The skirt imitating her thighs feigned inclusion. Int the kaleidoscope that was her crotch. She sat. Fingers poised over oblivion. The dagger pre-painted with blood. A stopwatch in every breath. Her demeanor always a gentle apocalypse where even zombies fear to tread.

She took the window by surprise. As her lungs filled it with fog. Would it rain again. Would the glass recall. The errant tears of absentee gods. And empty angels tethered to deflated flesh.

The mortar between the bricks was still soft when he began scaling the wall. The other side could not wait a minute longer to be seen. The wall had failed him. He still saw. Or otherwise imagined he did. Prettier whores. Bigger houses. Faster cars.

The end of the world came quietly. Precarious dominoes gently fell. In a devastating succession. It had always been dark. But light is a relative. Of how much you expect.

Armageddon aside, she thought, the world overrated. So many corpses in her graveyard still to be buried. Eulogies are for the hopeful. Funerals for the distraught. Love is for the beautiful. And sex is for the lost.

Digging up her dolls. Dirty feet and knotty legs. Gnawing on the folds in her cunt. She had no trouble. Finding boxes. In which to bury the remains. Of calculated errors. And flattened nightgowns. On soiled beds.

How it happened. How it never did. She drew the lines in pencil. Forgiving the flesh that had colored in. The empty outlines on her face. Together. They went back. To before it had occurred. Everything undone. Still transpiring in their heads. Chainsaws in her wrists. Fail safes in their hearts. Still running. Generating options. For the worlds they'd rendered. And the worlds they'd lost.

Impotent wizards. Flaunting empty curtains. To cowards. Idiots. And whores.

There's no place like home. Because home doesn't exist.

Just a bonfire of moments. Rattling the math. Deaf children. Looking in on the windows of the rich. Just cripples climbing their imaginary ladders. The fail safe still running as we stutter through the past.

Born again. To strange new mothers. Dry wombs. And no blood. Just a few weeks in the future. Old men and infants.

He caught the bullet in his hand. His super powers his patience. He counted the pimples on the mountain. Confident that volcano would erupt.

It was only on his death bed that he finally turned off the fail safe. And dared the future to come.

Maybe in a different utopia. One slightly less hectic than this. Perhaps in a world with less red on her lips. Or more suicides in her tampons. The scratches on the mirror. Juggle witless villains. As dead starts tumble into her lap.

The when comes later. The now is a failed trust. A contract between bone and flesh. That leaves me bankrupt. I stumble on the instructions of fearless time travellers. I stutter with the words from my past.

The graves rise. Stalling the engines. On a future of lovers that remember only dying suns. As the cloud accepted too much rain. And the axis drifted. To let the universe decide. How lost we would become.

Little bits of broken crayon. Bargaining with the colors that remain. When no one's looking. The grass seeds growing on the corpses. Ugly pajamas labor with the physics of how.

I can see this well in so much darkness.

The singularity confides in us. The black hole puts our lives inside parenthesis. The machine struggles to keep up. With the frantic worries of the flesh. It happens too fast. I love and hate in just a few breaths. And then they are gone. Broken egg shells. Stiff yolks to drown in. The singularity fractures half-hearted gods. Diminishes all demons. The timeline swallows us whole. The present is something yet to be. The past is mutable. An equation. Divisible by our indiscretions. I've been counting all this while. Trying to keep track. Of all the things that haven't happened yet.

I'm left with only numbers. No faces to corroborate. The black holes that I know made us forget each other.

I find the compass in the drug. And navigate accordingly. Pretending I know where I am going. The hero of my story missing in action. I color the outlines darker on the lines around her lips. Because when she speaks it's as if the words are happening.

Negotiating with the time line. Small offerings of blood and sweat. Appease the bowels of the catalyst. The paperclip is undone. The lock is picked. The vault is open. The cavity is empty. Always has been.

The future drags us back. Sip by sip. The tin man stays stupid. The lion remains a coward. We give up on wizards. And begin to wish for home.

Permanent discrepancies. Poster the edges of the gourd. As she carves it. Making faces where there once were none. Hollowing out the shell. Filling it up with an absent light. That only shows the shadows.

The secondary machine becomes more important than the first. I save them all. In fragments. I always come back. No matter how long I've been gone. The numbers lie to me again. Rabbit's bones in my lucky charms. Plastic army men in my democracy. I remember the pollination. The lies buzzing in my brain as the coffins closed. I see the desert.

The dog barks. Far away. But it's grief is close. The leash cinches around its throat. Children on the last of their dreams. Awaken. To a world with little sympathy. I bite into the apple. Tasted by the Earth. Looking for villains in all the wrong places.

