Beneath pine needle prickled branches, 

a suffocation of mossy and sienna autumn grass.

Her alabaster skin is a break in the early morning fog,

a stencil of the air blowing over her curves -  

     moving between black strands of hair,

     tickling slate, parted lips. 

Fingertips press into the soil,

creating a divot of her DNA.

Nails brittled and broken,

crimson polish chipped -

     flakes blending into the pools of thick,

     syrupy blood clotting over tissue-paper leaves.

To him, she is nothing but a chalkline. 

To everyone else, she is invisible. 

To the nature, 

     - her new home and final resting place -

she is a source of life and a new feeding ground for its selfish needs.  

The irony is in how you feel me.

In the heat of Summer sun, I am that distortion in the road, 

     a mirage - a blur in the Earth's matter. 

The simple curiosity gleaming in your black-cat's eye

is the motion and static of my silhouette.

In the shower, alongside the moist suppleness of your skin,

I am the steam clinging to the glass encasing you -

     press your fingertips into my shadow.

When the lights turn down and your eyelids are heavy,

I am that sudden chill down your spin, 

     the tingle on the back of your neck,

     the air brushing hair across your vanilla forehead, 

     the coolness in your sheets,

     the sensation vibrating below you - 

          surging deep in your abdomen,

          rising.  

The irony is in how you feel me - 

     - invisible me - 

satisfied with the thought that you are completely alone.  

My 8 year old self died on a beach.

I last remember the grit of St. Augustine sand in my teeth.

Mother's cigarette smoke -

     raspy laugh

     curly, red hair ablaze.

For my mother, 

only my ghost roams those dunes now. 

Still, no one mourns that girl like I do. 

The parking lot scene is old, 

antiquated. 

Distorted by backlit LED blue, 

he finds his next one here - 

                pixelated beauty.

keystrokes

"See U Soon"

For those here,

blooming in this anthology of euphoric

creativity,

originality,

raw language -

     expression vibrates, quivers on the vital pink of the tongue -

words slip under your skin like a velvet hand beneath your sheets.

"This is so good!" she says.

You feel your way through the imagery,

through the ecstasy of the human condition,

sensing the curves, the hidden places of the story.

"Brilliant", he says. "Love this", trips from his lips.

Suddenly, a cerebral climax - it travels down your spin

into your fingertips -

     tempting you to respond,

     to bookmark,

     to create.

A stranger is no longer a stranger.

Your intimacy is scandalous and secretly you lust for more.

Breathlessly, he whispers,

"Fortunately, here, one's words,

avatar,

personality,

and soul are all one and the same".

The day I die, the world will be abuzz,

alive with the kinetics of its inhabitants –

     babies being born

     the ache of a first heartbreak

     a celebrity snapping a selfie by a fantastic pool

     one man celebrating his retirement

     musicians creating new songs & artists new colors

-and I will know how lucky I was to have shared the Earth’s energy.

The day I die, my fragment of this energy goes back to them all.

Frequently, throughout any span of time, 

I dream that -

I am a teenager again.

Tonight is going to be my last soccer game ever.

I am frantic - 

     frantic to get my clothes together

     frantic to end my soccer career

     frantic to be good

     frantic to win

     frantic to get out the door

I am running late and my father is supposed to drive me. 

Urging him to stop what he is doing and take me is exhausting.  

He is almost ignoring me.  Or can't hear me.

We finally leave and on the way I am searching my bag for my uniform.

I am missing my socks. 

The coach will be mad and the referee will not let me play out of uniform.

Telling dad we need to go to the store so I can find the same color socks,

I know this is going to take a lot time.   

It may be impossible.  

I feel myself growing extremely tense, nervous, anxious. 

I make it to the soccer field.  

It's just starting the second half. 

I missed the first half of the last game I will ever play.

As I go to take the field, I collapse. 

I am awake and aware and I know I need to reach the field but I cannot stand.

I begin crawling.  

Crawling, so slowly, like something is holding me, 

I just want to take the center of the field one more time.  

I wake up, having never made the field, 

feeling tired, and sad, and a little relieved.  

It was the early 1990’s and she remembers the day her dad left the house for good. She was on her own with her, the mother who could barely care for herself. She stayed with her until the mid-1990’s. Days when electricity was shut off, moving constantly - ending up in a trailer-park, and nights of leaving her daughter alone with addicts had caught up to her mother. The bartender salary wasn’t cutting it anymore, her mother’s habits and addictions didn’t see a finish-line or even a rest-stop, and it was all too much. Now, she was eight. Her father was living in Kentucky was about to provide solace. Her mother sent her for a visit and on the day before she was to return home called her ex-husband and asked him to keep her. So, on her mother’s birthday, her dad picked her up in in his new Kentucky truck. On the way out of town after grabbing a bite to eat, she saw her mother drive by in a car full of her friends.

Moving to a small southern town was hard. One day, they laughed so hard at the tie-dye t-shirt she wore to school. Normal attire for St. Augustine, Florida wasn’t going to fly in Franklin, Kentucky.

For the next ten years, her mother would be absent. They talked on the phone but it was often a fight. Her mother missed every soccer game she ever played, every prom she attended, every boy she liked, her ACL replacement surgery, and even her losing her virginity. She got her period even before her mother knew to explain to her what it was. Her mother came for her High School graduation. That was 2005 and the last time she saw her mother. She asked her mother why she wasn’t happy that she had a wonderful life. Her response: “Because I didn’t get anything out of it”.

She invited her mother to her wedding in 2010 but she declined. Her mother requested photos be sent but requested none of them contained her father. She said she couldn’t take it.

Now, she hears from her mother once or twice a year. Sometimes for money, sometimes for a place to live because she is in a shelter, and once to tell her that he boyfriend had just murdered his family in their sleep and she was alone again.

Her life is amazing now. She owns a fantastic technology company at 29 years old, has a wonderful marriage to someone she has been with for 10 years, and just moved to Nashville, TN. She felt she should share that news with her mother.

Her mother congratulated her and wished her well (she was happy and hyper so she was high). Before they hung up, her mother whispered, “Maybe I can come see it sometime”. It’s been 11 years. She can afford her a plane ticket for her mother. Maybe a meeting is in the future. Time is definitely running out.