It was hidden there,

melting in soft ice.

His tongue, yellow,

and cowering behind

the birdcage.

The fog began to lift

from the mystery as

I crushed a walnut

with the palm of my hand

on the kitchen table.

He looked at me,

and I felt a tug pull from

my swollen womb.

All the proportions

of the room began to shift into

the scars of Prometheus.

His chin bent slightly

to the horizon, and

his eyes fixed neon.

A volcano rumbled

in the distance.

He paused,

"Maybe we should..."

There it was,

the shadow of his former

self became a streak

of red that reflected in

the window.

His smile morphed

into a pitiful grin, and

his words spat cyanide.

"The Nevada desert was so cold

in the winter."

I pinched the walnut shell between my fingers.

"That's fine, you should go."

My face contorted as the door closed, and our unborn child began to bleed.

jolted awake

no soul for a

million miles

only a soft voice

and the sound of

shattering glass

the ghost child

hides in the basement

she died of yellow fever

she is trapped here

and doesn’t know

how to escape

a small black mass

scurries across the floor

I reach for a smoke

to appease the gods

and settle back into

the rich purple and

blue tones of the

television

It is only a matter

of time

before

the sun rises

the gold to mend

my shattered

glass

She squinted through her glasses at his quiet, studied form, taking tiny but significant steps across the garden. It didn’t take long to get to him. A polite cough chirped out to catch his attention but he didn’t look up and over at her.

Despite the cloud of smoke over his bent head, like a grey halo, she sat a few feet away. Ten seconds later, she shimmied the skirt of her long dress with her across the length of the oak bench, even closer.

He breathed a deeply impatient sigh, and eventually looked her way.

“Hi again”, she whispered.

X,

You chided me. Said I spent too much time on that “shitty app”. What did you call it? “like Twitter and Facebook for wannabe writers”? That is was nothing more than a social media dumpster fire, “full of drama” and for “mediocre talent”. You called me naïve and too quick to join the “clique”. You regarded my interaction with other writers with utter disgust and jealousy.

Your words stung. I’m not sure if it hurt more because of coming from a lifelong friend, or from a fellow writer I had always respected. You being both, it certainly hurt. But this is not the reason for my email. I want to let you know I am leaving everything behind in order to focus on my writing.

First, I want to tell you ‘thank you’. Thank you for fortifying my suspicion that I may indeed have a story within worth telling. Without your disparaging words regarding my talent and social habits, I may have never taken this drastic step of cutting ties and pursuing seclusion. Your harsh words have ignited a fire in me to write like I never have before. Thank you.

Second, goodbye. Do not reply to this email. You will not hear from me again. I am excited for life’s upcoming chapters; I feel they will be some of my best yet. Our friendship is now a mere footnote of regret in a book forever shelved. Be well.

Wannabe writer no more,

Mariah

Unencumbered

Weightless

Invincible

Non-feeling

Unemotional

Aloof

Paradoxically

An emotion within itself

A freedom in the lacking of

Don't want to name it bliss

For then bliss it will become

Soon I will be back to human

Full of labels

Unwrapped and undone

Beribboned then

Unfurled

Open me up

And I'm out of luck

Tangled up

In my wishes

And my regrets

Sorrow for my haves

And have-nots

Happiness heavy

For the despair

Is an expert stowaway

Finds all the crevices

And trapdoors.

Hijacks the light,

Darkens corridors of delight.

...the spell is broken,

not even noon and my hands

have scrambled for anything that resembles a vice,

Unlucky enough to have fallen

within my sight.

I am tormented, i am angry,

I am amused by the wickedness of ironic delight.

I am shamed by my pridefulness,

Basking in the glow

Of my thoughts

Found deserving in another's

Eyes.

...human again.

Swallow your whiskey,

Exhale your toke,

Laugh at yourself,

Cuz you're just another bloke,

Just another sucker,

Until this rollercoaster stops.

