By Shadygirl ed4u@hotmail.com Date: 22 July 1998
I stood, shoulders bowed, above the railroad tunnel, like a martyr watching a sea of opposing troops approach. I closed my eyes and allowed garvity to hold me still under Night's weightless mass. The Moon pressed it's lips against my crown, a string of stars danced around my neck. I raised my lashes to the night to embrace heaven, but found deeper salvation in the shelter of your arms. But now, now you are gone. I can still feel a static warmth left, weakeneing but remaining, or your mistaken love. Love that you ran away for, (or from?) off to cater to her physical fragilties.
My love was boiling hot, bubbling over, and I had to let some go. You didn't seem to mind. I poured some out before I got burned. Beads of perspiration were threaded through my pores in an effort to show off your exertion. Little did I know that a storm cloud was forming. The rumble came to late. Shook us violently apart. And the rain did not cease. Now that the fire is out, my love is cold, and it seems to hurt more.
So sick of hiding. Just wish someone would find me already. Don't you see me? Here, in the corner, trapped under a sheet of translucent white (the closest I get to the light) like an abandoned piece of furniture in a vacant childhood home. I've been forgotten. The minutes wear my mind thin with answerless question. If nothing of me exists in the pocketed souls of my loved ones, (of him), do I exist at all? As if in response, the pink skin of my palm wavers slightly, like a mirage, and dingy bone structure takes a momentary glimpse of life outside the physical. I know time will leave me as nothing more than a textured erasure smudge on the cold basement floor. All I can salvage is the left-overs, the crusty life stuck deep beneath my fingernails, saved for a day of gnawing boredom.
I feel discomfort in my chest as my soul tightens it's grip on my heart, relentlessly trying so hard not to let it go again, with every thought, every memory I have of him, all that's left, besides the sticky static.
He comes to me. He used to. He would save me from the ember red eyes upon my brow. He would glide his sweet fingertips down my face, the eyes would close, and my emotion would instantaneously revert back to my horrorless beginnings. I was a fawn in his hands and he was mercury in mine. When the temperture rose, so would he. But he was mirrored poison, and that was the problem. I saw too much of myself in him. And, with out his gliding fingertips, the only emotion I had was wet depression. As stars ran from the sun's rebirth, he would come. His fingertips would wake me before they touched my eyelids, and by the time they reached my lips, my smile was genuine. He would lift me, and carry me, and sway me like the limp tides of an absent moon. Together we would watch the day, and try to race the sun to introduce failure to her unchanging routine. And when she won, he would carry me on his shoulders, back to my bed, where he would lie me down, and fill me, before taking his fingertips to my face, and lowering the corners of my mouth, until the sun broke night's calm again. He had been my day, and he had lead me to believe my night's were tamper-resistant. He introduced me to ugly love. And when I thanked him, he left.
I saw him yesterday, (or was it last year?) with her arm draped lazily over his, as they walked down the road. I saw her rubber band smile, and immediately the pink tracks of touched flesh ran from her hair to her chin, where his fingertips controlled her. Her mechanical walk. Her faded eyes. Her bright empty smile. But still, hate won over pity, in the final round of musical chairs for an empty space in my heart. A grunt exits my lungs and my shoulders slouch in realiztion that I would still rather be his zombie, than alone with my thoughts, even if they are real. I treat my memories of him like the individual boards on an hard wood floor. I know they are old, but with enough wax and polishing, and time, they shine more then they did when they were new.
Sunlight. Moonlight.
Sunlight. Moonlight.
Sun. Moon.
They ache for me. Pressing fingertips of light on my world, wordlessly conversing with me, double knotting my last thread of fraying sanity. Painting my blank white sheet like a canvas, yellow with dawn, fiery oranges and reds with the sunset, sighing violets at dusk, and the blue-white light of a crescent satellite.
The warping floor splinters into my numb thigh and I shrug, remembering my ancient softness, my sweetness, my innocence. I bite at the ragged edges of cloudy yellow nails and rock back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Slowly. Ignoring the sounds of nightmare's war outside my shelter. Shuddering with each rifle's scream. Feeling the gun smoke capture the spirit of it's kill as it hovers above it's conquered prey, chuckling. It burns my eyes like the past. Smoke dissipates as memories come in clear, and then, with out warning, I am young. And I am standing, hard shiny wood beneath the clicking of my shoes. Oh this room! My eyes squeeze shut, red with highway mileage. I have lost home. But I am still young behind eyelids. The mantle is high above head, cluttered with gray emotionless life and boring tales. Antiques rest weary legs around me, and dream of their own youth, when grays' and beige's were white. And there, on the wall, I look back at myself. Soft fire floats around my head and dives in spirals to the wide clover pools buried deep in my cheeks. My eyes open, startled. My memory is still before me. "Rearview mirrors are only a safety precaution." I plead with her. It doesn't respond. The memory fades, flickers and dies as quickly as it had come, and the door remains locked and unharmed.
A sigh trips over my lips and I am thankful for boredom. My crisp white shelter startles my nomadic mind as it trembles. A beetle crawls into MY space and I suddenly feel claustrophobic and violated. It stares into my eyes. It's lips move silently, and it tells me a sad story, before my callused toe crunches, ending his tiny life. The story is over, and I can't remember what the room looks like anymore, or even that there is a room, or life, or love, outside of my sheet. The crisp cracked corpse doesn't exist. Words and thoughts are idle. My head cocks, at a faint sound, but there was none. My eyes see, but do not comprehend. And I live out my days with silent awe and the strange light upon my world.