You sort of remind me of a guy I met at the club,

He was sweet and wouldn't leave without buying me a drink;

The wind blew and my hair rustled as we walked through the November weather,

And the next morning he left without saying goodbye.

I feel sort of guilty sometimes, if I think about it too long,

And I often wonder if I'd be better off alone,

But I always end up back at the bar and back to my apartment,

Whether I'm sipping coffee or laying in bed after he's left.

But I don't have to feel guilty about being with you;

I don't have to worry about being lonely,

Or being caught up with the wrong guy late at night,

Now that I have you. 

     As long as I'm with you, and you're with me

     I don't have to go around worrying anymore. 

Shall I compare you to Musical.ly stars?

Your profile says "i only live once, girl".

Because haters gonna hate even us,

Like, summer's expiration date's over.

I lost my sunglasses, it burns real hot,

Even my tan is not fake now; you ask

Where's my beach body in such trying times,

Well I had a cupcake or two (or twelve);

But look at you, having those curves just fine,

Not skinny, losing no pounds, just 'follow's,

Because you don't need filters for likes,

Created wonderful as are, God knows.

   So long your mirror is not distorted,

   So long you break those ceilings, you're OK.

I wish my scars were metaphorical

I wish my wounds were self-inflicted

I wish I had a choice

I wish someone had given me a choice

I wish my heart was the one I was born with

I wish my instincts as a woman could be fulfilled

I wish I had a choice

I wish someone had given me a choice

Would I have chosen death instead?

Would I have traded in this life for another?

I cannot say.

But I wish I had a choice.

I wish someone had given me a choice.

You’ve seen him before. You’ve seen him before. That man who stands at your door, his boots’ shadows streaked on your floor.

You curl your hand around the doorknob and wait for a knock; but father’s grandfather clock ticks as you count to six and winter wind whistles bristles up your chin when you pull the door on to find the man already gone.

You’ve seen him before: that thought you can’t ignore as you tear your eyes off bedroom ceiling and groan slipping out of bed, slipping on your coat, slipping through the black that slips bobbing past your back catching blinds’ each moonlit crack. You click on the heat with fingers weak and sit under striped window glow—that window you know, that window you curl before thinking thoughts before of the man you can’t ignore.

You know this view and that comforts. You know twilight’s fog that gathers insulation around streetlamps’ drizzled beams that hold your fixation, calm your frustration, burn a flirtation with otherworldly dreams bursting at the seams. You know this window, know that fog, know that insomnia that takes you from dreams you know—you know, when you glance at the ticking you know, you’ll find father’s clock he gave you last September to remember your nest when you sit at your window depressed. You know this view, vent’s musty humming on your lips, furnace wafting their blush you knew.

“But do I know you?” you whisper with a shiver.

Your breath fogs the fog through the glass playing the past in your reflection. You breathe into mind’s reflection of the man you thought you saw before, think you see now in your eyes and your brow till breath’s fog fogs out your reflection.

You stand. You stretch. You yawn, waiting for dawn, pacing through window’s light show, thinking of the man you think you know:

Not because he stood at your door, not because you await a friend’s visit,

But because you felt his being without seeing, without hearing a toe on your forty-year-old patio, the same you very well know.

Indeed, it’s not a friend’s visit for which you wait, but a chill over window’s sill, at the foot of the doorway where stepped the foot of a man—that chill you await, hugging your chest, never knowing how late air’s bite might clamp down your fate on a date you’d never have guessed.

You drag your hands down your face, turn to the door, hunching to brace against winter wind because you can’t anymore—you can’t wait anymore. You can’t wait for the man to return to your door. You must see if you’ve seen him before.

You swing open the door and his name touches your tongue and cold fills your lung and you heard it! You heard it long ago! You think you know. You swear you heard it young—that name so unsung—as dying breeze rattles the door you swung.

Your brows tense. Your sister passed young; his name moves your tongue:

“Death.”

It saturates your breath. Death.

“He’s the stranger who came to the door.”

Tick, tock goes the grandfather clock, whispering from window light, sealing winter’s bite, joining your internal talk:

“Death’s the man coming ’round the block.”

He’s not so much a stranger as the danger you ignore till his croak calls no more for the pain you felt before. You’ve seen him before. You’d seen him before.

You choke back a cry and instead release a sigh as you step out the door and into dark dawn’s mist, balling a frostbit fist. You puff, you scuff asphalt you don’t feel, hard, hard earth beneath your heel, and tell yourself, keep telling yourself,

“This isn’t real.”

But your phone glows in your trembling hands: thirty-three missed calls of the croak again calling for the bawling you’ve curbed in your fist’s balling. You tap the first of the voicemails poured through the night.

“It’s your father—something’s come up—” chokes Mom. “Just call me, all right?”

Your phone slips through your fingers. You stop in the street, stop mid-stride. Your father has—father has—

All your life, your father had tried.

Your legs seize and you fall to your knees, road’s shock shooting tremors through your wheeze. Your tears splatter asphalt earthquakes, your ears between shoulder shakes. Chin to your chest, rocks in your breast, you rediscover all your breaks, as the stranger who came to your door steps his boots before yours.

They swirl air’s vapor around your knees where mists taper.

His boots. Your wide eyes gleam a reflection of the feet you’ve seen; but, this time, through doubt’s veil, beyond this temporal trail, you see more than shadow. Your phone sputters the second voicemail and you stare at the boots of the stranger you know.

