colors. like fever. the ink spreads away from the bottle. for it those walls are only a suggestion.

the candy house. the woodsman. needles to thread. orphans. temptation. abandon. patterns to follow. the story telling us.

once upon a time she laments.

the woods. the basket. the wolf. the curious percussion of surrender. plucking at shoulders.

she sinks deeper. into the soil. walking in place. footprints quickly become trenches.

she imagines herself liquid. but it's not the same. her confines are not external. they lie within.

naked dolls. tempting Satan.

the glass breaks. malevolent in its determination. to taste the sun. rotting wood. dusty curtains. battles won. in a war without victors.

the apple sours. turns brown. once it is bitten. but that first sweet taste of its poison remains inside her. ink under her skin. spreading. filling her with pictures. of a room without windows.

a place. where walls are still enough.

where the eyes are. watching pebbles shout at the ocean. when the chance is. listening to songs stab the wind. smaller and smaller. until even the rage is only a whisper.

casual encounters. intimate exchanges. ripe fruit. bruised skin.

life is a long conversation with a series of strangers. living is learning to listen to them.

all of her crutches are tender. willing to bend. each of her monsters have names. that she's given them. friends she knows must betray her.

the broken squares. as the stone falls. fits of distance beguile proportion. depth makes us small. measure proves us large. stubborn ghosts. slick with stolen skins. open their zippers. we could go inside. or we could let them come out to us. we could lay as we always have. stiff and rigid and insisting that we are more than these hours that pursue us. but either way we'd be liars.

the sway of trust. a pendulum. keeps counting. long after we've given up on. these hollow costumes.

black balloons. fragile strings. she tastes like yesterday. stiff with the arrogance of seldom lovers.

fingertips and eyelids. the molecules play their games. spurious wagers. that rarely have a winner.

the beginning. sweet candy houses. gentle axes. cut the hours from the bellies of wolves. the middle. dense forest. hungry witches. taste the children. the end. empty ovens. the stench of survival spoiling our desserts.

it's too long ago to still see that path. those breadcrumbs out of the forest. defer to the darkness.

the edge of the story is where it's sharpest. so we linger there. arguing with both ogres and princes. about the archetype of the victim. and the nature of the villain. sour with equations that mark both as irrelevant.

time is soft. much softer than science insists. it bends. it stretches. adapting its tumors to fill our holes.

we become our diseases. small infections flourish. we open our picnic baskets. ready to be eaten.

the chase subsides. stale cunts chew on withered men. the last leaf of autumn. the dying tree won't let go of.

every night the world ends. every morning it's born again. in shattered dolls. limbs everywhere. fingers. toes. heads. a flower petal caught in the first breath of winter.

so the chase continues. the dead beating their chests to feign a heart. the living sucking on that shattered glass.

life measures us in stabs of when. and the scabs that insinuate we knew. how far we'd go to get that close. to people we could never know.

flesh ripe. adamant ghosts. bones. a skeleton of matchsticks. friction solves the riddle. spark. ignite. burn.

the smallest corners. hold the biggest secrets.

it isn't living until it hurts.

context. it puts us in places we've never been. it sends us back. to where the light still struggles to penetrate. scratching outlines into dark chairs where we linger. meteing out colors we never imagined were there. a frenzy of mosquito bites. making us real when all i want to be is pretend.

the hole that i fell into was dug by people long before i came to exist.

tight pants. created a waterfall of flesh. wrinkled pockets. pushed against empty fists. the easy remedy of scorn seemed appropriate. rage was the ideal coping mechanism. it tends to make everyone seem small.

i wore what didn't fit. stretching the shadows to cover the wagers. of tiring pendulums. shrinking myself to compensate for the deficit. of so many years. like paper cuts. deep wounds that draw no blood.

the sour came in down pours. brief, but effective. sealed boxes. full of her future. and she had no idea which one to pick.

shallow cuts are most effective. hurt is measured in duration. it takes years before you know that you've been. by the time you find out, it's too late to blame anyone other than yourself.

i was so desperate for anything sweet. the beehive seemed a perfect place to reach in and grab.

but the honey was sour. and after so many years of numbness. i barely felt the stings.

smaller still. the aperture. the lens is if. the focus is how. the photograph taken is us. heavy with the onus of empty picture frames.

stagnant shades of grey. ripe with the poignant humanity only addiction dares to tell.

fraction of when. the weak equations of touch betray the labors of skin.

the stairs climb her. she bends to accommodate their footsteps. sharp angles. borrowed from soft lips. frail snakes hiss from under their stones. while they wait for their venom to replenish. the world is full of lies. but those that I've been told are the ones worth believing.

soft bricks suffer their walls. in stutters of regret. shame. touch. confession. the cracking mortar. of every great fortress. the earthquake whispers to her. that it's getting closer.

the innocent voodoo that silly bones will do. adrenalin and magic. pretend to change us. torn curtains and broken glass as the storm commits to its path.

time hits. like rain against closed windows. confident that it will find a way in.

there is so much rope. weights and measures toiling in the dormant of choices. the thick of lies. and the thin of truth. empty pens in the fists of corpses. withered paper darkened by their open graves.

If I could still stay awake to listen to the voices. And pretend that they come from the outside. The beautiful monsters that made love possible. The ugly heroes that took it all away.

the waiting. spoiled by caution. the unblinking eyelashes of dolls to wish upon. the fetid witchcraft of pleasure. that chased away the last of that dream.

When. As soon as this distant sheath of skin confesses to murder. And that dull blade inside it digs its way back into my flesh.

