So, how often do you skip dessert?

I don’t know. Rarely, I guess. But that’s not the point. The point is that you still need the meat and potatoes. You need something substantial.

In one breath, you’re not wrong. But. Chew on this. How was that salmon?

It was delicious. It filled me up, but it was still light. I’d definitely order again.

I agree. I loved the salmon last time I was here. But I wasn’t really crazy about the salad or the way the veggies that came with it were cooked.

Yeah, they weren’t my favorite.

I thought about substituting both, but everything I wanted just kind of clashed with that flavor profile. It would have ruined the fish. Anyway. You’d come back for the salmon, right?

Well, yeah. I don’t know. Now that I’m thinking about the salad, I’m thinking I might try a steak next time. But if it were just the salmon then, yeah.

What if they paired it with something you liked better, but the service was garbage?

Then I probably wouldn’t come back at all. I wouldn’t mind if someone brought me food, but that also just sort of throws off the experience.

Right. That makes sense. Certain things just have to happen a certain way or the whole situation is tainted. I really want to try the cheesecake.

I am so full. I couldn’t.

But then. The plating is exquisite. Sweet, light crust barely containing the tangy, whipped filling. Her fork dips in and slides the bite past her teeth and across her tongue. And her mouth lightly meets his. Crystallized sugar settles on his tongue and caramel drips to his throat. And he thought he was filled to the bursting, but he can’t help but to swallow down sticky fluff. His eyes close and his mouth is suddenly too wet. And he lifts his own fork to his mouth, ravenous. Unsure whether he wants her mouth or the soft, creamy confection dripping with hot syrup. And as he settles for both, the coyest giggle trickles out her lips, barely escaping past her teeth, using his mouth as refuge.

You may not need dessert, but she almost always wins.

(Written 1/11/17)

The rain hits the window

Matching my fears

Of tomorrow

And my mind ponders on how

No flower ever

Wondered if the sun would

Come out from behind the

Clouds

No bird worried if the

Worm would suddenly

Hide from view

They just trusted

They knew

They were provided for

I know plans have been spoken

In the name of tomorrow

But late at night

While I hear the storm

Sheet water against my

Bedroom window pane

I question what if it all

Went away

If you were just a dream

And these arms were truly

Empty

How then would I live

Or love

Or trust

I dare to imagine a life

Alone at 1am

And it makes me

Ache with potential

Loneliness

He wakes slowly. Everything feels right. Easy. He watches her breathe, deep and steady. Her auburn hair, so often worn in a tight bun, now pooling around her. And something snaps. Her hair stirring memories, not quite his own, but still somehow memories. A lovely blonde. Sticky, dark puddles matting her hair to the bricks in the alley. Lips pouting, eyes glassed over. Throat leaking a slow dribble. And stomach missing all essentials. His eyes refocus on the dark haired kitten in a foreign bed. His bare feet tread light and quiet through the dim room with only starlight and a dying fire in the grate to guide him. His fingers close on the straight razor like a long-forgotten friend. And the metallic blade slides through the pale skin at her throat, easy as cutting the flesh of a peach. And the blue veins gush cataracts of contrasting scarlet. And the early morning sun finds her still and breathless. Insides spilled across the room. Face an unrecognizable mask of jagged cuts. Nightdress bloody between the legs. And the early morning sun finds the attic of his mind reawakened. Newborn shadows dancing across the weathered floorboards mixing with echoes screaming through the open halls. And early morning sun finds him a hunter of human flesh. Early morning sun rises on the rebirth of terror.

“Please, don’t touch me. Move your hand”, yelling at my grandmaa who was sleeping beside me, I woke up.

It was her daily habit to touch me past midnight, though I don’t know whether she did that to check my presence or the other soul in her wanted me to feel his presence.

The days were just like the normal ones, routine works etc with no feeling of a stranger’s presence besides me.

Since, my childhood I was being told that my grandmaa’s soul is possessed by a man’s soul. The man’s soul entered my grandmaa’s soul when she was 10 years old and till date it resides in her body.

And sleeping with her since my pre schooling time, I never felt this story to be a truth. But, as i grew up. I would find myself haunted with the presence of the ghosts and evil souls in my dreams everyday. It got hard to sleep soundly;so i started reading books and when I was damn tired that I couldn’t afford blinking of eye, I went to sleep.

And, when I was in a deep sleep, suddenly I used to feel a touch.A touch which could even make a coma patient alive.

I was so scared to open my eyes as the story of the other soul which had got vivid deep in my thoughts, would start replaying. So with close eyes, I moved my grandmaa’s hand aside by yelling. Because when I yelled at her, I felt like she was back to her body.

Somedays, I could sense an inappropriate touch past midnight. But the moment I yelled, it was back to normal. My grandmaa would get back to her senses.

Everynight, I felt something stange, a few days my grandmaa would cry in agony and other days, i woul be haunted with the presence of souls in my dreams, each and everyone with their high level of scary faces and actions. Trust me, there is no evilness like the evil faces I meet in my dreams.

No one other than me experienced these activities, even if they did sleep with my grandmaa for a nite or two.

The days when I would be out for a vaction or a trip away from my grandmaa, I never felt that strange activities except the feeling of someone calling me to be with them.

It went on, the days passed and then the years, everytime I ignored it with some psychological concepts.

It took me 25years to realise the truth of that paranormal activities around me. The strange feelings of being called upon.... The evils in my dreams...