He came, he came. You remember his name.

“Please call me,” says your mother into the ground, your phone face-down. “Your father, he’s burning up—”

You press yourself up, cast your eyes up, grimace looking up the silhouette of the reaper that came before and wonder if you’re too done for. The sun vaults horizon, squints your stare, Death’s face blocked by a glare.

The next voicemail plays.

“He’s passed. Around six—they say he went fast.”

“Six?” you mouth.

Six p.m. yesterday: seconds before that stranger came. Your breath bursts out your lips as the man, smiling down, softly grips your shoulder kindling flame. The fog dies; cheek’s tear dries; before a blazing sunrise, stands the man who shares your eyes.

You’ve seen him before, the man you’ve always had. The man who came to your door, that angel is your dad.

In the effort

To find ourselves,

We are held back

By the enemies

That don't exist

Fighting a battle

Against transparency;

The only enemy

Is yourself

Whose words these are I surely know.

His poem is on the website, though;

He may not see me reading here

To feel his verbalight aglow.

My fingers, locking, pull me near

To stop and think as words appear 

Between the loading page's wake.

No gentle write as uploads clear.

My fingers, scrolling, raise the stake 

And I just simply cannot break.

The wand of pen, a zen filled sprite

Of verbalight for poesy's sake.

This site, this Prose, engulfs my sight,

But I have deadlines I must fight,

And words to go, so I must write,

And words to go, so I must write.

"Death becomes you," so she said

While standing at my door.

Covered black, the eerie thread-

"Your soul, I so adore!"

Passed from skeletal design,

A midnight robe ablaze.

Living as its own divine

Encapsulated daze,

There I stood, a drooping heart

Insisting I should live.

Death said, "No, you must depart.

So take the gift I give."

Thinking of the many things 

That I had left to do,

Losing life, the feeling stings.

"I will not follow you."

Came from me, each feeble word,

And Death just stared ahead.

"Dear, you must not be absurd.

If I arrive, you're dead.

No goodbyes, no second chance;

Beyond the worldly gate

You and I will pass in glance;

For none escape their fate."

Pausing for a tear to fall,

I pondered o'er my life.

Death consumed me in her call,

She had become my wife.

Nothing left for me to say;

No utterance to pan.

Breathing in, I made my way

And left the age of man.

Gulping down the bittersweet,

Adventure would renew.

Taking hold her hand's entreat,

I heard her ... "Death becomes you."

If you're reading this, then A) I'm super-famous and this is my Anne-Frank moment--wherein I'm dead, or B) I gave this to you as a testament of how I survived that day--today, when all this crazy shit went down.

I'm really, really hoping that it's option B, because option A seems pretty damn empty without me there to bask in the glory.  But I don't know if I'm going to survive the night, with Angie and Rob banging and scrabbling at my bathroom door.  God, they've been at it for hours!

Speaking of which, where the fuck is God in all of this, huh?  Rob never mentioned any fucking zombies in his tales of hellfire and brimstone.  Being the pastor of a church should have meant that he would have a pretty good idea of what would happen when and if the Big Clusterfuck happened, and God recalled his own.  Which, hey, big fucking surprise: He hadn't!

When all of this had started, he'd rushed over to check and see if his precious sister was okay, and he'd been talking about the beginning of the end.  I'd thought he was drunk at first, because he was slurring his words and his balance was a bit off--which was weird, because he never drank and he had the fucking balance of a ballerina, thank you high school football!

But then he'd gotten angry, and actually bit Angie on the arm!  I'd thought he'd lost his damn mind.  He'd taken a big chunk out of her bicep, and I kicked the shit out of him before dragging my girlfriend into our bedroom and locking the door.  She wasn't doing so well, so I tried to call 911, but I just got this recording that all the lines were down.  I was freaking out, because Angie was losing a lot of blood.

I was about to go and call try to flag down somebody when Angie started convulsing really bad, so I ran to her and tried to hold her so she didn't hit her head on the nightstand or something.  Then I remembered something about people swallowing their tongues while convulsing, and so I opened her mouth and stuck my fingers in her mouth, so as to hold her tongue in place.

She bit down pretty hard.  I would have lost more than just the bit of skin and meat from my knuckles if I hadn't pried her jaws open with the fingernail file from the nightstand drawer.   But she started moaning like her brother before too long, and she got that dead look in her eye that told me that maybe she wasn't Angie anymore...

So here I am, sitting on the floor of my pink-tiled bathroom, writing all this shit down on the toilet paper that I'm pretty sure wasn't a good idea to use in the first place, but fuck it: I've already written this much...

I don't know why it's so damn hot in here...  Rob must have hit the thermostat or something in his crazy ramblings out in the living room or something.  And it's getting darker earlier than I thought it would, considering it's only three in the afternoon...

I'm so hungry, I'm having trouble focusing... 

i wont oto teat soemtheing hoooottt nn stiikii, os methihg fredsxh------------------------------

i have been practicing the art of

concealment

because i once thought that love

was a wide open field

where i could spin in careless circles

and scream at the top of my lungs

my every lucid thought

but have since realized

it is instead

a cold, haunted house

with creaking doors

that only open

with the hardest push

and the strongest of intentions

to get inside.