We wait forever for the rain to stop. It doesn't. Dull needles inject the medicine. To make us sicker. She argues with the clouds. Imagining heaven can hear her. Insisting that the echo continues.

Like the highway retains the roar of life. As they go. Wherever it is they're going. Chasing the wounds stubborn skin has confessed.

Waiting for the rain to cease. Convinced it never will. Her fingers like a river. Overflowing.

There is truth in this duplicitous flesh. But like the rain that's always falling.

Be patient.

Eventually you'll catch it.

A series of circumstances. Pieces of broken glass in her throat. As the words bleed from her lips. In matter splintered. In Schrodinger's. Both alive and dead inside these lonely boxes.

A universe. A crease in the hairs on a god's lips. The rain in the street. Teasing tenative footsteps. The thunder in whispers. The clouds in screams.

Choices. In a series of blizzards. I watch the snow fall. I wonder. Does it know how heavy it is. The sky makes it small. Our eyes make it gigantic.

A circumstance. An atom. A universe. A hair. Touching her cheek. Certain that it was broken solely to perform this task.

The weather interrupts the rain that's always falling. Why offer me darkness when I cannot sleep. Why let the sun shine when I cannot see.

Closer now, she says we are weak enough to understand. What we have to give. What can be given us. The outline. The thick black. Waits for a color. An interruption. To distract from its uselessness.

The weather pushes its feces nearer to my bed. I slither through the shit. Just to find a mania worth indulging. The world is small. I can see it all from my little stare. The world is gigantic. A man. A mountain. A boulder. Always pushing.

But the window. The window is what they want. Panes of glass like beads of sweat. Curling down guilty necks. The infection swelling beneath the skin. Broken puppets. Falling down on an empty stage. The audience only interrupting your humiliation.

It rains. Of course it does. But now no one sees the flood. The sun shines sometimes. Of course it will. But no one is grateful.

Life happens. The weather interrupts. And we wait for the lights to come back on.

We cast our threads. Hoping the needles will remember.

Working with the numbers. Fiddling with the scars. Telling their stories in bits of when. The fire had not reached the exit.

We like to say that the world is ours. But then it swallows us and we don't know who's at fault. We like to imagine that the world waits on our every decision. When we get what we want we say it's god's will. When we don't we blame the devil.

Working the numbers. Toying with the abstract. She finally decided it was close enough. Tiny knives flirting with empty dresses. Lonely people pretending they were invited.

Either way the party goes on. Doling out glass dolls like dirty pennies. Shoving their flesh into empty vending machines. Stubborn children. Peddling their lies. To any men still fool enough to listen.

I couldn't wake her. She said we were drowning. But here I am. Still breathing.

A porch light in the rain. A stray. Accusing. My savior.

The decimal in abstract conditions. Re purposes the number to its agenda. The decimal pierces the core of the sum. Kites without strings. Trundling easily through the wind.

Finding that glorious nothing. In blotted tears and missing skin.

Companions and corks. In half drunk bottles of Chardonnay. Her lips stumbling through the shadows. Like broken crayons.

She closes her eyes and the wine escapes. The world is washed away. She takes up her debate with the arithmetic. But numbers are hardly enough to explain. What is gone. What years have misplaced.

Decisions drown in a wallow of flesh. I don't know what they've said. Don't want to know. About the meager depositions of whores and their pimps.

The world turns brown every chance it has. Wilts and shrinks to a sunless stance. No matter how much the rain falls. There is still drought.

She sleeps close to the window. Thinking it will wake her up. When there is sun again. She sleeps. The world buzzing between her legs. She wakes up in a pool of red.

The demon always wears white. The liar always screams the loudest. It's selfish. But we must blame the pig when it's eaten by the wolf. It's doesn't make sense. But. We keep sending children into the woods.

What do you say? Whom do you hear? When the voices fall away and there are only their shadows left in your head. I try on the cape. I even fly for a little while. Stumbling through the air in nervous hiccups. Then hit the dirt. Like a dog with its leash wrapped around its neck.

Wait for gravity. It eventually catches up. To flightless scavengers and fugitive time machines. So do the math. Toy with the consequence. Of the power contained within such an act. Determine the variables. And abide by their callous verdicts.

I'm not there. Nor will I ever be again. But I never really left that place. I took it with me. And now, something outside of me, wants it back.