(Spoiler alert- the attendant went for a bathroom break, was bludgeoned in the stall. Your ride is magically invisible, you are restrained so you won't fall, your destiny is set, your fortune cookie says, "You are fucked!" And that is all.)

It was getting colder out and the rodents were coming in for shelter. I could hear the mice running the walls while I tried to sleep. It wasn’t uncommon for me to feel one run across my feet when I brushed my teeth. Meg would chase the sounds of the mice in the walls and I was going insane. I had flies in the room. They would come in from cracks in the light covers and take over the place. One night I spent six hours killing every fly I saw with folded typing paper. I became obsessed with them. I would crouch behind the big stand after I had cleared the room of them and wait for one to crawl out from the ceiling, and I would spring on him and flatten him. I thought I would never get to Manhattan, I thought I would rot there. The car had been on empty for weeks. I had nowhere to go and no money. All I had was the warehouse and I was lucky I had that. I could feel my mind slipping away moment by moment. It had nothing to do with where I was or the lack of food or humanity. It had to do with the morbid process, my incessant repetition of speeding into brick walls, my travels further into failure. My own brother lived close and he didn’t give a fuck. Time came forth and showed me pictures only the dead could see.

I was not human anymore. I hadn’t used my vocal chords in over six weeks, aside from talking to Meg. I was barely surviving. I learned to adapt to Meg’s food but that made it go quicker. My brother in the south end drove over illegally one Sunday and gave me a twenty. When he walked in and saw me he had to stop and put it together. I was ashen, my ribs were showing. He took me out to eat but my stomach had shrunk and I couldn’t put down half a burger without getting full. He bought me a can of coffee and some groceries. I was able to live for a few days off the groceries. All I had was the typewriter. It was all I ever had. He wanted me to come stay with him in the south end. He even said Meg could live upstairs with me. I couldn’t do it. I convinced him that I was fine. I had become so addicted to being alone that even spending the day with him was painful.

Another month went. On my 29th birthday I locked the place down. I could see headlights outside of my room and I heard someone knocking but I didn’t get up. Insanity had come fast, but it came certain. I didn’t know if it was the years behind it, or if the room was simply the last straw, the snapped end of string with no time left to replace it. I knew that I had lost my mind sometime in the passing week, but coming to terms with it only lost it further. I wanted to be surprised that it had finally found me there in the room, but I wasn’t surprised. The time it took had been well-earned, since the age of 16. The speed of its arrival was only offset by things bigger than the room that I wouldn’t let break me. The room was only there to garnish the grave, what the room reflected was what I’d traded my mind for, to let it go without another fight in me.

I was dead and destroyed, wasted, sorry, lonely and fucked. I had once had women and people who believed in my work. I was once a human with honor and strength and muscular flesh. Now it was gone. Everything was so gone I wondered if it had ever existed. Maybe I was born in the room and everything had been a dream, a neuro-chemical hallucination brought on by flies crawling down my throat and copulating as I slept. I had quit masturbating because it exerted me, and it only made me hungry afterward. I was not even alive. I was a cell in a jar and I was being monitored by giants who had painted this life for me to live as though it was real. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes and refused to breathe. Not because I wanted to die, but because I was bored with breathing. My body went through a cold wave and then it was dark.

I woke up with a headache and vomit on my chest. Meg was on top of me, licking my face. I was naked, and I reached down and counted the thin muscles that poked out of my stomach. I had eight of them. Eight was a magic number right then. I thought of scenarios with the number eight. If I cut off two toes and two fingers then I would have eight of each. If Johnny had ten apples and Susie ate two of them then how many apples would Johnny have left? Eight, goddamnit! Eight was a powerful figure! I drew figure eights in the air with my finger.

