Sweet Nothing’s
Sweet nothing’s whispered ever so gently in my ear. Dancing gracefully through my mind like a ballerina continuously twirling in her music box. Reflecting my desires as if it were a fresh dew drop playing hide and seek with the sun as it slides down the perfectly placed creases of a leaf. Burning to my core just like a wild fire, catching everything within its path a blaze with no hesitation or regret. Playfully pulling at my heart strings the way the stars play with shadows to create dreams or nightmares. Sweet nothing’s whispered ever so gently in my ear simply to be nothing at all, disappear.
We Are Not Afraid Of The Dark
The silence was enough. It felt shallow. I lay stiff and topless half-draped on him in the dark. I thought about what he might have done earlier in the day. Ordinarily, he would have attended his lectures, but it rained. He hates the sadness that arrives with the rain. Did he imagine that he would be here with me tonight? I imagined being a thought that crossed his mind. How many seconds did the thought of me last? My body lifted with every breathe he took. Time passed slowly. We were in the only place this could have happened, his room. It was cold and empty save the mattress on the floor and desk by the bed. It was unexpected. The pillows smelled like the version of him that I knew, and after what had happened, it comforted me. Maybe the Lexo I know is in here somewhere, but surely not in the body of the man underneath me. Watching him sleep, it was hard to believe that a few moments ago he was pulling at my nipples with his teeth and clawing at my hair. I closed my eyes.
I got up to use the bathroom, and I knocked my knees on the large desk. It did not belong there, but neither did I. It hurt, but I was astonished that I felt pain. Somewhere in the process, I deluded myself into thinking that I existed outside my body. Once the doors closed, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. I was not afraid to be naked in an unfamiliar place. What bothered me was that my features remained the same.
I turned off the bathroom lights before heading back into the room. I looked at his resting form, and I remembered a time when our relationship was innocent and teasing, and uncomplicated by the disasters of intimacy. I took solace in the knowledge that when morning comes, when we are left without the veil of darkness, we will not remember the night so vividly. My fingers traced the surface of the desk lovingly as I ambled, it's not your fault you are here. I came to a stop at the head of the bed. “Lexo” I whispered, “take me home.”
Frontman
We stand among the ocean’s sweat
A hair’s breadth from the cigarettes
The music swings and dips again
An endless song begins within.
Who could you be, if you really tried?
If breathless dreams bequeathed a sigh?
In solemn, steady lyrics lie
Coded quietude amplified.
Nevermore will sweet winds blow
Strangers and teardrops scream below
A fantastic neon stretch above
The sagging, sobbing death of love.
Sharpened strings go with the grain
Pulling toward the depths of pain
Silver ring and patterned rose
To the world’s embrace, he drunkened goes.
Sunday service
Her voice floats like a balloon,
rising to the ceiling of the church in which she sings on Sundays
It's still a quarter to noon
the midday sun sinks the streets in a heat-haze
ripples rise off the asphalt like steam
rising from the surface of a stew
that you slurp when you're sick between fever dreams
but no one in the building knew
their eyes were wandering all over
yet their ears picked up only the song
even wily children keep an air of composure
keeping still, although the hymn is long
the church is a building that sings the songs back
with it's high steepled ceiling of planks of wood
it echoes back perfect, though most of the wood is cracked
from settling, or the vast time this church has stood
the rows of pews force backs to attention
the straight up seats force a dignified posture
but we don't notice as we hold a breath of tension
not worrying of our backs nor the curvature
as the room fills to the brim with her voice
and as we sit we do think to ask
when she sings, do we have a choice?
her cry has never just slipped past
Who Am I?
It was May 2003; Sirens rang out over the small village of South Pekin. It was a tornado. I didn’t know what it was at the time; I had just moved to Illinois the year before and had never experienced a tornado before that. I, of course, was at that stage that all ten year olds are at where they believe they know everything, so I ignored it. In my defense, I had lived near a military base before that had all types of sirens go off at all sorts of times that meant nothing to the common public. At least, that is what I did until my stepmom came running in my room yelling at me to go to the bathroom. I had no idea why and definitely was in no hurry, but I did as told and called the dogs in with me. It was only then that I noticed the wind, It’s howling and blowing increasing until I hear the recognizable crackling of a tree breaking and falling over onto someone’s car, it’s own sirens joining in the catastrophe of noise. My stepmom rushed into the bathroom and ordered me into the bathtub. Fear started to settle in my gut as I realized that this wasn’t nothing, I felt like throwing up but I did as told, curling in on myself to make myself as small as possible after It became clear that my stepmom planned on joining me. Suddenly the power went out, startling and scaring me even more than before. I have always been afraid of the dark, and the sudden plunge into it was too much. I screamed as lightning struck near by and shook the house. I wished it would stop, but it wasn’t, no this was just the beginning.