Stones in her hand. Triggers to see that mirrors do not lie. The ocean in its redundant dance. Still courting the wind. Millenia later these stones in her hand are still their only children.

Flesh has its obvious advantages. And some others that are more difficult to see.

Broken is quite a blessing. I am glass. I fracture. Because the world out there demands letting in. I am glass. You can see through me. If you're not too distracted by your own reflection.

She loses the cork. And the wine is spread. Sour grapes and drunken disciples pretend to know the weight. Of callous strangers. And failing virgins.

She's not ready.

Two stones in her hands. A world made of glass.

Perfection betrays the young. Reinforces the aging. How it was once such an easy question. Now I sit for hours and stare at it. A deaf child mouthing the words to disinterested passersby.

These strangers. The funny thing is. They make these forgotten places more familiar. As I grope in the darkness for another broken light switch.

We try. With big sticks. And heavy locks. Cutting the dolls from hefty stacks. Of paper we're afraid to touch. We drive until the road ends. U-turns take me back. The beginning is the end. Paper dresses close to the match. Only the fire knows how loud the siren is. While we burn.

Progress. In paper cuts.

The sun sets. I don't notice. It's dark again. The day is over. The champagne bottle waits for a reason to explode. The scale struggles to balance. While we stand on our tiptoes. Pretending we can see through the glass. Imagining those monsters in our hands. Ambitious dominoes. More than ready to fall.

The game obeys. The rules will bend. For stubborn strangers. The puzzle will assemble. All on its own. Gods in their dirty aprons. Waiting for the yeast to rise. The dough quivering under her stare. These closets. Like forgotten friends. Who remember too much.

I see her there. In her billowing sundress. An accusation. A pocket of light absorbed by the darkness. Small things. To covet. These small things. So much bigger than I remember.

The end comes in soft footsteps rather than heavy hammers. These grave titans. Their thumbs on our spines. Make us dance. Make us bow. Grace us with lives not ours to live.

The dead do remember. The color of the sky when. The paralyzed still see. The machines meant to keep them alive. Mercy comes in numbers. Justice is calculated in dollar signs.

I'm going to sleep she warns. Leave me until this is over. I'm not fighting. Let us die. Consume each other. Let the future find us. As the cannibals we've always been.

Let's not wait for the drug she begs. But I have to see the end. I've waited so long. I can wait a little longer.

How am I to sleep now? Gentle dungeons calm the slaves. Virtual prisons disarm the servants. Embrace the broken glass. Let it into your veins. I've breathed on this window for so many years. I owe to it to try to see.

Let's leave this god forsaken Eden together. There are plenty of apples out there that we've yet to bite.

Her dead flowers. Her broken roses. Play with the curtain. As she exits the stage. The audience. Is processed through their outrage. In careful doses. She tries on the needle. In obvious medications. She lets herself get worse to prove them wrong.

But no one notices.

She says the world as we know it is over. You can't win. They won't let you. That dream you've been fed is just that. A dream. Not real in any practical sense. She remembers once understanding the politics. If not agreeing. At leat condoning the wisdom.

But it works its way down. Not up. This toil. This servitude. It has only one direction.

She's not poor. She's not homeless. But it's obvious. They want everything. And they're determined. To take it.

Cold sheep shiver in the wool. The work. It flows through our fingers. Slips through. We have nothing. Everything is theirs. And we give it to them willingly. Vultures never hunger. Because there are always dead.

Waiting. Protesting. Meager victories. Obscure the machine. Peasants. Slaves. Victims. Of our own fear. Fear the dollar. Fear the god machine. Fear the greed that would inspire the riches we seek.

Selfish. Stubborn. Stupid. The cold comes and we shiver. Who to blame for the lack of heat. We can't purchase. We can't afford. The right to live.

Everything we once owned now belongs to them. Stolen. As we borrowed against the fraudulent dreams they promised.

Nowhere to go. No one to represent. Whore. Liars. Vultures. Tweak the system for their own benefit. Minor victories inspire complacency. Keep us quiet.

Our meaty carcasses continue to keep the fattest fed.

Turn the leaf brown. Suffer the sleep. That would lie to me. The ladder. At her window sill. Pulling on her hair. The cloudy dungeon. In which he keeps her. Surrendering to the sun.

The bad men. Written on her arm. The truth embedded in her scars. Telling stories again. About songs they yet to sing. Flowers reflected in the glass. Coaxing the window. To open.

