I pull you from the shadows,

your memory is like silk,

a loose promise that

you will one day be made real again.

Yet just like silk,

you slip from my hands so quickly

I am left wondering

if I ever held you at all.

Memories can do this to a person.

They come from shadows,

cocoon you in promises

about a time that once was...

until it wasn't.

If my memory of you is my longing

than my nights are full of desperate yearning

for your warm promise to wrap around me once more

even if it is all a lie.

So I wait in the shadows,

a distant dream of a person

hoping for my beloved to come out of my memory,

to make love in darkness.

Only to wake... and find you are not here,

and you never were.

I went to the shore of your longing and gave you parts of myself that you have seen but not known.

First I gave you my eyes.

That you could see the depths of blue and the wholeness yet emptiness that fill my days.

Next, I gave you my ears. So you could hear the undertone of meaning in every human’s voice-their true desire.

I then came and gave you my hands, so you could feel how skin, seemingly malleable, is also unyielding and cages a soul.

My mouth was next. I wanted you to shape and taste the pleasure of my thoughts but with that, the pain too. The sharp bite of what can come after pleasure.

Lastly, I gave you my feet. I wanted you to feel how the Earth moves with me and not always against.

But all you could ask was, “What else?”

And to that I wept,

and was no more.

She follows rivers to the gently rounded bank

near dilapidated slices of concrete she finds her home

over back when, things made sense and life was just a road

or

rather like a path to the ever elongated rivets of obstacles

furrowing their way into life’s roads fluidly cemented in its stubbornness

if only the mind knew its way back from such traveled paths

to wander completely down would pit the soul of any brave traveler

I wonder when things began to erode so perfectly

first at life’s road then at the stubborn slowness of its realness

when this came about settlers took flight and the new world

was never found

all new became ordinary

all ordinary came to ruins.

There is a time and a place for Sorrow. Let Sorrow make a home in you.

Sorrow bathes and lathers.

It soothes.

Sorrow is a strange thing.

Sorrow is the weeds in our soul.

Try to purge it and it grows back as quickly as it came.

Sorrow makes the world stark and real.

Sorrow creates a want for more.

Sorrow is the hallowed breath.

Listen.

Sorrow blooms gratefulness.

Awe.

Before:

I thought.

I thought maybe we could be the pair of lovers who walked side by side, not needing to touch, comfortable to accompany the other, in silent communion.

I made movies in my head. A friendship that maybe could lead to more?

In the thick of it:

Then I stopped dreaming so often. You would look at me and I did not know what text to read from you. From your eyes? From your limbs? Or just from your voice? What were you really saying? Was I looking just to look?

Now:

Now I am awake, your words a halting rejection through clenched teeth showed me I did "read you right" after all. Now, I do not yearn for you. At first not as often and then not much at all. It seems to have happened overnight or maybe it was many nights. What I know is that I am now the one who isn’t able to always see you. I see you and I do not know if I feel anything anymore: is it gone or will it come back?

I do not yet understand how this happened. My first instinct is to look at myself and wonder if I am broken, or that I am running away from the prospect of a relationship, because I believe I cannot have one, because I am afraid of intimacy. I think this has always been true, even before, before he came and

t

o

o

k.

Or

maybe I do not want to date you and you are a friend. A friend from the beginning and a friend to the end.

But now,

I sometimes catch you looking at me. You are thoughtful in your expression and you blush when I smile. What changed?

Did we just

switch places?

There were those potted plants out front, just like I saw them when I left your home for the last time some years ago now.

You were not home.

Just as well.

I don’t need your presence to still feel the fear that sliced through me that soulless night.

I gave myself a tour- the one you never gave me. And beyond this dreamscape of your bedroom I saw blackness. Because I cannot imagine a “normal” home for you.

That would make you human. And I've been demonizing you for years.

Besides, how can you forgive a demon?

You can’t.

So I visited your home and tried to see a home where a human lived, one with flaws but a capability for goodness.

And there you were, so fucked up from war and weary of the world that you turned to writing and women. Two loves you held, but were never humble enough to admit that you had anything to learn from. Only arrogant enough to believe you had more to give (knowledge) and much to take (sex and accolades).

