2007-

"Seance"

The girl's grey skin was almost illuminating the room of dull but obsessive death fanatics. I saw sorrow on her stiff face and I took a silent step into the room. I couldn't hear what they were saying. The small gathering of unfamiliar and blurry faces circled around her. She must have been so petrified before it happened. I stood right behind one woman with untamed frazzled hair and loomed forward to have a closer look. The child's lips were a shade of blue that seemed untouched by an artist's pallette and her eyes were already becoming clouded. I knew it was only a matter of time before I had company.

Out of the silence I heard a very clear "bellaline" and the room rippled as if it were made entirely out of water. I turned to look behind me at the doorway. There were others producing themselves behind me looking equally as confused. I slowly turned back to the girl. The reapers around her were searching her body for a sign with their hands and their black eyes. I set my gaze upon her. After a few moments, her milky eyes fell to the sides of her sockets and she looked directly at me with a great uncertain fear. I paused for a short moment before I nodded. A hand slid around mine and I looked to my side where the girl had been reborn. She set her gaze upon her husk lying there upon the floor and then to all the disappointed scavengers around her.

"Bellaline."

My form froze as did the child's. Again the room began to ripple as light interrupted the troughs and sent a warmth through my nonexistence. The girl's sad eyes met mine and I nodded once more. She dissipated then and the room became empty. I knelt down to one of the mortals around the girl and I whispered "She's gone... and so am I." The woman's mouth stretched into a scream that I could not hear and I began to see her thrash about and grab her face. I observed the madness produced from a ghost's whisper and knew I had made my point. I gazed upon the only man in the group whom for a moment I thought had seen me. I closed my eyes and left them there with their failed mission to somewhere less hopeless.

---

"The Battlefield"

I stood on the top of the charred hill and took the sulphuric gases into my decaying lungs. And when I opened my sludge-covered eyes, I could see you; barely, but I could see you... You weren't there before. Your arms were glistening with years of reddish stickiness that brought fear and horror into my fleeting soul. Was it yours? Or...

I couldn't feel my feet, so I assumed they weren't there. The ground was sinking anyway... There was no way I could have known. I gazed once more into the blackened depths that were suppose to be your eyes, and I saw exactly what I always thought I had seen... You knew I was there, and you saw my fragmented body. Knowing that yours were still capable, you still stood there. You stood in my direction but never moved. Typical of you, isn't it? You've been fighting the battle I've just started fighting all your life, and now you're suddenly tired... You've given up on me haven't you? Or maybe... You never believed in me in the first place...

I could feel the depths of the soggy earth pull me asunder, but I still begged you silently... Even though my insides were screaming, and my head had become panic-ridden... Would you? Even though I was slowly suffocating, induced with a numbing case of apathy as I sunk into my new home... Had you come to watch my funeral? ...Had you ever cared?

Had you ever cared?

Had you....

2006-

"Rage"

You wouldn't know,
you couldn't know,
that breaking of the frame;
That crack,
that fissure,
that broken thought;
The one that never came.

Perhaps the scattered ashes lay
among your lap a mess;
The whitened lips of a poetess
who's known of this decay.
In whispers fragrant of rotting flesh,
this intenal civil war, a whore,
who thrives on anger, nothing more,
opening that forbidden door
to birth emotional death.

The suicidal outbreak
eclipses what once was warm.
Strangled all the scream and pain,
thrown strewn upon the floor.

And the pieces can't be,
they never could,
and they boil behind hollow eyes,
contained, like all good girls should.

Their candy lips would never part,
else screams would spill aloud
to the cold and open air about,
and never make a sound.

2005-

"Awake"

The grandfather clock sings three with that saint-like cheerfulness that always promises at least one more chime before I waste away. The long-settled darkness has already lost it's blinding essence and I can clearly make out the many identities of Johnny Depp staring down at me in my disheveled state.

I've been lying awake since one-thirty and the green neon light emitting from my own digital sony has been teasing me for an hour and a half straight with that eerie mockery that only the inanimate objects in my dungeon posess. I stare at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that have already expired the hour that they swore to shine and thinking about all the wonderful things I want most in life; his name is Daniel and I hope that he's incapable of sharing my state of mind; hoping that he's getting the sleep I promised I'd not disturb. I think about our last conversation, how short it was, but even so, the sound of his voice being more than enough to ease me safely into the realm of dreams-- three hours before a needy toilet summoned me.

The house moans in a quiet effort to stabalize it's heavy frame and I sigh along with it. My blanket wraps my right leg and surrounds my torso in a feeble hug. The night is warm but I'm warmer. The uncomfortable stickiness that the Georgian atmosphere brings into my room causes me to deny the loving cloth with a cruel kick and curl into my signature fetal position.