Her discretion resembles the math. As her skin calculates the probability. Of finding the source. The roots pierce the soil. The flowers usurp the sunlight. While she pretend not to understand the balance between.

She sleeps on the edge of the bed. With her window open. Falling asleep dismissing the rumbles of the world. She carries it all in clenching arms. It's not that heavy. To tell these lies. It's not such a burden to give in. Let these roads decide how lost I am.

Breadcrumbs. And stalled motors. Drive the lost. Patience. And torn dolls. Illustrate the cause.

Wearing the hours around her neck. Like hundreds of miscarraiges. I don't know. I test the time machine. For more of us. The replica. The heavy sheet. That covers the open door.

She sleeps like a child. She wakes up like woman. The difference she says in purpose. The fractions. Still revising. Failing flesh. The motors. In the machine still humming. As she loses herself in it.

Not then. Or now. Or here with them. But someday. When all the buttons are pushed. And then is as weak as we are now. This will all make sense.

All these machines will be useless. And we will laugh. At the moments they once used to threaten us.

Barefoot despots. Tilling parasites. The controversy. In thinning subjugation's. Distilling life from foul corpses. The art of hatred. Moving the idle. Numbing the rest of us.

She counts backward from one billion. Each digit a stone. Breaking the surface tension. On too still waters. Frozen stairs. Betray the cellars without windows. Everything is down there. Nothing is.

Finding solace in the pause rather than the ritual. She counts. The missing doors. The empty attics. The wolves and the children. Coaxed by the fairy tale. Left to presume. Ambivalent footprints. On the way to when.

The math in hysterics. The ghosts in feeble patterns. Soft wood. And little houses. We wear under our skin. Loose stitches. Cull the blankets from soiled beds. She counts backward. From one billion. She pretends she is close. To one.

She is.

Closer than she knows.

Time sputters. Slit throats. Sift these lives through meaty sieves. Time vomits. Sick. With too many lives. Innocent and guilty of the crimes we commit. The rabbit pokes from its hat. But we see through its magic. The curtain stands between. The illusion and the belief.

This high pushes us too close to heaven. Too near to the devil's depths.

Wading through the floods. The fallen trees. Searching for light in interminable darkness. It is our power. We light the world and we shroud it in darkness.

These feeble machines will always fail us. Bone and skin. The sweet of flesh betrays spoiled prisoners. The cages we cannot see. How are we to escape them?

This ugly world is too beautiful to disdain. Even in my captivity. This weak ladder which promises the surface. How am I to trust it?

Time dies the same as we do. Sliced across the neck. Time lives that same as have. Wondering what is next.

We dug. For hours. Discouraged by the wind. Counting the cars. As the road gave up. We fought with the portals. As the future admitted. It didn't know.

Big masks. Little faces. The monsters in their cages. Learning the locks.

She tries the window. No one's there. She tries the door. There is no knob. She questions the fire, but it rages on.

The world is hostile. The road there more so. She tries them on. Choking neckties. Useless men. frozen in their tuxedos.

We are close enough. To admit. That the world doesn't listen. That these time machines we covet will betray us. That how it began will exceed the arithmetic. That insists we are getting close.

Overtures in dusk. The pallor of her skin. Not content to trust. The small eyes the world would offer. The machine on her wrists. Turning. Coldly burning the fuel. Of splitting stitches. The when. Proving otherwise. I was. Am not. Soldier on the plateau of if. This war was ours to end.

Turning the clock back. I see so much blood. The scabs pulling away from certain flesh. The monster charming the child. In candy words. And broken promises. The monster. Selling windows to the blind.

I see.

The fallen ladder. The door on her back. Coming open. Widows on the porch. Discussing dead husbands. Captains with their foot on the clutch. Letting them pass.

Limping ghosts use the open window as their crutch. I see. I don't. It's near. It's close. Nothing and everything. These blank spots in my skin. Following the scars. To the places I almost lived. The door is open. The house is empty. No one's home. The winter's over, but outside this window, the trees are still dead.

We're supposed to wake up, but we don't. Face in the glass pretends to know. Where we're going. Where we might be. Nowhere. No place. Healing bones and missing flesh throw their parties for the dead. Crutches walk on us. The words seep out. As she undresses. Auctioning her open windows for one more chance to see. What's out there. What's not. The void. The content. The faces. Stranded in the broken glass.