It was that day, the day that breaked all my psychological concepts, I experienced something which I couldn’t gulp till date.

Sorry, I mean Night.. Just thinking about that night makes me feel goosebumps..

 A cold chill passes down the spine whenever I hear a name ‘ghost’.

“It was a usual night just like daily, I was trying hard to fall asleep when suddenly I felt a touch with a voice..... And that was...............”

-- continued in the next part

“Laying in blood that’s not my own, though I’m halfway dead so who would know.”

I inch my neck to the right until I feel the warmth on my cheek from the blood beneath me. And I let my head rest in this puddle of despair.

There are shards of glass around me that are now glistening from splattered blood, and wide eyed cold bodies that were wide eyed even before they died. Their still expressions hold more emotion and pain than I ever could.

How lucky are the fallen? Incredibly lucky. I’m sure they weren’t even aware of it. How lucky they were to feel pain, to be able to scream and cry with a deafening sound. They all begged, and pleaded for their life. They would dig their nails into my skin and look straight into my eyes, just looking for an ounce of compassion. And that only made me more motivated to take their life. Sometimes I would hold them for a little bit, just let them cry before the last plunge of my knife. And each person seemed to find knowing that they’re going to die, more torturous than actually feeling my dull blade rip into their body.

I move my head back to the left facing the real owner of this blood beneath me. His eyes are open, just staring into mine. I reach over with my right arm and slide my fingers across his cheek. Then I try to copy his emotion, I widen my eyes and furrow my eyebrows. While keeping this expression, I move my hand away from his cheek and grab a tiny shard of glass. I look into it, peering at my reflection. There’s something missing, something I’m not getting. Then I start to angle the shard towards different directions and I am able to see the many landscapes of my face. I am scarred and bruised, most self inflicted and some are from people trying to defend themselves. I have a moment of realization and purposely squeeze the shard of glass between my thumb and my pointer finger.

“Can you feel this?” I whisper to myself.

“When will you feel this?” I whisper again.

I squeeze the shard hard enough between two of my fingers that I actually start to draw blood. It drips on my face and in that second I felt relieved because it was as if that drop of blood was a tear. So I repeat the action but soon the feeling is gone. Now it’s just blood dripping on my face. I throw the shard of glass hearing it fall in the distance and lay my hands at my sides. I take a deep breath in and count to five.

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5.”

...

I sat within our families conjoined courtyard, hunched over my studies, accompanied by nothing more than the hushed rustling of withering leaves and the crackling from the fire-pit. My eyes trailed lazily over the text in front of me, my mind fixated on the pin-prickling feeling that accompanied the silence whenever I lingered there. That and the echoes, like whispers, that trailed on the wind.

It had always just been the voices, a low, slow chorus - a cacophony or tones incoherent yet persistent...

Shuffling in the grass caught my ear. I looked up and the flames went out. The trees seemed to bend forth to encroach around me and I looked on into moon brushed darkness, ethereal shapes breaking through the pluming smoke before me. The voices enclosed from all around speaking in broken tones and meandering speech.

"Flee...this place...you must...must be forever rended."

Ebon hands reached out from the darkness toward me; disembodied eyes hovered ever closer. I strained yet no voice left my throat; my body was frozen, quivering but uncontrollable.

A smoky haze forced its way forward, the scent of tobacco, theine and mint, and the ebon hands recoiled rapidly. A singular voice reached me, distant yet grounded in reality.

"You always sit out here in the dark like a creep?"

I recognized the voice and the mixed aroma that accompanied: Olivia, the Locquinn family's eldest. My eyes shot open to see the embers of the cigarillo hanging from her mouth, as she knelt by the pit-fire, working to reignite it. I scoured the darkness for the shapes I had seen before, but all was still and silent except for rustling leaves and the efforts of Olivia's work.

A small spark took hold and the fire slowly grew, pushing back the hazy darkness around us.

"Nichelle, yeah?" She broke the silence, meandering her way over and picking up the book I had been studying. She offered the hefty text back to me.

I simply nodded in response and took the book back. The smoke rolling from her cigarillo lingered in my nostrils and proved to snap me awake. Had I just been dozing off before?

"So, what've they got you pegged for?" She plopped down next to me and I could feel her gaze lingering over me - she was motioning towards my studies.

"Social work and substance counselling."

The chuckle that followed was hindered by a cough. I raised a brow as she collected herself, taking another puff before speaking once more, "so, you're supposed to be like the model citizen of the Commonality, eh"

I twisted my mouth and furrowed my brow, "I guess so." It was easy enough to see she was mocking me, but I was not sure if it was personal or not.

"So," I offered back, "what's your vocation?"

"Cremation mostly. Coroner, when something interesting happens. My mentor is a hag - always talking aloud, supposedly, to the dead. She goes on about spirits and what-not." She shrugged but turned her eyes on me with a wry grin as if expecting. "You wanna meat her?"

I could do little else but nod my head. Her grin only grew before she took another long drag and then snuffed her cig and began to stand.

"Fair warning," she turned a sidelong glance on me, "she doesn't get along with the living, much."

I'm not sure

why every leaf

must die,

but there's a mirror

wrapped around the dew

when they rest

soft upon the soil,

and I close my eyes

everytime I break trail,

knowing

that this broken world,

will leave shards

in feet as I pass by,

and I will follow

her bloody tracks

into whatever waits

beyond the effects of sun.