lucid dreams

in ephemeral night

luminous visions

fading in twilight

it’s all a stage

with balletic grace

fake danseur nobles

adorning masks on face

pull back the curtain

rouse from sleep

you’ll soon divine

the dance runs deep

lucid dreams

in the glimmering

night

the world’s a stage

pirouetting

in daylight.

what if we never had English together

and you never got seated next to me

what if I never wrote with sharpie on your arm

or forced you to climb up that tree

I would have never loved so hard

that the world itself seemed to fade away

yet my heart would still be strung together

rather than it's current state of disarray

what if you never asked me to love you

and I didn't willfully comply

would I now know what it is to trust someone

instead of to always assume they lie

I would never have hated so much

that it consumed me for so long

yet not knowing you would mean not knowing me

and how the hurt has made me strong

Happiness is to Joy as:

a) Love is to Like

b) BFF is to FWB

c) Loneliness is to Solitude

d) Head-Over-Heels in love is to Heels-Over-Head in love

We are all

puppets

of the disconnect.

The broken

chain

rests heavy

in the deep dark

of us.

Its slow drag

against our ribs

exposes

the empty

inside.

Loneliness makes slaves of us all.

#poetry

Martha Evans sat at the new table in the strange house after church had finished. Her stomach was rattling, empty, like the collection bowl after Colin Martins, that old balding man, had dropped his near-empty envelope. He never donated enough, and even worse he tried to hide that problem. Martha would never do that. Her coins would clatter proudly into the plate, even her breakfast money for which she now nurtured a martyred spark of regret.

Today was different because she had left church early. The seats next to her were emptier than usual, especially the one to her immediate right that her husband, Jacob, having been dead for two months now, would sit. Pneumonia was the diagnosis, according to the last of the doctors, that one who spoke to her for fifteen minutes between glances at his computer. But Martha knew he wanted her to accept an easy explanation. How she missed Jacob!

And now she was here, at a table in Julia King’s house, lured by the strange promise she could see Jacob today. This was the first time Martha had accepted an invite to Julia’s glamorous house, with all its deep oak furniture and curious fuzzy wall hangings. Martha could see why Julia lived alone.

Throughout their polite conversation, Julia did not call the ceremony a seance, which was just as well because Martha did not believe in such things. But she missed Jacob - like no-one else ever could! - so here she was, still the dutiful wife, doing something new for her old Jacob, who would never try anything new anyway.

The ceremony did not start on time. Julia was still busy flicking her long brown hair and pontificating about the sermon today, although she did mention how Colin Martin’s android phone had buzzed at least twice during the third prayer session. That’s typical Colin, Martha thought, looking at Julia’s watch.

10:04am.

The second hand jolted a few times before Martha realised her eyes had dropped to the cloth table, its colour an off-white fade, something indicative of a poorly run household. Jacob would never have stood for that, Martha would be sure. The dirty cloth drifted across the table, huge in its unkemptness, a vast careless plain. As her vision focused a few moments more, the cloth seemed to stretch out to an impossible horizon, a place where the air became scratchy and cold. Or was it? The room around her seemed to be beyond temperature now, her vision filled by bone-white layer now distant beneath her feet, the horizon an utter black ceiling.

She floated with her slow footsteps over the plain, noticing a mass of rocks in the distance. She strode towards them. Like the pulsating egg sacs of a tropical spider, the white rocks breathed. She began to pass ancient trees, green fingers stabbing knives towards the air. Closer to the rocks she saw swathes of dark move in unison, a strange stew of noise and stink floating with them. They gathered like the huddled bodies of naked people. Dots of white jostled occasionally. She could only see a vision of conflicted nothingness.

Amongst the rabble she senses Jacob. She drifted downwards into the misty mass towards the coalescing figure of her dead husband, her eyes gazing through the space beneath where her feet should be. Her clarity of vision, her sight of the open ground, belied the absence of her nose, or any part of her body, something she does not realise (unlike you as you become aware of your nose always blocking your peripheral vision). Jacob is here! Julia was right!

The figure of Jacob doesn’t see Martha, and is instead surrounded by tiny shapes. It is a series of stray church cats, purring against him with comfortable affection. She calls to him. He does not answer. An invisible dome of loneliness surrounds him. Instead the cats jostle into one figure, growing mass, a torso, breasts, mouth and lips, and finally long brown hair. He smiles. To Martha’s horror, Jacob kisses the familiar figure with the pretty smile and deep body. She laughs. Jacob runs his fingers through her long brown hair and joins her in laughter. The sound stung like disinfectant, a perceptible ozone rising from their mouths. The misty stench becomes too potent and Martha jolts away.

Her eyes snap open.

She has clearly slept yet was strangely unslumped. She sees Julia’s watch.

10:05am.