The window in my skin. A zipper coming undone. The world reflected. Shattering with it. As the stones hit. Little holes at first. Then big ones. Let the cold find us. Making it impossible to see. Beyond the pieces.

Content prisoners worship the walls. Keeping them in. Keeping the world from finding them.

It's bland. This blade. Constantly stabbing. I bleed. The blood dries. And we start the cycle again. Scarves around her neck telling the time machine when to stop. Little rips in pantyhose creeping up.

The hours arrive in bottled passions. Frustrated stupors mixing with seldom and gin. She measures the moon by its distant from darkness. She weighs the truth by its empty wrappers.

Pencilled in maps and crayoned blouses. Dress up the world in places to visit. A time line of feathers disperse through the wind. While she imagines what the button would've looked like had it never been pressed.

The diamonds in the sky seem small from this far away. They're no bigger close up a disembodied voice explains.

The earthquake doesn't happen. It always there but I only feel it sometimes. The disaster is not sudden. I just ignore it for as long as I can. Hot water on the stove. Little packets of dead leaves waiting. For the pain to bring them back to life.

We swallow. As if all these small things belong to us. We take. Assuming it is our right. To consume the leaves we can pick. To eat the animals we can tame. To run the world as we see fit.

True. The world is ours to take. But what will we do once we've used it up.

She fills her nights composing manic fairy tales. She clutters her gallows with anemic protagonists. Half villain. Half hero. Not remotely whole.

Telling her stories in jagged truths and fetid opinions. Chasing the truth away in sticky zippers.

Working with the clones. On random identities. The astronaut between her legs suffocating. Too close to the sun.

Tripping on the steps. Numbers. Like atom bombs. Taking us back to zero again. I'm not real. I'm just the ghost of a girl. Who once visited your island. And now cannot find a way to leave.

Fussing with the levers. The buttons. The throttle stuck in first gear. The hours explore. Feeble strangers. Across dimensions. The dream is had. I want to wake up, but I can't.

It's yesterday she yells. Wake up. Do it over before the math remembers. I'm only a fraction. Pull up. Hard. Brace yourself. The dead have not landing gear.

Choice comes in many facets. Choosing. As it were. To be alone. To be touched. By anything you had hoped might remember. Solving the puzzles as the logic comes. In hysterical outbursts. Of empty apartments. And leaky roofs.

Lazy friends. And entitled men. Bored with the cycles of menstruation.

Choices she says are only an illusion. We've already decided. To be loved. Or to wish that we had been. To be poets or mothers. Or lesbians.

A broken world. Full of broken people. This hope that remains. Is my only weakness.

I wake up in the dark and she wants to turn on the light. I wake up in the dark and wonder how she she knows the difference.

We're sorry. We always are. These shitty wings don't work and these beans ain't magic. Rage protects. The hurt child that cowers inside us. Love is a difficult emotion to process. It tears down. It builds up. We're weak and we're strong because of it.

We're lost. We're defeated. Because. Ultimately that's what life does. Use us up. Bits of the machine to be processed. Teasing time lines give us pause. But little changes. We're sorry. Always. For soemthing. Someone. Braids in her hair. Reluctantly coming undone. Because the rubber bands have broken.

Mothers explaining to their children. Who they are. The cycle of defeat finding its rhythmn amongst ordinary people.

Was. Am. All we are. Clamoring to contain. The seeds of doubt. The pursuit of demons keeps me busy. While I wonder what you want. I know, but don't understand. How life is enough.

Telling stories. Climbing stairs. Looking in attics. For boxes that are no longer there.

There are walls. There are windows. I couldn't tell you the difference. Except that looking out. Seeing is its own prison. Looking out. To find. The world waking up again. Is another reminder. Of how little I have left in here.

We chase the sunsets. With eyes half closed. Blaming the sun for our blindness. When the fact is. We don't even look.

We dream. In rapid sequences. Hungry animals gnawing on the fences. That separate. The needy and the privileged. We tote with us. Those heavy bones. Searching for the focus. The window has exploited. Combing through the dead. For pieces of skin. Big enough to be our blankets. When life forgets the winter should end.

I sleep beside her. As if she might know me when we wake up. From this awful nightmare. That is us.

I don't say anything, but hope that she's listening. As I break the glass.