Living is violence. Life is a corruption of moments. One by one they take everything. A brutal and unrelenting rape. Constantly tearing. Digging at the small holes. Until the void becomes comfort.

I thought the hurt was world enough. Some wasting habit ample to annihilate. Papier mache skeletons. Drying slowly against the thin balloon of touch. Harder still against the arrogance of the hollow.

Confident in the poetry of the paradox. Of all that could not be because it already was.

Everything is nothing. Nothing was everything.

In it I heard. The whisper of a sheep amongst the roar of the wolves.

I'm at the bottom. Still falling.

With every angle I saw us. Refracted and bent. Moments spoiling for more than mere seconds. To find each other. A relentless gravity. Whispering in my ear. That I was getting closer.

In every way I could I wore the shame. The need inside like rotting wood. Dark and moist and crumbling with expectation.

I was a caterpillar. Spinning an urgent cocoon. Unaware that it had missed its moment. Dead inside a failed opportunity for transformation.

I'm full. Sick with the taste of strangers. Starved inside the infinity of my own skin. Grabbing. Clutching. Everything there is to hold. Owning nothing.

I put time into a box. A small gift for a seldom friend. And I waited for it to be received. Humbled by the slow arc of life's pendulum that would decide whether or not I would be remembered.

I was loud and small as we so often tend to be. Just weak enough to want to be condemned.

A face without lips. Stealing a kiss. A stare without eyes. Pretending to look. For what was never there. An impotent ghost. Haunted by its houses.

patterns. the wake of the seed. as drought ensues. angles make their marks in pliant skins. the geometry of sex is there are only parallels. no intersections. sharp corners that squeeze us too close. shapes confessing we don't fit.

fingers see much better than eyes. the weakness. in strokes of skin. jack rabbits kissing foxes running from huntsmen. thighs learn so much quicker than heads. the parody. of love. that uses us.

it's a commodity of flesh. that finances this living. just listen. disappear into the quiet fury of failing bridges.

there is freedom in that grave. the dead draw their maps. through our madness. alone. the journey through it is all we have.

it's magic. a dense grimoire of touch. that works its spells. wakes the dead. convinces the deaf that they can hear its music.

it was always there. we're just only now learning that we can dance to it.

the ocean wonders just how we found our way to the dirt. the thunder puzzles over the source of the rain. each of them a tiny hole in a very large boat.

wearing her monsters in desolate fevers. claws blame the blood for the red.

she's had her share of the wind. dim stairwells at the base of her skull. humming with the footsteps of dark places both above and below. empty elevators caught between inspiration and panic.

drawing her battles. on torn burlap. and fouled crutches. distant wars left on her pillow.

the chaos worries. a small victim. dwarfed by the crime committed against it. a lazy oblivion disguised as epiphany. the truth frets. a tiny fracture in the continuum of touch. choking out the flood. the enormity of nothing overwhelms the tiny instruments that we use to measure it.

the siren whispers to her. its lips moving. though the sound isn't there. she sees the words tumbling from its mouth. Bowling balls and shotgun shells. A long series of silent massacres. Like being young or growing old.

Her pencils betray her. She's drawn all that she is able to see. And though she knows there is more, she is tired of searching.

Skin is a treason. That gives away the secrets of these bones. A careless shrug of sex discards the skeleton. Leaves us smothered under piles of the empty flesh that remains.

Touch is a thief. That steals the joy of anticipation. Leaves us feral with wanting to consume what can never fill us.

Time is the tender edge of a very sharp blade. We stroke it. Looking for blood. Never realizing how close we are to getting what we want. The monster isn't ugly. It's beautiful and helpless. Like being young and growing old.

Soiled glass and trembling wood. Quaking rain and raging wind. The manic whisper of your skin as she tries you on for the first time. And you fit.

Forget the war. Forget the cause. It's within those small battles that life is lived.

the barrel. empty as it were. pitched to the fall. everything inside it. laboring under the rule of a diligent cowardice. liberated on the fickle whims of choice.

we would dither in the thankless sunshine. each moment spoiling for the next to arrive. we would scratch. with rusty nails as our pens. our initials into the cement. still small enough to see the world as big.

and then it wasn't.

but there was no liar to hate. just the cold treason of perception. as it shifted through the gears in our heads. i was dumbfounded by how quickly we went. from friends to strangers.

the wrinkle of her eyelids as they move over the ghosts in her thoughts. tumbling betrayals. made of bone and flesh. ladders made of clay. lay against shattered windows. and she climbs. to reach. the calm hysteria of those empty rooms. where shadows still speak loud enough that she can hear them promising. it will change.

we built a strong bridge out of those delicate matchsticks. for a time, it even, took us across. but we failed to consider. the consequences of the spark.

Bright angles on the lens steer her vision toward the darkness. She presses the sour to her lips. Convinced it will make everything else taste sweeter.

There is. There are. Depending on whom you ask. An infinite number of us. Each one the same, yet different. Some more broken. Others less. All unaware each other. The infinite distance between each of them too small to measure. We are are always alone. Because they are so near.

The cripple in the stone. As it tumbles down. The muddy hill in her throat. To break the water before it reaches the sand. The awe of repetition. In scars. The spasm of pleasure. In scabs. Torn flowers on their high. The wound revives. Brassy witches suffocated under the weight of their magic.

Breath like pencils. Easily erased. Skin like ink. Bleeds through. The thin slips of paper she puts between herself and them.

Year after year levies upon her its debts. Still she responds the same way she always has. With payments made in flesh.