So is it any surprise you found a kind faced girl, with big blue eyes to wet your appetite and fill your ego?

Is it any wonder that it is easy to hate you more, thinking of you as human, because that would mean you can choose to do better, but you didn’t?

You chose to show me darkness, not even letting me see the man who carefully, gently cared for those beautiful potted plants out front.

The ones that have mocked me in my nightmares ever since.

Tie me down.

Take the vines between my thighs

braid your hair with your treachery.

For these vines were never mine.

I did not plant them here.

And yet... oh how I let them grow.

You are a blight in human existence that I wish to extinguish, wish to kill.

For I am neither good nor evil.

I am just as without within as you are without in all respects.

Maybe that is why you can wear my shame like a necklace rather than a noose.

Oh how I wish it was a noose.

How I wish you were not here.

Never here, never there,

Never near me. Never to touch me.

But most of all,

Never in me.

Never, never, never.

How is it that I can feel all at once too much and not enough?

I am like a cup filled to the brim

but when you try to drink from me,

There is nothing,

nothing at all.

I feel the changing weather of my emotions.

Sometimes, the forecast is unexpected

and showers on me mid afternoon,

and I didn’t bring a raincoat.

Sometimes,

I can dance in the rain,

Until I can’t.

Until I don’t know how,

because it is rain I’ve never seen.

I don’t understand why I let the warmth of other suns

comfort me more than my own.

I wish it wasn’t a warmth I wanted,

That it didn’t feel like new and old

wrapped up in a blanket

to hold me on those lonely nights.

And on those lonely nights,

when the call of anyone's name but my own

stills the emotions rioting for attention,

I cry for a warmth I’ll never have as my own.

Searching for any body to leave my soul’s storm behind.

She came to me then,

brown skin under warm heaven.

"Not much longer now,"

She whispered. Eyes a deeper

brown. "Soon, we will be free. Yes."

We ran in moonlight.

There are only stars to see

us. Limbs pushing north.

Once there, we will never sleep

with whips cracking in nightmares

She threw in her whole world when she asked for a miracle... 25 wishes to be exact.

She took a "penny for your thoughts" and ran with it. As in she threw it down here.

I look up many times a day and usually only see hands from where I live down here. Living in a wishing well has not always been the plan... I definitely remember wishing to be set free and somehow, someway found my soul bound to this damn place.

I see her face peaking down at me. No one usually sees me... her eyes widen and her face goes away.

"Well, goddamn" I thought, " Did she just see me?"

I see her again, coiled black ringlets on pale skin and pink lips.

All of sudden, I taste it... I haven't tasted anything in 100 years, but I cannot mistake the metallic clang on my touch. Yes, a quarter but with it is the inexplicable taste of a human emotion I haven't tasted since I made an unwanted home down here,

hope.

The woman, or girl I cannot tell from all the way down here begins to yell, "Hello there, are you okay? Do you need help?"

"Oh honey," I thought. "If only you knew."

She waits a beat and then yells down again, "Hello can you hear me?"

No human has seen me, so it feels a bit incredible to me that I get to actual use my voice after all this time. My voice is a scratchy baritone as it floats upward.

"Well hello darlin;, can you actually see me? Did you throw in the quarter just now?"

Her eyes widen even more, I imagine she looks like a frightened doll at this point with her eyes bugging out from shock.

"Um, well yes, but I mean I don't think that is something to worry about right now, do you? You are obviously stuck, are you hurt?"

I had never had anyone ask after my wellbeing in quite sometime. I take a breath. I guess this is round 2 for trying to get the hell out of this wishing well prison.

"Oh little one... you have no idea..."

I shoot upwards finally free and stand before her. I know how I must look in short brown hair under a cap and a 3 piece suit.

Her gasp lets me know she is as confused as she has ever been, "But you, you," she looks from me to the well, eyes a steady green searching my own for answers.

I can definitely provide that and then some. "Well darlin', you asked for a miracle and by golly I think you got one."

Her second intake of breath has her gasping for air as she takes a step back, her black hair seeming to shine even in the moonlight.

"This is going to be fun," I think to myself with a smirk. "Now, let's begin shall we?"

_______________________________________________

To be continued...