i.        Night comes once again and her lashes only flutter, her eyes do not close, she is as predictable as the cycle of the moon. Oh come sacred Sleep, steal through her window and bless her with a nepenthean kiss and let her dream serenely till her mind is quiet and her limbs are loosened, and let her not wake for days! However, inspiration sinks its claws in her and she awakens before she can drop her guard and surrender. The pen she clutches looks more like an extension of her gaunt hands that have no time to waste when seizing notebooks off the nightstand, and the pen can never keep up with the quickness of her thoughts. Writing all day and all night, and sometimes weeping about the suffering in her fingers, (arthritis might be in her future, or possibly in her present) but neither risk nor agony will stay her hand. She won’t stop, she can’t stop, albeit there is no malady crueler to threaten her with than Words, and she is already acutely afflicted. They are fires in her brain, consuming and spreading like a virus and the only remedy is to write them out, but it is only temporary, because her immune system can no longer fight them.

ii.         In the stark light of the morning scarcely legible lines are scrawled top to bottom on her sheets, with snatches of Blake and Poe across her pillows, and why not? The bed served no other purpose to one whose lids shut only to scratch the maddening count of minutes; similar to a prisoner who carves down the days. Nevertheless, it is as painful as the sharp tapping of her lashes fanning air and desiccating her bleak, blue orbs, fiercely stinging from the closing scrapes of her eyelids, as the chisel striking a wall (if the wall could feel). Furthermore, her space is swiftly filling up and her walls are already penned murals many times over, and below are layers of paint and words and words and words. She is sitting at her desk by the window, shades drawn like her wan skin; she hasn’t eaten since god knows when. Skipping meals is common, though it isn’t so much skipping as it is forgetting, because eating means nothing when she is writing as though she is dying. And she is writing about everything and nothing, pressing hard into the paper, leaving ghostly imprints from the first page to the last, letters flowing from script to print like the tide of her moods. Her eyes were always older than she was, as though they had seen lifetimes of wonder and too many tragedies. They are deep, but now empty, yet shining brightly (shining too much, and unsettling somehow in a foreboding sort of way) like broken mirrors flashing warped reflections in a wishing well.

iii.         Tonight she does not sleep again and it has been an eternity too long. She is naked and sobbing in the corner of her room, conscious that she is breaking badly, that something deep inside of her is broken, has always been broken, and that there is no way to fuse together the miniscule pieces piercing her heart and floating in futility in her bloodstream. The curtains are drawn so as not to see the moon and all the lights are on in imitation of day and she bleakly hopes the illusion takes hold so she believes that it is morning because she cannot take another night that she is still awake while the world around her is sleeping. In her anger she had ripped papers that now litter the floors, and her numerous letter-crowded notebooks from her overflowing shelves were tossed at her desk and thrown violently at her bed of dead poets and her lovely calligraphy walls; and now she screams out in pain and frustration. Her pale skin is tattooed black, and on close inspection it looks like newsprint that flexes with her wrenching sobs and every movement. An unfinished short story circles ‘round her legs, a diary on her abdomen, random thoughts on her left arm and a to-do list of sorts, things to remember, that she mustn’t forget, that seemed so important in the moment, are clumsily written on her right, her favorite quotes are written on her hands and songs lyrics on her feet. There are sonnets on her breasts and poems composed carefully where there is any space left. Blank pages always mocked her like nothing else; they are there to be filled, just like emptiness. Her white-knuckled hand is still clutching her pen, which is still behind her tortured mind; her thoughts are miles ahead and she can never catch up. No matter how fast she writes she will always be miles and miles from where she feels she wants, and where she needs to be for peace.

Your fingers are guillotines,
purely purposeful machines.

You pluck the apple,
and carve it clean,
find the core,
suck out the seeds.

Take a life
and taste the power,
it's arsenic
and sugar sweet.

You thank God and the devil
with a crooked smile
that the day is young,
and so are they,
and just ripe enough
for you to eat.

I was cold, you made a fire.
The logs crackled like applause
while you played your guitar
and sang to me songs of love
of broken roads and crossed stars;
with every note I loved you more.

You brought me flowers-
no, in my mind you did,
and that was all that really mattered.
I kept them pressed neatly
between Byron, Keats, and Shelly
and the lines that made up you.

You said that you had always loved me
and that I was the only one,
but I didn't really listen,
I only heard what I wanted
instead of what was important,
your use of past tense regarding me.

I was wrong, I was wrong,
I made you grander than what you are.
I built you up in my mind.
I hid your flaws in the shadows
and let the rest of you shine far too brightly.
I saw exactly what I wanted to see.

I was wrong to make more of you
than what was really there,
but my heart believed in the mirage.

That song you sang to me
has turned to ashes in my ears.
It's my fault for trusting you.
The petals wilted upon reflection,
and in this harsh new light
all the words I used to love
are now an empty page.

