Trophy
Longing and desire were all I asked for in this relationship. I picked you when we know I could have chosen anyone, asking nothing but a smile in return. The shining rock on your finger and matching ones on your neck and wrists weren't enough, I realized as I watched you dot rouge on your cheeks and pucker your lips for someone else. This someone else who saw you for the last time in my car wearing my clothes, shining like my jewelry. They call it first degree murder though I'd call it defending your title, no matter the cost.
Genesis of Imagination
Waterfalls of acrylic pain shower brown roads
And the cellophane palette dissipates slowly
Into a shower of multicolored tinsel and gems.
The family steps out, curious of the new world.
The mother, with blue hair down to her butt.
Held her child in one arm and her husband's
Callused, ogre-like hand in the other.
Cautiously, they explore, following the river
Of parafilm that once kept them in reality
Down a precipice towards the forest that awaits.
The forest to soon become a home for them,
The unwanted thoughts and ideas of the world,
Where they would rule and decide what goes.
They lived long enough to create the laws,
Fusing chaos and wonderous intrusive thought
Into magical creatures and crazy scenarios
Their son watched and admired, growing older,
And more fascinated with what the world refused.
Winged horses, horned rabbits, wide violet grasses,
Lilac-scaled lions with translucent skin and flowers
Made of greyscale wax with purple stems and thorns.
No law in the land went unchallenged or overturned
Except that the imaginary and the real must stay
Separate by all means, even during war and famine,
Even when those with imagination die and leave
Abandoning what they created into this microcosm.
The parents broke one rule, one fatal rule, and left
Their son in charge to never make the same mistake
And make no exception for any dreamer or wonderer
No matter what the situation was. Distraught and lost,
The despot ruled from his childhood home, the large
Marble castle overlooking the rainbow waterfall
The family once followed to create the world known
As Makk Bellif, a refuge for those imagined, created
From theory to imagination to arbitrary thoughts
That plague every human, young and old, in their sleep
And sit on their chests, suffocating them during the day.
Watching them, coming and going like waves of emotion,
The despot tries to ensure their safety and keep them
From disappearing forever like his parents.
Break My Heart
Twirl along the edge with me once more,
Avoiding the abyss of sentimental words.
Take my hand and walk me to the darkness
And lean in for once more kiss, one more hug,
One more gentle graze on my cheek and look
Into my eyes with that smile I fell for years ago
And whisper those diabetic sweet nothings
Before dipping me off the precipice again.
Forgotten
Stroking her hair, looking at pictures, I watched Nana's mind work. The little farm in Illinois. The sienna school photos of her and her twin sister. The picture of her mother, stoic and serene, and father, scarred from the war. Her little brother, who died of cholera as children. I thought maybe the memories trickled back, since she quickly bypassed the pictures of my grandfather, her first husband, and lingered on the pictures of her second husband, beautiful on the outside only. But then, she looked at me, teary-eyed and smiling, and whispered softly, "Your life is beautifully tragic, Anna."
Hard Truths
A stony heart refuses to concede to say the words formulating in my mind like a snowglobe being shaken into a flurry of torn love notes and shredded photographs. The scene ended long ago and the curtain closed yet demands for encores keep regurgitating feelings that I just wish would make sense. None of it does, from meeting you to you leaving agan, and again, and again (and one more time for good measure). Perhaps these come up as God's way of telling one of us that there is some unfinished business holding us back. Since I'm the only one talking, I guess it's me that needs to keep learning.
The thing is it's not like I'm not trying to learn and move on. Not in the "just get under another" way either. I mean, I'm not the same fifteen year old kid getting with bad men just because I know it'll spite someone who convinced me whatever we were doing was love. I'm sure I told you, during the drunken nights we'd spend talking, all about my exploits as the coveted "other woman" who shot herself in the foot like your old friend shot what's-her-face. You seemed so enthralled by my life that felt so bland in comparison to you, a gangbanger who played football and rapped and made thousands and literally left it all to hide in a war-torn country.
I hardly think of you now. I mean, you are in the back of my mind I guess since you still come up so easily whenever the opportunity arises. Just look at this piece that's another plea for the memory of you to stop haunting me so I can move on. I don't want to lose what you taught me in many ways but I want it to fade. I want to not compare what we had to what I have now or what I'll have later in life. Since you are clearly not what God intended for me, or are currently pulling a goddamn Jonah and hiding at the bottom of a sinking ship acting like you're not endangering everyone around you by not listening, I need to make a move and sever the tie between us before these memories make me drown.