Soon enough the entire house was shaking from the wind, and I could no longer hear the siren that started all of this. The wind was whistling, howling, roaring, the windows were shaking the trees were crackling, and the house was groaning, and that was when it happened. The tornado broke through the house and was ripping it to shreds around us. I began to feel my stepmom lift off of me and I reached out to grab onto her. I shouldn’t have. I began to be lifted up into the air by the massive funnel of wind. I closed my eyes and clung to my stepmom while screaming in fear and darkness, that is the last thing I knew.
Next time I woke up I was in a bathtub in a destroyed home and a long haired woman was screaming at me. I didn’t understand her but I could tell the simple act of waking up greatly relieved her. I went to stand only to have sudden pain in my feet, I didn’t have shoes on, and the splinters of wood and nails hurt my feet. Luckily, the long haired woman noticed this and called out to an older woman the next house over. Thankfully she had shoes I could use, though I still had to wonder who she was. In fact, I wonder about a lot of things. But most important of those wonderings was the persistent question I have had since I woke up from my dark slumber.
Who am I?
The Broken Lily: A Prologue
You never know when you’ll be seeing someone for the last time. I thought I had seen Aiden for the last time, the last night he made me cry. When he took my hands in his and stared into my eyes. “Oh, my sweet, sweet Lily,” he whispered, rubbing his fingers over my scars, “you are so horribly broken.”
I snatched my hands back and wrung them together in my lap. “No, I’m not,” I whispered back, staring at the nothing in front of me. Shaking my head now, I repeated myself. “I’m not.” Was I trying to convince him? Or was it me I hoped would understand? “But what if I can’t wake up from the nightmares?” I asked, daring to peek out at him through stringy strands of black bangs, hoping for something to hold onto.
Pushing those strands back, he smiled an empty smile as he tucked them behind my ear. “Well, darling,” he mused, as he sighed and sat back, ” that just means that you were never asleep.” I had often wondered when I would learn: that sometimes, just sometimes, the one person you’d take a bullet for is sometimes the very one behind the trigger. “You see, that’s what happens,” he went on quietly, “when you let someone get close enough to destroy you.”
I wondered then if someday, someone would think to ask me, “Who were you before he broke your heart?” But what would I say? What was I, really, before that?
Aiden spoke again, this time as if having read my thoughts. “Some people, Lily, can go through their whole life never having need of a weapon.” As our eyes met, he drove his point home. “They were simply born to be one.”
As my tears fell, I still refused to let it be someone else who took the blame. “But, it wasn’t him that destroyed me,” I murmured, “because I’ve destroyed myself.”
He watched me for a moment, and I wondered what he must see. It wasn’t like him to withhold the truth, even if it hurt. At least he was honest. “It must be a horrible place there inside your mind,” he said finally, as more tears dropped and landed with a splatter on my scarred hands and arms. “You are far too young to hate the world as much as you do.”
Did I? Or was I just a little girl waiting for the happy ending I’d always heard about? The Princess, waiting to be saved? “Will it ever stop?” I asked, wondering if he would dare to lie or tell the truth.
His sudden laugh seemed out of place and I furrowed my brow, waiting for the words that would follow it. He leaned closer and caught my gaze, still smiling. “My darling, have you not heard the storms? The thunder, the lightning, the howl of the wind?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and blinked slowly. “Don’t you see? Even the sky screams sometimes.”
Denial
When you reach 65, I guess the depression question becomes routine during a standard medical checkup.
“Do you often feel down, depressed, hopeless or worthless?”
“Yes”
“Do you have thoughts of suicide?”
“Yes.”
Alright thank you. The doctor will see you soon.
And then, of course, the doctor doesn’t bring it up again and I certainly don’t either, because I’m embarrassed to admit to being depressed and especially to contemplating suicide.
“So what can I do for you today?” he asks.
And I tell him I am concerned about my blood pressure and a bruise on my leg and acid reflux and plantar fasciitis and he doesn’t inquire about depression and I don’t bring it up… don’t ask don’t tell…and so on the way home I am thinking why do I bother to go to the doctor if I don’t tell him what’s wrong and then I realize he would just refer me to a counselor and I hate counselors so I will just endure the pain.
Depression catches me in a weak moment when I’m thinking of how much I miss my children and grandchildren, regrets from the past and not much hope for the future. It’s cold steely fist grabs a piece of my gut and I have to quickly find a place to cry and get over it. But a few times I have been caught, so I have to explain it’s clinical depression and yes I know how to deal with it and no I don’t need help. I know what to do. And of course that takes a great burden away from anyone thinking they might have to do something and it is real pathetic for an old man to cry. Who wants to see anyone cry or hear their sad stories? It is beyond pathetic and weak. So please just forget about it. It will go away. It always does.
I know it’s coming from inside my brain, but it feels like an outside surprise attack.
Of course, there is no one to talk to and if there were, I wouldn’t. Complaining is such a seriously pathetic stupid thing to do and it can really ruin a friendship. Not that I have a friend, but if I did…
But I’m better now and so please don’t bring it up any more. I am seriously better, no longer feeling sorry for myself. Let’s talk about sports.