I was 29 years old and I was a loser. I had tried but I had failed. The world was good and sports were good and careers were good and a job meant success and only fools thought they could write. Brad came into my room and told me he wanted money for the utility bill. It was a total of two hundred and eighty-six dollars. I jumped up, and told him there was that number again. I told him I would give him eight-hundred and eighty-eight dollars in eight days. He backed away slowly and said whenever I got some money, that was good enough for him. He told me to take it easy, and he backed out the door. He had his hands up and he bumped his head walking out. I looked at Meg and she cocked her head at me.

I was a freak. I was wasting away by flesh, rotting away by soul. Where were my people now? They were out in the sunshine and they were making love and talking to God and God talked back to them. I was no concern of anybody’s anymore. I was now at the gates of my real self. I was born for the room. I was born to write in the room. Without the room I would blow away and die in the dusty wind.

One night I woke up to the sound of Meg growling deeply. I had never heard her growl like that. I reached back and flipped the light on. She had this huge rat cornered in the room. It was drawn back against the wall, hissing at her. It was horrible. He was big and vicious and his tail reminded me of a whip used to snap out my eyeballs. He took a scratch at Meg and I snapped. He was diseased and hungry and he had the heart of a demon. Then I got it. He was a demon, coming for me to take me away because I had even failed to do that on my own, and the devil was fed up with me. He sent the rat to me to gnaw out my esophagus in my sleep.

I stood and hissed back at him. He was watching me with those eyes and he wanted me. I picked up my typewriter and held it over my head and stepped toward him. He gave me a flash of death and I brought the typewriter down and killed him.

Meg jumped onto the couch when it hit. My typewriter was broken and he was on his back, a claw still ready, but the nerves died in seconds. His face showed pain, remorse to his master for not carrying out his work. I scooped him up and carried him out the door. He was heavy. I walked down the hall and saw myself in the big mirror. There I was, naked, holding this rat. My profile was sick. There were my ribs, and I had a six month beard and long scraggly hair. I saw the picture again and my mind rushed back into my skull. It hit me and I took one more look at the mirror and stumbled back against the wall and slid to the carpet, holding the rat and sobbing. I threw my head back against the wall and screamed. I sobbed and heaved and coughed up yellow and blood on the rat. I cried for him and for my life. I screamed for my mother in Heaven and for my soul, for a way to get back into my body and live again. I screamed at the ceiling and called my fate a worthless whore.

Outside I held the rat by his tail and swung him in circles until I let him go. He disappeared in the darkness, and I heard him thump far out in the grass. Back inside I turned the valve and scrubbed myself with hot water until my skin was red and raw and it pulsed. I spent the next hour bending and screwing my machine back to use.

This vapor tastes like yesterday,

and this drink smells like rage

Bleeding sorrow,

with every breath I take

All I do is sit in the smoke,

hallucinating words that sit in this cloud

Flying so high,

I may never come down

A once mythical creature,

has since become all too real

Fear of closing my eyes,

for it may disappear

Christmas treats come months before,

numb my body, my lips, my gaze

Make me dizzy with every sip,

until I cannot remember how I got to this place

All of these vices,

no reason to give them up

They bring me closer each day,

and my time will surely lessen as I refill my cup

Everyone can break your trust.

"When?" "Why can't you?"

"Please, not right now."

"I can't." "I don't know how."

"Goodbye or later?" "Now?"

"Forget, believe it." "Not gonna show!"

"For the love of God, please, let me go!"

"Will you ever give me another chance?"

The words I formed in different chants.

Your lock was ever open,

for anyone to go in.

Gullible, the bear of me,

who thought I needed a key.

What are the chances that I met you,

living in a world colored in blue.

I have no authority over my heart,

only an image of us that has been torn apart.

The blue has bled into all of my clothes,

giving me nothing but migraines and drives on empty roads.

What are the chances that we are both here,

in this world that breeds nothing but fear.

Fear and loneliness push us around,

but I have no where to look now except the ground.

Statistically we have beat the odds,

based on the probability of us being here at all.

What are the chances that I ever move on,

I guess it doesn't matter because it's the end of the song.