Potent Variables

wounded monsters. don't bleed. but the pain is there.

the shuffle. the shudder. blood's daily marathon. stretches and tugs. at the ogres asleep in those distant corridors. so weak. so tender. more frail than any victim. since this puzzle fell apart.

skin's thick cape. flutters in the wind. one last desperate leaf at the beginning of winter. still feigns that its tree isn't dead.

fragments. puzzle pieces play their images. whispers of when. rhythms so alike how. the whole once echoed. frantic and diligent. soft eyes drawing their stalwart maps. in the dense murk of missing skins.

you are here. all the signs confess. where you always are. where you've never been. the difference between them only a fraction of a kiss.

he's fragile now. and so far away. an ocean. in the distance. blindly crashing into the stern arms of the darkness. each repetition breaking him into smaller shards.

she scratches. still filling in. the outline deeply embedded in her. chasing the colors that made it real once. but they run so much faster than she can.

slipping inside those old dresses. she finds comfort in the stiff hem of the paradox.

that when she was at her smallest they barely fit.