It is embarrassing to be assigned to this table again. But thank goodness, really, I don't want to sit with them. And I guess those are the only options: to be included or ignored.

Because kids should be seen, not heard.

I think that they pity me. The grow ups, that is. Well, some do, for sure. But the others don't seem to like me. At that's fine, if you ask me.

I'm not really a kid anymore, yet here I am at the kid table. I feel disproportionate, and oversized. I am grotesquely super-sized, compared to their perception of me.

And my knees hit the underbelly --

I wonder if this is her poker table. That's what we use ours for at home. But ours has a small tear, and I always poke my fingers into it. Its stuffing feels manufactured, just like me. And I always think about the things that I could hide inside its lining, but it'd have to be something small like an Ace rolled into a straw.

They still tease my sister for cheating at blackjack. She kept an Ace tucked under her leg, and she used it to win a couple hands before they noticed. My sister is smart, especially for an eight year old. And everyone finds her endearing, but mostly because she has dimples.

I love these glasses. The gold paint on the rim is chipping, but it seems right. I'm sipping a Roy Rogers, but pretending it's alcohol. And every mint that I eat, I swallow whole like a pill they are forcing me to take.

I wonder what these mints are called. I love the way they dissolve before you finish chewing. They remind me of Nona. I wish I could disappear before anyone noticed... just like a mint.

My mom keeps looking over. She nods like, although she is pleased, for now, she's not taking our goodness for granted. I think she'd rather be sitting with us, though. She escaped this town young, rebelling against its generations of full bred roots.

Okay. I think I've arranged my food enough to pass for "I'm full." A real lady never finishes her plate, after all. Gluttons are sinners and big-eaters aren't feminine.

As soon as my sister is done, I'll ask if we can be excused. If we walk past their table together, she'll grab their attention and I can evaporate.

I hate big holidays. I want to go home.

He calls me darlin. And angel, and pumpkin.

He calls everyone darlin, but his tongue snaps the roof of his mouth a little differently, when he says it to me.

We met in a bar. It's where I've met most of my men. But the night I met him, my past evaporated. The bar was empty. It was a grand opening, unadvertised and failed.

But not for us.

That night, I wore a typical first date getup. Something grown up. With a veil of confidence, stating "I know what I want," laced with some, "Don't worry, I'm a sure thing."

I ordered a manhattan, extra sweet. A splash of maraschino cherry juice, to remind me of my childhood.

He doesn't drink much, he has an ulcer. But that night he ordered scotch on the rocks. I guess he too was playing a part.

I've worn nothing but torn flannel and heavy eyeliner since that first night. And I almost always start with draft beer now.

He did get lucky that night, but that "luck" has since unfolded into a friendship birthed outside of time. His soul welcomed mine back from before time. Before creation. Where it belongs.

And, darlin, he is now and always will be my angel--guarding and walking with me--into the end of time and beyond.

There is a lonesome wildflower growing tall between the cracks in the asphalt on this road leading into the city. Its white blossoms contrast angelically against the black and white backdrop of the abandoned cross-section of morning. The sun has yet to rise, but its peekaboo light emanates gently--and just enough--above the horizon to bring the flower to attention. The wind comes and goes, and it sounds like a freight train attached to a boomerang. The sound of nature's intent interrupts the weed's solitude, and its beauty bends over and into itself as though covering its ears.

And as I make my left turn in acceptance of Thursday, I can't help but wonder if the wildflower will survive until I get home.

Her resilience buffered

Stumbling over itself and

Summonsing face-to-face

An eye for an eye --

Her inner and outer intent

How does one communicate with

Flat words emptied of a pulse

Lifeless forms of identification

Tagged without a body

Roaming the barren plains as

A headless horseman storms

Through the Valley of Darkness

Babbling nonsensical epiphanies born

From his projection of his reality

His truth wanders lonesome among

A graveyard of empty tombs

With belongings of riches buried as

The substance to which family prays

As they worship the hollow casks Forgotten is the spirit risen and

Life never-ending among

The continuum of consciousness everlasting

Lost in the dark, tangled in silken threads, the moon appeared at noon today. And with its antithetical appearance casting confusion upon the streets below its amniotic atmosphere of blurry distention, an awakening began.