Together. We try on each of those demons. Together. We decide. It has already hurt enough.

We waste years pretending we can measure. Each other.

We don't say anything to each other. Though we speak every day. Dirty mirrors pretend our faces. Wet shoes. In place of our footsteps. Are all that remain.

I should've been gone. But I didn't leave. I should've been orange, but I'm still red. Teasing those same old scabs. The vanity of love not withstanding.

It was always too close. Broken egg shells in the nest. Useless yolks. Spilling down the tree.

It's winter. It's how dead things are distinguished. I pretend to live. To fool it. I pretend to live for many reasons.

The least of which is us.

Matadors on the edge of the red. Tease the horns of the beast. The red is the paradox. The thorns are the truth. The blood is evidence. That the victim is not who we think it is.

I don't wait for the snow to melt. I shovel it away. Assuming. Always assuming. The sun will not rise again.

I let them stick the bull. Provoking it. Because I want it to win. I see the red. The billows of bright satin as they entice the horns. A lazy suicide. A series of skin. A time machine without a pilot.

I give them the future. In little cuts and picked scabs. The blood lets us know. We're not too lost.

Dolls in their plastic shoes. Their fabricated dresses. Stages. Momentum. That jolt of skin. As it ponders the clock.

Every hour. Every minute. Accountable to the end.

This time machine. Steadfast in its decisions. Those dirty clothes still wearing her.

Often the remedy is simply more of the sickness. This flesh. Like little elevators through warring dimensions. Time pondering. The growing infection of love.

Couldn't we tell these same stories in the words we already have. Rather than stumbling through the time lines for poor substitutes. Couldn't we just wear. These torn t-shirts. And admit that naked is better. Blind dolls on the edge of the mountain. Their plastic breath in echoes of when. I could say where I was.

It was under my skin. Movement and sacrifice like a wall of broken mirrors. The leeches spoiled by my blood. Losing their grip.

I am nothing without them.

Dimensions determined. By the absence of when. We were ever that young. That naive. As to believe. We would tell these stories without hurting.

The monster. The caution signs. Proliferating. In idle cuts. The drug. More myself than I am. Torn belts on her heavy pants. Test the scorch marks for evidence. That she was. And should be remembered.

The arrogant fantasies of stubborn fists. Imagining the world in circles. Seeing it in boxes. The story is geometric. More sides than I can keep up with. The autumn plays against the summer. As the winter persists.

Wanting comes in thick bundles of wet firewood. The ghosts check off the items on their to do list. Because sometimes it's just over.

She stands in line for her patent. Writing down every end she can think of. Knowing they've all be used.

The stairway on its tiptoes. Straining to see. What is right in front of it. The world in colored blocks. Testing her confidence. As she examines the evidence. The wolf puffing. While she hides in her straw house. Bricks falling all around her. Catching none.

Her painted fingernails. Rife with counterbalance. The texture of the world. Like film and skin. The repulsive bleeding into the sweet.

Ripe fruits. Their meat speculating on the realities of us.

The taste of possibilities.

Cost. In stumbles of skin. Measuring. What isn't there. The island. The drowning. That takes forever. And only minutes. As she forget the world that has already forgotten.

Little poisons coax the sick. With promises of rescue. And worlds so different from the one we're stuck in. Teasing the monster. With blue ink and bluer riddles. Beating the answer. Into submission. While these weak gods fester in the marrow. on broken bones.

It's absolute. This deafening mystery. As the sun rises over the hills. In a caution of skin. It's crutches. Chaffing her breads as she struggles with absentee legs. It's crawling. Up to the edge of the island. The water fighting the urge to let us stay.

The sweetness if the ocean. The bitter of the waves.

It's only alone. Letting you know its there. In little itches and weak splints. For too many broken bones. The random villains and derelict heroes. In the sparsely populated kingdom of our hope.

The tornado in her fist tells her the darkness will be coming back. And she'll never know when. Or for how long.

Her stockings in their cylinders. Opening the locks. Islands undone. Along with the men that would want them. Tall trees and telephone poles. On a collision course. With the lights out she knows it's only loneliness. That makes the world this small.

Touching the glass with a delicate hand. As she collects. Each piece of window. And begins to solve the puzzle. Of which came first. Sight or blindness.

Funeral or corpses. Gods or men.

Not that she doesn't already know.