You were a lesson in love, sure. A lesson that a person can dominate me without terrifying me. A lesson that a person can love me wholly and completely if I just let them. I guess just like you're more emotionally open, I'm more physically open. There's no way I would have gone on my first date or had my first adult kiss or lost my virginity had I not met you. I would have never gone on a limb and tried something new if I was unable to see what life feels like when I stop trying to plan it and anticipate what will happen next. I mean, you were predictable, sure, but your predictability was because I had jumped into the unknown and allowed myself to be fully curious and intrigued by someone, not as a romantic interest but as a person. I got to learn you and see how smart I was and remember how fun it was to learn someone and watch their reaction to having someone genuinely try and succeed to get to know them. Maybe it overwhelmed you... I've honestly given up on knowing the end. Though I still write these, I move on too. It's like telling the story again of a scar instead of reliving when the blade entered my skin and the adrenaline raced and the blood poured and all the pain surged through my body and paralyzed me.
The person I am with now challenges me by being the opposite of you in all the ways that count. He confuses me by being an enigma of emotion that I cannot crack. Though I unwilling trust that he likes me, I have to test the limits of my emotional endurance and my social anxiety every time we talk. The swarm of thoughts that this man forces me to feel and have is irritatingly exciting, and make even writing to you feel silly now because you clearly won't come back. One day, I will accept that perhaps I am not the one who needs to take the bait and explain myself for what happened between us. One day, I will take myself by the hands, look myself in the eyes, and tell myself that losing the first man that seemed to genuinely love me was not my fault. One day, I will be able to separate first love and only love and move to whatever is next. Probably cracking the Rubik's cube of a human that I am with now.
I usually end these with the typical goodbye or that I miss you and I honestly I don't know how to end this one. I guess it'll just end.
Frozen Hourglass
Bitter cold necroses fingers and toes
Tips of noses that used to sniff tulips,
Wrinkle at the sight of bees and trash,
Bury in pubes every once in awhile
When hot girl summer allowed some fun
Amidst the studying and books and grades.
The falling leaves and sullying, chilly rains
Gave some experience to slipping on ice,
Yet nothing prepared for the cracked soil
Never to yield another tulip or blade of grass
Or tree where we climbed and giggled again.
The frozen globe that I traverse alone,
Occasionally getting glimpses of stained glass
Scenery like the sunsets, the ice-cream stand,
The beach in October then again in July,
The last kiss we shared beneath the sherbert sky
As the stars appeared and that summer ended
And the eternal winter set in and buried us.
Sound and Fury
Flitting darkness and bullets lighting up the night sky like Christmas lights we used to hang before our safe microcosm blew to pieces. The air we breathe smells of destruction and the gunpowder of neighbors we once called enemies but now use all the oxygen in the room to pray for, lest God take us as sacrifice for being untrue to our words of thoughts and prayers. Moments of silence and salutes to a waving symbol of indolence and laziness. Blind eyes suddenly saw when the fire returned and turned the blue and red into bruises and blood. We carried a big stick, but they took it and knocked us at the knees and watched our bashed heads roll on roads paved with people underpaid and overlooked. But now we see them. We see each other and plead for each other like the world pled for us, but we didn't come just like no one will come now that the mighty have fallen.
Metamorphosis
Gifted from birth, the reaper held the scythe in its bony hands. Twirling it to see the etched surname it was given long ago, sometime between cuneiform writing was invented and the present-day where those with a pulse feared it. The symbols only it could read were taught to it long ago by a father as a mother held it in her arms, radiating love through her flesh. No one would think that Death had a family, except the last one who looked up at him with bruised hazel eyes and asked softly what it was like to have a family that loved them. The reaper had not answered, for the utterance of a voice would have scared the little soul, but tried to show him by taking the little hand and gently helping it out of the body that had never known a day without pain.
How the reaper had wished this was not its job. There had been thousands just like this little one in its century and a half since assuming the robe and family scythe, but if it had ever had a heart, the hazel-eyed victim would have been the one that stuck to this reaper's. The reaper had taken the long way to try to show him love. They passed parks where dogs played with their owners and cats slinked, watching the reaper with fearful eyes. They went past schools where mothers and fathers embraced their children after a long day and held their warm hands as they took them home. The reaper watched the boy clutching his phalanges, and wondered if it made a difference. It never occurred to it before that day that reaping could make a difference for someone.
Upon the pearly gates, the child was welcomed home. The pain was erased and the child was gone, but the reaper remained, perplexed by the encounter. Images of the child being embraced by others, kissed and loved for the very first time flashed through the reaper's cranium. The child smiling without forcing it, waving back at the reaper, his first and only friend.