They were the ones nesting in shadows seated upon the ledge of an open window to an underbelly reality wading behind the coiffured static. The majority thought of them as background noise, a disruption, a runaway train.

But they were the transposed insurrection of new consciousness.

Because the new

Always has been

And the old

Has been reborn

With mass dialogue shared in new tongue, their alphabet was reflected by their DNA tapestry. They were jugglers of the right and left mind, balancing humanity with an expansive reach.

And their process was contagious, but only to those susceptible to what was said in the beginning, though not in the sense defined by The Static.

The tidal wave ensued tripping me blind on my own false security. And endlessly, it returned: over and over, the infinite lashes of loss and dismay disabled my cognition. The shock beat against me along the shores of fragility. Relentless and thrashing, my shock was soot in my throat. My lungs filled with bile, and my hope was cinder. Suffocating in my flesh, and growing raw against the rub. I collapsed, incapacitated. Too confused, I couldn't mourn.

But then I ascended. Elongated by the wings of my denial. To enforce the disposition of my weakness, I set to murder the walking dead. And violently, I was ready: I charged at the victims, nameless and without a face. Furiously reacting, I buried the coma of my fate. I drew a sword from my bowels, and facilitated war. To force my just penance on cause was my only resilient affect.

Then my warrior grew weary. I stumbled through a trap door, and a new path from the hurt was revealed in its game. It was a smoke-filled room with a roulette foundation. I took a chair at its table, and the dogs dealt me sins. I began gambling mad for odds with dead-ends. In exchange for my chosen return, I offered my pulse. Working harder to win, I spun the wheels of Houdini. But wth the finale inverted, reason left me broke. I was a rat on a wheel tied to a circular track. Consulting to escape, and seeking the solution to a maze. But its puzzle was constructed by ghosts.

I vaguely recall when I fell into the bottle. Darkness enveloped me and I lost my existence. It corked me into some whiskey, aging my blood until black. I tore my veins from my flesh, and weaved my own noose. I resigned to my failure to alter the past. And at the bottom with razors, I carved misery deep. My blurry self-talk and disgust built me a shelter of poison, and faith was a jester overseeing the grounds. My sadness mocked back, poking fun at my heart. I was worthless and useless, reflected only in mirrors smeared by brown felt. My face was a stranger, haunted and desperate, I abandoned myself until I was alone.

When I finally surrendered to what I had treasured all along, I realized I'd been holding onto nothing at all. Air is intangible, and so was my control. Falsely birthed from neglect for the truth that I knew. My belief in nothing, and its meaningless life, died and I mourned it until the lie lost its strength. There was more to this life, with its purpose and answers. I fought inclination until it won, and it looked back with celestial light. Baptized through the consciousness of life everlasting, I was reborn to understand humanity as faith that never dies. I buried my projected autonomy, and rebelliously weeped for my nihilism. I didn't want to let go, but my grip finally unraveled. I accepted there is more, and, on my exhale, fear was released and hope resurrected.

He kissed me the first time we met. I can't remember what the weather was like or if the bar was busy, but I remember every detail of him.

It was the last time he pulled me close without thinking. We didn't have the past to burden us with resentments, and the future was undefined. There were no expectations waiting to pounce, and there were no feelings to protect.

Reality had no baggage.

"Live in the moment" is terrible advice. It is an unattainable goal.

The so-called enlightened ones walk into a bar, eagerly, lining- up, and march proudly onto the tongue (a red carpet event) of a lion's mouth called Failure.

Because it is impossible. Literally. The mind processes sight, and all senses, not instantly, but seconds later. Maybe it is fractions of fractions of seconds, but it is not real time. Even if it is just milliseconds later, it is later. It isn't now.

Time is an illusion and humans thrive on definable boxes. The linear.

I am too exhausted from my own thoughts to do the research on the findings of human brain's exact processing times, but --

We do not exist in the present. It's not where we live. It is our applied projection. This much I know.

It is the past. The moment we feel something--or see or experience it--it is already history. It is over. Past tense. Fleeting, at best.

They are just memories, really. We are living in memories.

Because nothing is as it seems.