked her instead. This garden is too small anyway. I'd rather be unhappy. I'd rather hate myself than them.

Counting the years between she brainstorms a new protagonist. All those other stories done with her. She searches her thoughts for fresh heroes and villains. Knowing every story requires both. And that sometimes they are the same person.

She asked him which he wanted to be. And he answered her.

I'd rather be the hero, but I can be the villain if that's what you want.

Stalwart distractions beat the dead horse. Stoic stairs ignore her footsteps. Planting flowers on the graves like nail polish on runs in pantyhose. Saving what can't be saved.

He said pretty girl let me touch your hair because kisses tickle the same in my throat. The headlights laughing while the engine made jokes about her faulty brakes. She didn't care. Sometimes the food is all we want. Taste is irrelevant when you're that hungry.

Barbies dolls tried to teach her, but she was too busy with their careers. Dreamhouses tried to warn her, but she was distracted by plans for a hot tub.

Maybe life is fair and we're the ones who spoil the game. Climbing up those chutes and falling down those ladders. Arrogant enough to think we know the rules.