You are not a song,
you are not a sonnet,
you are just a man

and I was wrong
but I believed in you.

Hereditary.   
        
        I learned the meaning of the word when I was young on a summer afternoon. Too hot to play outside, I was sitting with my dad on our blue couch with the small white polka dot fabric. In retrospect, it was probably a tacky piece of furniture, but love is unconditional when you are small, and I sure did love that couch. I remember my dad watching Winnie the Pooh with me every Saturday morning on its spotted cushions. That day, though, we had a conversation about eyes that I never forgot, and even then, its deeper meaning was not lost on me.
        
        "Daddy, your eyes are green like a cat's," I said.
He smiled, and told me that mine were also green, but unlike his, they changed colors. "Sometimes they are blue. Your eyes were so blue when you were a baby! Big and blue.... Sometimes they are green and blue and gray mixed together, and sometimes they are blue-green; but they are never just one steady green like mine. The shade of your eyes varies."

        I frowned; disappointed I didn't have cat's eyes and wanting to be like my dad. I asked why it was they changed color and he joked that my eyes were like mood rings. That made me laugh and it became a running joke. He always knew how to make everything better.

        Then, I pointed out the gold flecks in his eyes near the pupils. He pointed right back at me. I went and looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and saw that I had them too.

        He said, "like hair color and skin color it is hereditary, a family trait. It is something that is passed down from parents to children when they are born. My mother told me that the gold flecks that sparkle in a person's eyes are a sign of wisdom."

        He smiled his loving dad smile as we sat on that blue couch with the white polka dots that summer day, his hand resting on my shoulder. Looking up into his green eyes with those sparkling gold flecks that gazed warmly down at me; I believed him. I would always look up to him. I still do.


        Now that years have gone by many things have changed, but I still look in the mirror, {s}crying for the past. My eyes are changeable things, like mood rings, as my father told me long ago, so I wait for the right conditions and search until I see. And through my irises, colored deep green and layered like forests, near the black nights of my pupils, I find him winking at me like golden stars, telling me it's all right.

        "I've been here all along, and I always will be."

Born with wanderlust
imprinted on her
beautiful star chart,
like the freckles that
dot her sun-soaked skin;
her heart's wild as the
red tangles, snarled
like brambles, coiled
like crowns, twisting through
her autumnal hair.

No one can convince
her, she will always
willfully believe
that Wonderland lies
beyond the next bend,
no matter what road
her capricious and
come-what-may nature
should choose to travel.

They say she is fey,
and she believes them.
She dreams of faeries
that take her away,
(it's the second star
to the right and straight
on till morning) to
fly on wings that Fate
forgot to give her.

           Vamp for the worlds ending
  with gilt lashes sharpened for the killing.

   Traipse drunkenly in steel-toed slippers,
        inhale spring and exhale winter.

         Trace epigrams upon the man,
          draw epitaphs into the sand;

            all hail your scarlet fever.

     In the summertime, he keeps the windows open to let the breeze in. He hears the ghost train nightly passing by from his bed, yet it is not the steam whistle that keeps him awake. It is not the chug of the engine firing fuel to pull its weight. It is not the thought of the dead that frighten him so, nor the phantasmagorical events that would unfold during the night. It is the sound of the chains as they rattle accusingly on the iron rails.

ClickClackClickClackClickClack.
Two coins on your eyes for my thoughts…

     Sentimental, hateful memories of a boy, and all that he wanted was his grandfather's watch, passed down from his father's father, attached to a chain worn in his breast pocket. How he coveted it, that loud TickTickTick. How he would steal it, just for a minute, just to hold it and pretend that it was his, considering the possibility of never giving it back. He thought he would rather die tomorrow than let go.

     His momma said when he was small that there were no such things as ghosts or ghosts trains for that matter, but she didn't understand, not like he did. His grandfather told him the truth over hot chocolate, that the dead visited the living and the tracks behind their house was a convenient way to travel. But his momma didn't believe, or pretended not to, so she never could understand.

TickTickTick
Two coins on your eyes for my thoughts…

     She never heard how the train in the distance sounds like a gasping breath. She could never know that he wakes from sleep at 4:00 am with the low, rumble like thunder of the train in the distance and the ClickClackClickClack of the chain on rails like a cold metal heart beat. Nor could she ever know the Pavlovian way he takes her father's watch from the bedside table drawer, checks the time, winds it up for the day, dips his kerchief in alcohol and meticulously wipes the watch clean.

Two coins on your eyes...
     
     He wakes with a start at the sound of the train. The face on the watch in the drawer seems to scream. It TickTickTicks so loud, so alive (more than he) but it always bleeds before dawn, and he resents the dead as he goes about his day, weary from the weight of his chains.