A barren landscape. Beautiful. And all the things that made it ugly. I check my nose. This Pinocchio is uncertain. Of when she is lying. The dwarfs lay me sleeping on a bed of stone. But the poison is better than the prince.

I walk. On new legs. I fall. On unfamiliar crutches.

The notion wanders back and forth. On brittle crutches about to break. Every night in doses. Still haven't cured myself of this life. The mind is a pendulum. Swinging back and forth in endless repetition. I'm alive. I'm dead. I love. I hate. I need. I reject.

Each hour tolls true to the count. Ghosts undress. To awaken our dirty attics. With clouds of dust. And spoil our beds with the forgotten contents of musty boxes. The devil may care, but probably not. The window may lock, but the glass is still transparent.

Some say suicide. Others say addiction. I say logic.

The cloud pushes onward through the sky. As the thunder whispers from too far away. She readies herself for the coming storm by poking holes in all her buckets. And setting the clock on her time machine back a few suicides.

Death. Well, that's something the body just doesn't understand. The mind tries to convince it. But these stubborn veins refuse to carry the message. I cut the flower from the stem and wait. True, the petals wither, but it doesn't forget.

We briefly skip ahead. To some time in the future. Everything's different. Except this. The time machine is still running. I'm still inside it. And all those me's it's created are out there. Stranded between the world they've come from and the one where none of this happened. The past sneaks up on me. The future forgets.

I busy myself look for the cure. Knowing there is none.

She puzzled after the pillows as the bed coughed a few breaths. The bunny under its wheels not quite so lucky as the skin above. She never thought out loud until she started asking him why. The glass stopped making sounds. When it cracked. Claws in wet cement. Drawing blood of another kind. Monsters built undoing their scientists.

Following the worm. As it struggled its way through the density of the wood. Morals came to mind. Of small things. That feed on the big ones. Arrogant perches where the wise owl pretends to decide. Answers to all the questions he's long ago ignored.

The fallow on the torch causes it to burn that much brighter. The graves on the hill hurry us to dig quicker. But the tombstones slow us down.

She slept. For as long as any girl had ever slept. In the wrinkles in god's fists. Dreaming of mundane things. As her world came to an abrupt end. She said, well, strangers are lovers you've scorned. And friends. You keep looking. Let me know when you find some.

Each lilting step she took creaked the stairway. The harder she tried to be silent, the louder her footsteps. But evenso, she was determined to reach the cellar. To find what secrets those dank boxes kept. Of little girls kneeling in torn underwear. And women. In bathtubs boiling red.

She listened. For longer than any addict ever did. To the warnings. The quiet sirens turning rainbows in the bruises on her knees. As she fell down. And got up again. Ad nauseum. She tested their love with needles and with thread. Repairing the torn edges and cutting the seams.

Her lips worried closer to the kiss. The thinner the fabric stretched. She slept. close enough to gods or devils. She dare not guess which. She dreamt herself small enough. That everything was far away.

Sometimes it's that easy. The folds of her skin. Portioning the diseases. The particles in their frantic collisions. The physics like dead bulbs in crowded closets.

The hidden wake me up. Much too late. Stitches. In frail blankets. Attempt to fool the cold.

Dancing ironies on broken toes. She could crawl. Rage on the nothing. All the very things she keeps from sun.

The drugs try to find her. She finds them first. Silent amputations turn empty torsos into gods and kings. Found. Axes rupture the belly of the wolf. To expose children born dead.

The doorstep under her lantern. Casting shadows on the stairs. As they are escorted down. To where ragged gardens grin. Where the apple that was first bitten still waits.

Concrete feathers adorn her eyelids. As she blinks in my direction. The serpent on her doorstep seems an obvious cliche. As I reach to feel a heartbeat staggering beneath her breast.

It's just a metaphor she said. I'm not scared. Of sleeping in the warm beds of bears. Nor of being found that way. Eyes closed. Claws open. The porridge still warm in my belly. As I become their meal.

The trench coat on her thighs. Acting the detective. As I sneak inside. Bored with murder. Bored with victims. Ready to be punished for my crimes.

She whispers from inside her shell that it's not so simple. Gods arrive in variables. A series of numbers pretending to reveal. Places we've already been. She laughs. Kites in the wind. Once attached to the broken string on her wrist.

She plays checkers with the demons. A simple game of strategic movements. She plays chess with god. She can't beat him, but she never loses.

Write me a letter. The way you do. Maybe more. Where words are formed. Then sentences. But neither of us understands what is said.

The candle on the cake anticipating a fruitless wish. As the icing softens above the confection of her skin.