I hug my pillow and pretend it's my Daniel. It doesn't breath or sigh or hold me back, but according to the state he's in while he sleeps, he probably wouldn't either. A few seconds pass and my pillow begins to warm. I nuzzle my cheek against it and smile, wishing it were his back or perhaps his chest. I love the sound of his heart for reasons that I could probably write a very exclusive book on.

The pillow's softness contours around my head as I close my eyes and try to listen to the symphony of the night. It seems that the only performers that are ever available are those damn tree frogs chittering away by my window, a few toads providing the bass, and the ever so punctual crickets playing in harmonized melody to the score of the muggy, twilit wilderness. My kind of lullaby.

I whisper a soft, "I love you" to my plastic star three to the right of the corner, as I do every night before I surrender myself to my friend, the sandman. My room is always shrouded in darkness so I never see the actual stars. These are just as good as the natural ones as far as I'm concerned. Somewhere behind the desert of swirling imagination, I hear the grandfather clock sing four... Tomorrow will be just fine.

---

"Summer Evening"

"Do you want to get out and walk around?" Peter asked me as he pulled his mother's white Grand-Am to a stop. I gazed out at this humbled structure before me faded by time, then lifted my eyes to the threatening sky. I sighed and replied a sincere "No.."

"Oh come on." He said as he turned the key ending the gentle drone of the engine. I heard his door open and realized the battle to be lazy was lost. I lifted the brand-new, unopened bottle of sparkling grape juice, slightly cold from the store's air-conditioning, opened the door, stepped out and gently placed the precious beverage onto the warm cushion.

As I stepped out, a warm, yet humid, breeze caressed me and I looked around at this magical world we had just intruded. Peter wanted to drive, so I told him "Then drive," and this is where our journey took us. Darcy and Miguel would be at his house soon, but they didn't exist anymore. It was just an aged house, a porch swing, a dead field, a collapsed barn, and us. It was like we had stepped back in time to the '50's when Georgia boys ran around in their overalls helping 'Pa gather peanuts, cotton, and corn. I never thought about ending up somewhere like this on a day like today.

"My dad used to live here when he was younger." Pete said. "This is my Grandpa's place. He only comes here when he and miss Nancy have had too much of each other." He peeked into a rather clear window with a small, what looked like, bullet hole. I wandered away from the car removing my glasses and wiping the fog from them; I hate it when they cloud my vision. I put them back on and stare into the window too. The only things visible were a few cardboard boxes that hold random items, a broken bookcase with a few selections on the top shelf, and a table. When I took my cupped hands from the window, Peter had already wandered off.

I hurried to his side as we wandered through a few trees. He pointed to a black stump and chuckled a little bit before asking himself out loud, "Is that where I cut down the oak?" I stared at the stump covered in vivid green plant life and pictured a small boy being chased around by an old man, infuriated at the results of childish curiosity. I smiled. Peter turned to me and asked, "Do you wanna see a creepy looking barn?" I nodded and said "Sure."

I followed him behind a shack with what looked like a well hidden beneath clutter and leaves. There stood a leaning structure built completely of small logs. The building was, indeed, creepy; Like something out of a Tim Burton film. A scent was emitting from it too. I couldn't place it. It was an old musk that was neither bitter nor sweet: just old. I gazed at the building for a while disappearing for a few moments into a day where those same overall-donned boys were opening the door to get a hoe and a rake. I sighed and turned to find Peter wandering the house next door.

I walked to him and we went around to the opposite side. Peter laughed and patted an orange something hiding behind tall weeds. I walked around to see a rusted Anvil.

"I use to play on this when I was a kid." He said as he patted it, then turned and gave a loud chuckle of happiness. There, lined up against the house were three antique bikes, all rusted from age and weather. They were all intact except the middle one which looked like the front wheel had sunk into the ground. "My dad and his sisters use to ride these!" He said. I smiled imagining a boy in blue jeans and a button-up shirt and two girls with white dresses and blue ribbons in their hair riding up the dirt road that disappears into the towering trees.

We walked to the road and up to the white vehicle. Peter was telling me how his Grandpa came down here to get away and how he wanted to out-buy his aunts to get this land after his Grandpa died. I listened contently as the sky began to darken. I felt tiny droplets fall onto my exposed flesh. We reached the car and I crawled in, lifting the glowing bottle to place between my knees as I clicked my seatbelt into place. I looked out of the tinted windows to the swirling sky and wondered what I did to enter the beautiful moment: I wondered if Peter's father was treating him to a look at the past. If so, I'd like to give him a thank you card.