And I see them from a distance. And she grabs his hand and pulls him in. The music pulsing through them both in whirlwind beats. Noise exploding around them. The crowd moving to the energy. And the song that she said always makes her cry is pounding across the floor and the stage and the walls and their skin in heaving waves. And with their eyes locked on each other I can finally see who that song belonged to. And I shut my eyes to block them out. Because I’ve realized it’s not my eyes she’s searching for even when she’s lost deep in their shadowed depths. She’s only drowning in him. Always drowning in him. And she lets him pull her in his undertow.

I am submerged

below my flood of tears.

Can’t gaze

through murky vision.

My arms flail

trying to swim

through emotions

impeding my struggle.

I am drowning

I grit my teeth

to stay the flood

from flowing sobs

penetrating my soul.

Perpetual grief

adding to my misery.

My despair darkens

like sky’s sorrow.

Fissures weep

spitting blood of angst.

Chaos speaks

through thunder’s hammer

and lightning’s smite

Please, lend me

your heart

to float on before

deep watered threat

conquers

and takes me under.

Expel my torrents

from body and breath

before I gulp

the cascading torment

and nothing remains

but muck and sludge.

Quench my need

engulf me

immerse me

inundate me

wrap me

in your warmth

quell my pain.

There is no flood.

There is no drop of water on my tongue.

There is no memory of a fruitful time.

Raindrops, cold and wet and spiteful, taunt me as they rage against my window.

I want to feel their life on my nakedness.

I want them to feed my sight.

I want them to awaken my unknowns.

But my window is locked, and I have no energy to turn the latch.

My mind is lost in unending existence.

My heart pumps blackened dreams.

My soul seeks fruitful times.

Parched and weak, I wish for hail to break the glass and force a flood inside.

I opened my eyes

In a snap

Why was it freezing?

Was I losing my mind~

The bed was swaying &

Rocking from side to side

What in the world??

Slowly I made my way

Away from the bed and

Clos’r to the bedroom door

The knob was covered in

*gasps* Ice!? Whoa!

Was I dead— or in some

Other parallel universe?

Soon, I heard the sound

Of maniacal laughter

Then she appeared before

me grinning from ear to ear

She told me that I was

Her newest victim-

There was no place for

Me to go at all to hide..

I was trapped in her

Crazy world so very

Far away from home.

#Krystaline.

The first that struck was of tumultuous force, tumbling over my entire being. I’d lost my footing as it crashed over me, knocking the wind out of me and dashing my fragile vessel against the jagged edges of the rocky shoreline.

Stunned beyond tears, with its

overwhelming strength, it had taken me as a rag doll and tossed me, emptying me like a boat, capsized in the perfect storm; stripped bare of all its belongings, submerged and sinking to the bottom of an abysmal depth. All of me lay scattered across the endless abyss that engulfed me. That became me.

I finally caught my breath only to heave as the flood of emotions began to careen throughout my body. My mind was awash with a mixture of fear, denial, anger, sorrow, and confusion. Nothing was deeper, though, than the distance that had now separated us for all of time to eternity. I drowned in the absence of him; in the nothingness that life became, empty of his love to surround me and wash over me.

I looked around to find pieces of my heart and soul, tattered and floating like wreckage atop the blue. My sole identity bobbed in the pitch black deep like a lone buoy.

Alone.

Cold.

With no land in sight.

Tears began falling to overflowing. Slowly, their ebb and flow came in waves that were high and low; moving me about the vast loneliness and flowing the lost pieces of my self back toward my being. I collected the fragments as they drew near me, but gullies of

grief had washed out and eroded the banks of my heart. Cavernous spillways were full beyond what they could contain. I was drowning in the bitter tides of pain and unspeakable heartache.

At times, the storm clouds gathered to tempests that struck without notice. At other times, the colored sky and position of the sun, read like a sailor’s prediction and storms would arrive right on schedule. The grief never ceased. It was ever encompassing and falling upon me all at once.

I drifted, afloat, as the natural course of time and emotional healing washed me closer and closer to the shoreline; back to where I was before, but before would not be back where I was.

As I found myself nearing the edge of the separation between the depths of sorrow and the shores of sadness, I glided past the once jagged rocks that had battered and bruised me years before. The many tears I’d cried had washed over them and smoothed them to polished stone. They were there as a monument, like a gravestone, but could no longer inflict the same pain they once had.

I stood at the edge of the shore and gazed at the horizon; its dividing line upon the deep sapphire body where I had been immersed and the lapis-lazuli heavens, above, where he was. My feet slowly sank into the sand that was still warm from the late summer sun and I emptied myself dry. Tears streamed down my cheeks creating rivers in the sand. I gathered the tear soaked sand and I built, for myself, a sand castle on the shore of the grief that had once swallowed me alive.

A tune began to rise like a river, cleansing to my soul, and I sang as I dared to rebuild, there, at the once was, alongside the eerie deep.

“I live in a castle fortress

on the edge of the ocean, deep

and I know that someday tides

may come

and wash me out sea.

But ’till the waters rise again

and call me out to grieve

I’ll live each day with all I have

in my castle by the sea.”

Sometimes, still, my tears tear down my castle walls, but my foundation remains and I rebuild it again as I remember his love that filled me to overflowing.

In starts and stops it rolls down that little valley between her cheek and nose. Relentlessly it rolls, there being no end to the destruction of its crushing weight.

I put up a fingertip to dam it, to stop its slide, wanting to push it back inside, but it only washes over and around, carrying our hopes and dreams, spilling itself over the edge of her hopelessness with the thunderous force of Niagra.

Deep depths

They pull me under

Stolen breaths

Murmur mysteries below

Heavy water

My eyes won't open

Gasp for air

I'm stuck in seaweed

Fish tank

Can they see me

Poison drink

I can't stop myself

Current coaxing

Let go of the shoreline

Horizon blooming

There's light under here

Soft seawater

Drifting silence

Salty melody

Capsized mind

Stolen breaths

Floating memory

Deep depths

No return

ocean. the water reaches just under my chin as I climb to the surface, only to be pulled back under. confession:

I am afraid of the water. I am afraid of the force that it carries, the weight that it holds, the children it has dragged

deep beneath itself. I am eight years old and drunk on sunlight and the beach is the closest thing to love

that I have ever experienced. brave moments bring me out into the current and humiliation drags me under again.

it's fear that guides me, always- fear that holds me fast and cradles me like so many waves. you are looking within all of this,

trying to find driftwood to hold onto within this lukewarm saltwater I bathe you in, and I give you this answer- it is the fear of drowning

that keeps me afloat. it is the fear of darkness that brings me light. it is the fear of death that gives me life.

Illusions.

Dripping from my mind

Like hanging drops of dew

On bending grass,

Or slithering

Down my stem.

Clear as glass,

Transparent

Like crystal waters

Oddly mirror still

At the foot of waterfalls.

The turmoil of the world crashing down

Undisturbs my illusions

Like pools of water

Pure and

Dripping from my mind.