Wishes. The universe saves them up. For just such an occasion. When the future is too close to the present. Melting ice cream on the sidewalk. As the equations insist. What I know is not what I think it is. Parallels they whisper as the mosquitoes die against the screen.

The monster under my bed moves to touch the pillow. Swift claws shred the dreams I would've had. The crayon against her knees. Captures her surrender. As she bends over to adjust the settings. On the portal.

The more I leave this world the better.

I began trying to educate this darkness. Now I can only learn from it.

Nothing asks. Nothing tells. The long short stories stuck in her throat. She brushes the songs from her thighs. The hollow between her legs remains. She listens harder. The time lines evident. As she circles back to stop herself from asking him again.

The new comes in blunt guillotines. Their heads stare at their barren necks. How long does it take. To know you're dead. How hungry is the flesh that this fantasy still persists.

The child with her basket drawn close to the wolf. The trip through the woods not remembering her footprints. As she cinches the tourniquets on her time machine. Prepared to loose the legs to save the skeleton.

It's my birthday she says to no one in particular. I'm old enough that I can't see the future anymore. It used to change. When I'd stare out the window. I could see them. Strangers flowing like blood. Now there is nothing.

Idling engines pouring their pennies into deaf fountains. Disappearing shadows as the doorway closes. I always thought I could never be this old. I always assumed the physics would see me through.

That all this glass under my skin meant the window would stay open.

She waits for the alarm. Anticipating the fright. Eager for the chaos. Of anxious time machines. Failed by the constant. Accused by the universe of obvious treasons.

The alarm goes off. The sun bleats through the blinds. Reminding us which world we're in, but not indicating which is ours. Heavy pots of water. Come to a boil on open flames. The world is as small as it is large. And the spaces between it are where I find myself lost.

Each page comes into focus. The science surrenders to the meagers of flesh. I wake up. Unable to remember where I have been. But incapable of forgetting that I was there.

She warns me about the wizard. Thin curtains on the weakest of lies. I pick at those yellow bricks. Until my nails are bloody and all the monster are afraid to attack.

She wakes up without me there. Though I can see her from where I am. Some stranger drowning in the depths of my skin. Tiny sailboats struggling against the sand. As she counts the footprints.

She went back too far. The time machine was gone. She went back to find. What had forogtten her.

Her skin like a parachute opening up. Against the force of the fall.

Little girls in their beds. Stories told not withstanding. The action continues. The movie in her head muted. The vampire seduces the witch. A bite. A spell. A broomstick. No love for the human. The dialogue is improved, but no one listens. When the attic talks of ghosts.

The day confessed. Broken turnstiles. As the flood of skin proceeded. To empty trains. Stubbornly going nowhere. She tested its fangs as the rabbit sneered. What race she asked. Unclear on the destination.

Wearing her surrender in loose belts on heavy engines. The kinetics whine as she does nothing. Measuring the distance. souvenirs. What years are left after the time machine breaks down. Stranded. She pulls the integer from the condom and fits it into the math.

Division always comes unexpected. I can never remember. When I started counting.

It's beginning. The fetid orbit of damsels distressed. Failed constants on their impervious arc across empty atmospheres. A million fingers grabbing. Each one with a thousand paper cuts. The blade on my time machine poking holes in our flesh.

It's beginning to be over. It's a long process. Burnt dolls struggle into their torn dresses. Giant grins wear the weight of so much nothing. Paper jewels hang heavy on her chest. She writes to the future in brief letters to herself in the third person. Where she confused the tense and tries to explain why she's sorry for what hasn't happened yet. She tries not blame the science embedded in her cells. But it's hard to hide things from yourself.

Occasionally she'll receive a letter in return. she marvels at herself. The stranger who has taken her place. She's inclined to write about the beginning. And compelled to notice the end. She assumes they must converge some place where internal time machines cannot penetrate. She looks at herself years from now and wonders if it's true. That the doll can be still be mended after the all the stuffing has been removed.

Some Sunday when I'm young again. I'll write you to find out how you have been. Frenzied lips and dutiful skin change the choices. Not the decision. If only I had that choice.

Fresh boogie men try on their tuxedos. As I listen to the music dim. They'll be no dance. Just Cinderella's wet with pumpkin. And the trail the carriage forgets. Crippled time machines trying too hard. To convince the math.

Maybe we grow together. Maybe we just grow old. Pleated skirts on dead pussies. Tease the volcano. But it never erupts. The ladder tries to hard. And she falls from it. Closer to heaven. Further from the top. It doesn't make sense. There's nowhere to go. But a million places I should've been.

The alarm on then wake me up. But I stay in bed. I gather my journal. The artifacts that make it obvious. How lost we've become.

