Power, victor’s power —the world is just as much in my hands as if I could feel its peaks and valleys with my fingertips. My enemies are my stepping stones and my teachers are my equal friends. Feeling like this, I will win all their silly little games, love the makers, and hate their lies openly. I sit and accomplish for hours. Hours I sit and accomplish what I could not in many years before, I do not eat or drink. I do not notice when precisely it has made me worse off.

I knew it would come though —the fall. I watch it happen and try to minimize the harm. I am becoming an empty shell. What is unremovable in me is crying in a black vacuum for the sad love I started with. Power took its place and left. I harm one, I harm two people, and find myself a drone. I cannot speak, cannot move this spent dross… and my friend makes me laugh.

”I feel better after laughing so much.” I say that to my friend before he leaves. In my dreams I stand by my brother resisting my father in a place I’ve surely never been before. I stir awake, afraid to be normal again, and it hits me —that love feeling I lost. Power had taken its place and left. It hits me like an egg cracked on my heart. I’m going to keep things better like this for as long as I can this time. When they say it’s their way or destitution, I’ll hold on as tight as I can. Eventually, I’ll be driven to power.

The sky is grey, like forgiveness

or a mosquito growing old.

My clothes are grey like eyes closing and suddenly, the scent of winter‘s rustling vanguard.

I’m diving through a pool in black and white —greyscale— and my eyes take in the stars down deep.

Grey is gone now for browns and word salad. I don’t know I’m relatively happy and that this feels like warm memory. My head is fuzzy when it isn’t grey.

Adult human curling up and sleeping like a dog at the foot of an armchair, fireplace crackling.

The memory of sore steps.

Two humans who love peace having little to talk about.

And I called Justice Love as it walked by today. I undressed from my street clothes and took a bath in a more orderly, imagined world.

Let’s see— we got Greg, Greg’s funny… to some hahahahaha. Um. This is Isabella, no one invited her and she’s the worst, but she does have a crush on me. This guy’s name is Aaron, I think that says it all. Same goes for The Joker and Forgotten Goblin Boy. Edmund is the one you hear wheezing by Mr. Twist, who is as small as he appears. You’ll really like James (I call him sunny boy) and Greg 2, who is the sardonic Yang to Greg 1’s Yin. Last weird ones I promise: Naruto Uzumaki (drummer), Monkey D. Luffy, and the ghost of Bashō. Our long-distance runner is Bodey here and this is our cockatoo, Peepee. We wanted a Condor. This is Mother Agnes, thank heavens for her. Let’s see, we won’t go over the plants… we won’t go in that room…um… I call this guy Modok but that’s not nice. He’s really Greg 3 and his bit is that he’s an octopus and he’s alllllwaayyys watching tv or asking someone to read fantasy novels to him. We all have our things so I can’t judge. Lastly there’s Grey. Grey is short for “standing on a glass planet with grey skies and there is a quiet in my soul. I wonder if experience is a warped mirror of the total cosmos.” Grey is the best of us I think, but I’m hopeful for us all. Yep, it’s pretty fun. With this group, anything can happen. It’s hard to get so many of us in the same room like this though. You’re lucky. Stay as long as you like, I’ll walk you to the door when you’re done.

Tell me that you want the world. I’ll get it for you, even if it costs an eye.

Better yet, tell me you’re gonna get it first and I’ll race you for it.

I’m so lazy, lonely watching you dream of a small house with a chicken coop, not knowing to wonder what the mother of chicken coop shapes like, or son of.

I feel like your grandfather when you take pride in loving old things but mean the 1800’s. I remember the Apollo 11 Stones, which you have not heard of.

I feel like your furrow-browed toddler wondering why —with your silence— you say China isn’t real and provide no proof or explanation.

I’m so claustrophobic waiting for your world to grow enough for your patiently magnificent soul to stretch and see itself.

Tell me that you want the world. You can want it and I can get it for you.

Tell me you’re gonna get it first. You might do it, but not without being chased ’til the end; my heart has been burning for a run all this time.

Are really old bones holy? Even when the flesh is dressed to match a trend? This room reminds me of one much more painstakingly done. My body was built to last 80 or so years. How long until this paint flakes, how long until it’s purpose is foregone? How long until the old and maybe holy bones are redressed again? How long until they are broken and swept to make way for an aloof and unambitious youth, hoping to make it just one century?

How long until there are no hopefully-holy bones left? How long until the ribcage of a dinosaur is just a painting in a book. When I am 80 where will I have older siblings left? How long until the temples are gone leaving only the temple-esque?

It was your birthday in my dream the other night. Sleepover in a strange room —I was left to sleep away again. “I have separation anxiety.” You said that. I said I love pure colors and you wear them and that’s not fair. I watched your phone intently while you taped the sunset waiting for lightning to strike in the frame. I stepped away from you to look at the real sky and then stepped back close and long as just-friendliness demarcates. You were asked about romance and your answer wasn’t me at all, unless this is a movie where all seems lost but all is only poor communication. It’s not one of those movies, it’s just a little death I’m watching. It’s sad but otherwise at worst the whole house would come down, and at best we would be unlikely to last. I’m sure of that as I lay in bed holding my stupid, helpless heart. I fall asleep only to fend off a tattoo artist trying to brand me with your name.

You’re possibly my favorite subject. I like your dirty yellow eyes. I also like… warped warped your skin wrinkled, warped. I’m just —overall— glad you stay looking like that. By looking I mean with your eyes, not your appearance. I just like the way you look.

You’re life (how I guess it’s been) is beautiful: full of pain and unrelenting force and bad smells. Born to a half-caring parent who loves you but is in no-wise prepared to think you ought to be caressed. You’re birth, soundless in a raucous machine —nature is your great, great, great, great grandmother. Funny how you’ve made it here. Yes, warped, but how else was it ever going to be. The sun is shining low and there is nothing, no nothing that could disprove your singular, quiet, toothy grace. That you’re the scene, my heart is making my breath sweet.