Julia had finished talking about the sermon that day, and was ready to start the seance.

Martha, being the good Christian she is, refuses to take part, finding an easy excuse to leave. She leaves fifty dollars in three neatly folded notes on the table and stands up. She feels terrified. At what she does not know. But she knows there is no point staying. Julia cannot talk to the spirit of Jacob that only Martha knows.

All the days you live in fear, you will forget. I know at times it will feel like that is every day, and at that time, you think you will never be able to forget the fear. The face of it, the smell of it, the ache of it. But you will. The days you remember are the ones in which you live.

You know those moments. You know those moments. When your heart feels as if will burst through your chest but not from anxiety, from happiness! At first, there aren't a lot of moments like that. And you will struggle a lot to find and keep the happy in your life. Time and again you will push away the blissful moments, those who bring you involuntary smiles, laughter and peace because you don't believe you deserve these things.

It will be more than a decade that you struggle but life will have its way with you, because you're just not meant to despair forever. You will walk a path of healing, of growth, self-discovery and love. You will hold hands, gaze into the souls of and exchange hearts with so many beautiful people. You will write your truth, and it will save your life.

You will become more beautiful than you ever thought you could be. There will be amazing people who cycle in and out of your life, and someday, I believe, you will find someone who will cycle in and not want to cycle back out. Someone who will be a permanent hand to hold, soul to dance with and keeper of your heart. Hopefully ten years from now, I can write me all about him.

For now though, I can tell you the future is a beautiful place. You created a life of struggle for yourself, being you, and that's okay. Because beautiful does not mean easy. But 90% of your beauty comes from your strength. So go ahead and get knocked down, you will be so much stronger when you get back up.

Oh, and you are so very loved.

Always,

Mee

My mother runs. Every morning, she wakes up at five, clothes herself, finds her phone and earphones, and goes for a run. One mile every day. One mile before work. I get tired just thinking of running like she does. But every morning, my mother runs.

My mother runs. Every time I ask about my father. Everytime I asked about my birthday. Everytime I look at the pictures. She’s afraid I’d notice. Notice the picture of my brown eyed father and his brown eyed mother. Notice the photo of my brown eyed mother and her blue eyed sister. My mother runs every time. My mother runs from the truths she hides from me.

My mother runs. Soon, I follow in her footsteps. She runs in the morning. I run at night. We cannot bear to look at one another. Only appearing when the other one is gone.

My mother runs. Now I run too. I run hard. I run fast. I run like the wind barks at my feet and the sidewalk falls away behind me. My mother runs from the monster at her heels. I run to find it. The monster runs with my mother. Is what my mother says. The monster holds fast, my mother says, and will never let her go.

My mother runs. But today she hasn’t left when I come down. My mother runs. But today she hold a picture. The picture of herself and her blue eyed sister. I sit. She sighs, no more running. Her brown eyes shimmer and my blue eyes already know.

My mother runs from the truth she couldn’t bear. That her blue eyed sister runs. Runs away from everything. Her sister runs from responsibility. Her sister runs from the future. Her sister runs from me. Her blue eyed sister runs away from everything.

My mother runs from her blue eyed sister. Whom she cannot bare to see. Her blues look just like mine and my mother will not let it be. She says her blue eyed sister runs. Runs for the past. Runs for her memories. Runs for a time before me. Her blue eyed sister runs because she blames her daughter. Her blue eyed sister runs because she is a monster.

My mother runs. To shield me. Hoping I would never see this blue eyed sister.

My mother runs after me. I run hard. I run fast. I run like my mother is behind me. I run until I spot her. Until I recognize her. Gym. Treadmill. Outside the glass. Blue eyes to blue eyes.

I freeze.

My mother runs.

#mother #running #family #daughter #familyissues

Head wrapped in thorns and flowers

'cause selfishly, I’m all I want.

I swear to the heavens and the hells

that my heart is blind to sentiments.

I run from the vulnerability and commitment

that most crave.

Death of my own kind

I do not tear,

but collapse into pot holes

stuffed to the brim with sigh and shrug.

At birth

most are dealt the Queen of hearts

and attach

themselves to the symbolistic face value.

To them, love is a card.

I flip it over and shuffle

to regain composure.

The only time I pick up a deck

is at parties, in which I remain nameless,

where my mind runs on empty.

Easy escape.

One touch

and I'm off to the races

with a torch in my hand

and thorns in my hair.

It’s quiet, Dear

And you can’t hear

All those people inside me

Voices scramble

Thoughts are ramble

Due to the pantheon inside me

Corner of my eye

I see them smile

These people and people inside me

You want to know

How can I show?

Faces hidden inside me

Oh, I try to count

Yet there’s such

An army of persons inside me

We’re a whole

Inseparable

A very many people inside me

~Cotton Candy

A poem inspired by dissociative identity disorder.