We broke the window together. But the blame was not split. We talked about heaven, but planned on something less. Time dug its claws deeper into the opening. the blood paused for a moment. To relieve the bandage. But they were all used up.

Some Sunday. When we're young again. I'll kiss your cheek and say that we learned something.

The connection folds softly into the ether. The orbit. On distant bodies. Inherits the gravity of any incoming object.

It's heavy she says. Though there is very little in her fist.

I've heard her. In her sleep. Negotiating with the devil. Telling the wolf where her grandmother's bed is. Coming up on that house in the woods. With nothing to offer. Except empty baskets and dead things.

I tried on the disease and it fit so well. I wanted more of it.

The island in the distance. Where I once was. Where I've never been. The scale in her chest weighing matchsticks. The yardstick in her skin. Measuring how far we've come. Let's go back. Let's pretend we never left. Small worlds that let us choose. How we can manipulate them. Tiny boxes. Broken crowns. Negotiating their princes.

Was once. Not to be again. The curdle of atoms as time tells. The stories I never have. She scribbles on her pages. Numbers frail with sound. To imagine that it once was found. This lost that I covet. Still alive in the extremities of dying mechanics.

The island in her cunt wrestling with the waters for a better perspective. The now in her fist beating the math. As the numbers come undone. The edge. She says. Is near enough. I can go there. And I can leave it.

I am then. I am now. I am when. The words inflate my veins with all the lies I've always believed in. The truth doesn't care. At all. If I ever should find it.

I strap myself up against the motor. The years humming in vague obsession. The machine takes me apart. Until everything is as small as I am. I draw the curtains closed and ask the glass to break.

The time machine is obvious. But its controls are hard to find.

Broken bricks. She wades through her life the same. The crags. Bleeding toes. And fallen arches. Obvious symptoms of a more elaborate disease. Everything fits. As it should. All those monsters with their laminate name tags. Charming the rain away from the windows. I look out. And see several equations. None of which I'm able to solve.

Pretty panties resting on her shins. Moist watercolors on the canvas of vagina. Love happens in stiff stabs. The razor in the feathers. The girl in her gown. Waiting for the next song. when everyone has already danced.

Coaxing the physics. As she must. Certain her addition is not enough. Counting clouds. Too close. As the sky comes closer. She reaches. To rearranged their graves. And finds herself among the dead.

Arguing with glass. As the reflection proposed. That the future was as far away as it had always been. And the past still to close..

She took her medicine as any devoted addict would. The prostitute in her cereal. Grinding the oats. She listened to the atoms as they collided. In stretches of plastic and ready skin.

She fed the wolf. Eager for the villains to give her an excuse. For this mess.

The acrobat on her trapeze. The time machine on its last legs. Filling the future with all dead things that ask these questions.

He would wear me like this. All pimples and chancre sores. To reinforce the aristocracy of appearance. I would let him. Because it seemed to be true. That beauty is all that separates. The alcoholics and the poets. A thin membrane between cunt and cock shouts its stories at the deaf.

Sure. I would try it on. The luster and allure of dying animals. Awakening the Hunter in me. The partition. At her ass. The sliding door. Closed. Then open. No one out there. Or in. Like a nervous comedian. Fiddling with the dials on this catastrophe.

I would lay down. Pretending I had what I wanted. The future taunting in stiff jabs. As the outline colored in. The flesh the mortar. The moment the bricks, Building bigger walls around these obvious prisons.

He would wear me. And I would let him. Those candy houses temptation too much. We'd negotiate with the witch. With dull ice skates. Struggle over the surface. About children warm in the wolf's belly. Not to eager to be released.

I couldn't tell you the moral of this story. But I suspect it's there somehow.

Woke up and it was September again. The leaves beginning to cough. Shy as the buttons are. On these ominous devices. The future comes. Sure enough as the past vanishes. So why. Why do I remember. All these things that I shouldn't. And what god is there to blame. For these portals.

She asked me to let her sleep. And I did. On the condition that she would wake up when the need had subsided. Shallow wading pools. Thick with piss. To entertain the ghosts afraid to swim. Too far from the shore. For us to reach.

Lonely buoys. Spill their cement. Transactions of skin. Pay for little. Take too much on credit.

Closed my eyes to search for November. Winters lost, but not forgotten. Eliminate the weak. Leaving the strong to bury them.

I let her sleep. hoping she'd not wake up. There is killing yourself and there is only wishing you did. I could explain the difference. But there aren't many. And in this situation there are even less.

I could trace the path. From the tear in my panties to the place where men begin. But I think it's asking too much. To want the beast to feel. More than skin. I could ask the lion a thousand times not to hunt. but I'd be better served simply killing it.