When I was seven

I had a neighbor

He was 85

He harvested snails

In a large wooden box

In his back yard

We would talk about books

Listen to Led Zeppelin

and Jimmy Hendrix

he on his easy chair

me on the velvet ottoman

He knew my mother

her zebra couch

her purple shag rug

her need to sleep

she stayed sick and dying

while the records would spin

He was kind to me

his wife was ill too

The wife knew death

as did I

I would make her fondu

and escargot

When it rained the

old man would

play her piano

with crooked

fingers and sing

like Sinatra

(It was a very good year)

As good as it was bad.

clothes when irrevocably stained get thrown out

and it's funny how we all try the same

with memories

only to find that the trash man

never comes

I gaze

This is Eternity.

In front of me.

Won't call it an addiction?

This is surreal

And yet tangible.

Is it a passion?

Or plain madness?

This is a bustling city

In front of me.

Illuminated.

Is Heaven golden?

I stare at everyone

And there I see myself!

Hovering cupcakes follow me

Strangest?

I look at my wings,

They flutter in eagerness.

It's like all the dimensions, high and far off 

Can now be touched.

It's pleasantly warm,

And yet it snows.

Lights float on the lake

And stars still pose a mystery.

I look into the vastness

Ready to explore

Everything that had mystified me

But then Beauty grips me tight.

I sit here and gaze

I'm addicted

It's painful, it slays

A trick of imagination?

I gaze for hours

I'm addicted

To this bad longing

Of being there.

I gaze, uninterrupted

I'm addicted

To the Magic

It might, might possess

I gaze. Lost.

This is Rowling's Erised

I've painted on my wall

I often, often forget to live. I'm addicted.

More paint here

Won't call it an addiction unless

You paint your own image

I  n    E  r  i  s  e  d. 

Painted on the petals of trees

That shift passively in accordance to the breeze;

Raindrops magnifying the cooling glow

Until they eventually roll off the edges;

Shadowing a floor of graying sediment

As the sun blazes over ominously;

Rough branches grazing against the fuzz,

Scraping off richness in slight segments;

Attacked mercilessly by crawling critters

That greedily devour their lavish bodies;

Thriving resiliently in their havens,

Deep and intense and alive.

Then Autumn decides to come.

It urges these gems of nature

To transform into tawny, fragile flakes.

Hanging limply from their constant twigs,

The flakes become so crisp and wrinkled

That they suddenly snap.

Descending slowly from their origins

With no choice but pitiful acceptance,

They flip and swirl and reel

Until finally reaching a piece of solid earth.

Settling precariously on the graying sediment, 

They gradually shrivel into specks of dust,  

Becoming the land which they once kept cool.

There are birds living in my house

under the eaves of the porch.

Each spring they sing at dawn 

with their children,

chattering on about the sun, 

how it moves from the horizon.

And they must think it is their house,

their place decked out with their found things.

I leave them.

For don’t we all live on the solitary edge of 

someone else’s world?

She thought a few drinks

With her friends would be fun.

Vodka circled the group of teens.

A few rounds later, drunk she was.

What was fun, turned to a suicide attempt and a missing person case. 

She drunkenly said yes to sex.

Nearly was raped.

Depression overcame her.

On the floor she lay,

Crying.

Crying.

Crying.

Threats of killing herself.

Someone thought this was hilarious, and offered her his knife.

And she took it.

To get it out of her hands required some wrestling. 

We called for her parents,

and her mother came.

And so she lay in bed to sleep it off...

Or so her parents thought.

I really fucked up now. I can't turn back, were her thoughts soaked with Vodka.

Depression was winning, and its victory fed it to succeed more.

Why be here?

So she decided to end it.

She jumped out the window, without plans of opening her eyes again,

But remained conscious...

2 AM and the police and her friends are searching the town.

The nagging of her worrying friends fortunately brought her home.

To this day she refuses to admit to where she stayed.

Alcohol is her self harm.

And alcohol brought on this episode.

Don't let a drink make your decision to stay or to hide.

Don't let a drink make your decision to live or to die.  

Recently, I quit my job. I hated my boss, I hated the hours, and I hated that I left my dreams in the dust. So, I quit. Instead, I work twenty hours a week and barely make enough to keep the collectors from towing my car.

I tricked myself. If I want to live comfortably, I need to write. I need to do freelance work and write every. damn. day.

This is all well and good, but doubt settles over me. I love writing, but am I good enough to purchase? Writing has never been about money for me, but I've made it about that now.

And I feel myself withdrawing, growing frustrated. It feels like a chore.

I want to create fiction. Facts aren't my niche, but facts are what pays. Sometimes, we have to do the stuff we're less passionate about to reach our dreams. At least this time, the work is related to writing. At least this time, it will help me to reach my goals.

I can never stop writing, even if I never reach a point where I can live off of this dream.

"They are coming!" She screamed.

Their presence was all too familiar.

She knew it was them by the way they flooded her bloodstream: heating up her body and causing her stomach to writhe in fibrillating anxiety.

"No, no, no." She murmured, feeling her pulse quicken and her skin moisten with perspiration.

"This cannot be happening to me again."

But it was.

And it was irrevocable.

She had attempted and failed many times to wall herself off from them because she knew how they had controlled her in the past. She particularly loathed the idea of feeling vulnerable. Especially when they inflicted such an undesirable subordination upon her.

Simply intoxicating yet also sickening. The bittersweet harmony between love and hate. But she does not wish to evict hate in expectation of love's arrival. Love only bargains for a short lease which he promptly breaks with no promise of a security deposit.

She knew this sort of scandal all too well.

"Please,...get out."

A scanty and rather meager plea, but yet one so innocent and completely absent of will power that it would be difficult for anyone to resist. That is if anyone could even assist in her defense. But you see, no one can. She is alone. Full to the brim of ravenous feelings and emotions which devour her very being,...but alone.

They say "the heart wants what the heart wants". But she understands what is really occurring here. Her mind has evaluated her body's odds of survival and after a brief synopsis, has decided that the human heart is a danger to her own viability. It must go. So she watched as her mind decided to let her heart depart in a way that only its foolish, romantic self would approve of.

Her mind allowed her heart to discover what it loved,

and then let what it loved,

kill it.