Just keep walking.
No time for worrying. No time for thoughts. Only you and those cracks; crystal clear on the pavement a shattered mirror a pathway divided a place you’re not.
Just keep going.
Does the stinging in your lungs excite you? Does the fact that you. never. show. your. face. mean something?
The only way I know you have one— the droplets along the cracks, the eyes in the mirror, sobbing and fading. Not yet gone, grey, diminished, tarnished shine scratched exterior.
Are you still you in your eyes? If you even class them eyes anymore? A blankness in the face A drained complexion.
Raise your head from the cracks, fix the mirror, align the pathways. You’ll find me waiting.
They say you’re man’s best friend; but I deem you mine. Perking ears at the smell of bacon— A damp, nuzzling nose when you know I’m on the brink of falling.
You don’t get mad if I spend my day with one person— in fact, you revel in their company. Exploring their quirks with a heart-melting smile, Tongue-lolling, “I think I’ll keep you for a while.”
You don’t say much now, but you’re still man’s best friend. Eyes communicating whatever you need. Sat on the sofa beside me, The soft hum of the TV, all worries freed.
I guess it’s naive. To think this life would never end. But deep in the caverns of this heart of mine, You’re still man’s, and my, best friend.
Going Going Gone.
The day that gavel struck my life, I knew what was coming. Life seeping from your skin, Age hollowing your bones. But a smile that never faltered.
Going once…
I found you on the step— Grinning so broadly it must’ve hurt. I know it did. Before I could ask you how long you’d been lying there, you turned from me, into the harsh winter air.
Going twice…
You told me not to worry, even when it happened again. This time I found you in the garden, slipping on the soil, the vivid crack of a flowerpot. Why are you still smiling?
Gone. __
I searched for your smile until I lost mine. Sitting at that headstone, marble white_, _running my fingers over its glossy contents. Eyes rimmed red until all I could see was a flowerpot, ahead of me, the cracks glued together.
And I sat on that step. Reenacting your falls. Imitating your smiles. While chasing your ghost, I became one myself.
My laugh is Mom’s. My humour is Dad’s. An accent extracted from the people around me.
Maybe my love for the countryside is justified. Maybe my dislike for heights is fair. Maybe the reason I hate the city is that my mind’s been molded outside of there.
I stole that joke from someone else. I thought it was funny in the moment, and so did you. I’m merely a puppet behind the strings, comandeering this ship of thoughts picking and choosing like apples from a tree deciding which quality is best for me.
The rotten ones get tossed away, And shining ones I hold— brighter red than the leaves in mid-autumn, right there, in the palm of my hand, A glittering gold.
Am I as kind as you say I am? Or is that something I’ve learned from you, or trained myself in your presence to be? Are you my psychology? Am I yours? Are these questions a formulation of my mind or others evolved?
I’m still someone you’d come to for advice, but are my words enough? To get the truth, the certainty that they are purely mine, distill them under water. Analyse them under scrutiny. Pray they come out as bright red as I hope them to be.
“The only answer is arson”, you had said, with an ounce of familiarity. As if, you too, had accompanied the job as the gallons trickled over windshields— greasing over, obscuring view to a blur. A mere moment in time before the flames hit the surface, melting those wipers, pungent rubber prickling the air.
I sat cold in that classroom. Papers unfurling toward me like the gallons trickling over. Waiting for the moment that they’d ignite before me, setting your glassy eyes the same shade as that amber. “The only answer is arson”, we’d joke.
Then, they came to me. Smiling warm with daggers not yet bloody. Pinning me in that room, hitting me with everything I’d been afraid of. “The only answer is arson”, you’d said afterwards, wet cloth to my bloodied cheek.
Their footsteps outlined my mission. Our mission. Your mission. “The only answer is arson,” you said, so serious in the moment, stood beside me. Unwavering, even as the flames leaped to the forest. Even as they came for us.
She laughs in the moment. As the key slots into the door, the soft click meeting her every time. The beige cat in the window blinks lazily, once catching sight of her, and then her new companion beside her, hops from the curtain to greet them.
There’s conversations only the door hears; the keylock so used to its role as sentinel, wedging a barrier between strangers and friends. It observes so much— the first kiss still ruminating, a hand propelling the handle, frozen in motion. The door, years prior, when it was open and closed for the first time, breaking that seal of infancy, imprinting new arrivals on the laminate floors.
And today. That day, where’s there’s no pouring rain, Or storm on the horizon No foreboding message. Letting her know today wasn’t just one to chuckle at from the tarot cards, Or look away when her friends tried to talk to her, Or seek the fates for advice.
Laminate floors creaking beneath her heels; The only sound within the hallway. She’s left with her thoughts, torrenting her emotions, sending the captain overboard. The key they’d given her still fit the lock, but in this bubbling silence, in this frozen tension, it no longer felt like home.
Each drop is a journey One emotion One time. Watching as the fatal drip, drip, drip, pools onto the ground like a crimson river.
The clash of the blade as it sparks the ground, leaving that trail, that set of footprints, while I trek deeper within the red.
These numbers reach higher levels Heartrate ceasing, Speed increasing, A proportional equation and the math to this madness As the answer equals need.
Each limb, a disconnection to the motherboard, hitting the bottom one by one. One emotion. One time. But still, the hand pooled in crimson clutches the dulled blade yet again.
Fame is such a funny word— Used so sporadically That even the most reclusive souls Turn round to look at me.
It’s not something I brag about It’s not something I want The death of all I’ve ever known Comes back to sit and taunt.
I sit on this uncomfy throne With orders in my hand But remnants of the fight and battle Still lay upon the land
He fought for all we love Tried to divide and conquer With quiet now, the only sound On the chair rests his daughter.
Clutching the parchment in his grasp He sprints, ducks, weaves, each page flitting in his red hands as the date marked first of November Slips from his fingertips.
The memory of Mama slips from her mind, As casual as sleight-of-hand, As crafty as deception As November first becomes a day she deems normal as any other. And the sound of the heartbeat monitor Beeping. Beeping. Ceasing is lost.
The rest crunch and crease in his white knuckles; Screaming, pleading, Days of August, July, and January shrieking as they tear, Her wedding may have been white, her brain remains as such— blank, devoid. So does the memory of Papa, the creaking of his rocking chair eyes grinning, face unaware Of what he was about to lose; and who she had to pick or choose.
He thinks to gain a steady buck Scrolls of time in store, And though there’s nothing left for her Would it hurt less or more?
