The Trees

We throw beer bottles at doors,
hoping that we can find a remedy for being human.

We inject ourselves with poisons,
longing that they can make us whole.

We label the broken parts of our anatomy,
with the thought that we can separate.

We spit words with vehemence,
knowing that they will destroy us.

We ruin and plunder,
in the name of progress.

We have forgotten what humanity is.

(forgotten the dew of the early morning grass,
or the scent of her breath as dawn creaks)

We consider ourselves whole,
but yet decorate ourselves as broken tapestry.

(adorned with the silence of our own mourning,
as we trap ourselves in words we can't escape)

The process of humanity,
is to abstain from progress.

Memoryhouse

You spill over the pages, flood with words so full that you forget to breathe. They come rapidly -- a tidal wave in your lungs, capsizing, bitter with hatred and remnant with remorse. You forget how it feels; the way fingers curl against the sand, the way the wind kisses your rose cheeks in a spring afternoon. You know only the lines: criss-crossed until each tile begins to look like the next. You know the curve of your pillow, the dip where your temple touches fabric, envelops your skin with the tenderness you've bitterly sought.

You forget the way skin feels on skin.

Perhaps you've memorized the silence between your fingers: the space where his should be. You've forgotten the pulse of your heart as it throbs in your neck, and now each beat struggles against the frostbitten cavity of your chest. You no longer welcome the invitation of comfort -- no longer greet it with amiable, open arms: instead push it away with bruised fingers as you fight a battle you want to lose.

But mostly, you've forgotten the brilliance of warmth.

You've discarded the somber whisper of the ocean on a perilous night, retraced the lines of weary picture frames in the hopes to rewind. You know only the weight as it presses against your chest. You no longer remember the butterflies in your stomach, or the wandering of curious fingertips against the grooves of oak. You've forgotten him, mostly. The silhouette of his cheek against yours, or the curve of pink against ivory as secrets are traded -- words traced through dances of fingertips, of smiles whispered against the press of lips (because body language has arranged itself as the centerfold of your art).

And it's brilliant because you haven't forgotten anything.

You remember everything so vividly it's like a scarlet nightmare -- a ghoul that appears in the blind hours of the night, enveloped in the silence you've kindled so dearly. 

But you wish to forget. 

And you think, perhaps, if you wish hard enough, you might forget the silent heartache of a bitter girl traced by her own misery. 

Epigram

Blood pumps endlessly throughout ivory veins.

Limbs move repetitively, avoiding the crisp wind of the afternoon day. The sun filtered behind forgotten hill tops; dancing idly behind the clouded veil. Cradles into the comfort of the wool; wraps the fabric around his emaciated carcass as to bite the wind backward. His efforts are simply in vain, as the wind nips his hollowed cheeks greedily.

The creature knows this place. Has memorized it's every detail; carved into the back of his macabre mind so that he may remember later. Knows brick after weary brick, has run his withered fingertips along their edges until they have leaked maroon, have punctured skin and flesh in the ambient attempt to retain him. Deadened optics trace lifelessly across cement padding, searching for source of entertainment and finding none. Limbs brush past other lifeforms -- cladded uniforms adorned with plates of respect. He has none. An ambiguous facade; marred with maroon puzzles, and decorated with blue and purple. He wears his bruises as his badge, as his prize, rather than his fault.

It stalks endlessly; meandering appendages carrying him far from the basement, from the classroom, from the comfort of sanctuary. It is perhaps what he does best -- ambiguity. Hollowed frame carries for what feels like miles: muscles weak with fatigue and indifference, circles formed under dead mirrors, and he dreams of a mattress beneath his feet. 

As he wanders, he finds himself in an unfamiliar territory: buildings formed with familiar architecture, but of a different atmosphere. Here, there is no cloud pressed to his chest. There is no daunting feeling of ill-satisfaction. Here, he finds his murmuring brain at ease. Clouded pools raise, absently, to peer at the creatures that shuffle before him: a fray of unknown sheep, bleating and blathering as they stumble aimlessly within each other. The creature does not move forward, does not engage their interaction. Instead, he stays apart. Bruised fingers dug into the fabric of his own skin, causing him to bleed maroon. He swayed, restless, at the edge; scattered pools dancing from bodice to bodice with no certain degree of interest.

I'm Sorry, I'm Lost

Driftwood, beached on shore. Cascaded by ribbons of sand. He has found solitude amongst the sea; broken into the softened, salty air. Feels it rushing through his lungs, ripping through his heart: bleeding through his intestines until he feels completely and utterly free. He has danced throughout time, completed the motions of a miserable life. Poisoned once by his desire for nothing, ribs shipwrecked as he plunged his orifices into powder, drowned his sorrows by the bottle. He was a work of art; a Sylvia Plath poem.

A stowaway. A wreck of a man, plagued by his own misfortune. Tired circles pierced under crystalline eyes, he wandered aimlessly from person to person, from cabin to cabin. A laugh pierces the air, but it is not his own. Shameless faces worn with regret; pupils widened with anticipation only to be twisted, broken until air is not his own. He has many faces, many words tumbling out of pierced grins; but he is one person. A name. Judas Villa. Boiling in the undertones of society, he is a name -- a story whispered through inquisitive kindness. Skill with a knife, with powder, with charisma. A morally deformed crook; broken from the sense of an ill-forgotten childhood. A plague upon the rest of civilization. A name.

Painful Memories

Fingers cross frivolously weak bones; spines on repeat and ribs twist like the arms of a decrepit tree. A box labeled fragile, he was never handled with care. Knocked around, passed between hungry fingers, until the contents were so battered and bruise they couldn't distinguish left from right and up from down. Half-hearted apologies are mumbled through weary lips, and his whole life he listens earnestly -- believes in their fragility, and hopes that they will mend. Break through the exterior he has built, instill within him the trust he so earnestly seeks.


Humbly committed to the prison they had built for him, there was no evidence of bail. Heartbeats rotting in frozen nights, wails muffled into frostbitten wind. Nervous fingers twitched with the anxiety of contact, a gift given from the women who had birthed him -- made him afraid of flying objects and pinched words. He pushed question marks at the ends of statements, hid behind shielded, ashen limbs, and wondered on the price of his sanity.

♛♛♛

His home became stale. Worn with pictures of martyrs; hanging from barely plastered walls. He grew restless, weary eyes dazzled with the destiny of greatness -- a picture painted into the foreground of his mind, present with his every bred action. He swung with the delicacy of a fawn blossoming into a stag -- anchors tethering him to the ground he had yet to wither within. They faded, with time. Ghosts murmuring on the wind as they swayed in and out of existence.

Wandered at a young age, crept within the dying streets and brawled in hidden corners with the fray. A mongrel. Street-rat. He knew nothing but the acid that crept through his veins -- poisoned his insides as well as his outsides; broken up fragments of dissected mind pieces bled through gardened veils. Couldn't find ways to translate feelings into words; bled his feelings into fists, and pounded, pounded, pounded until his vision was one of rainbows -- yellow, blue, purple, red. He couldn't understand the word stop. Muffled into the dictionary of words he barely knew, such as love, understanding. No incentive to learn, no incentive to live -- just a burnt flame quickly dissipating to ash.

Hide And Seek

Hesitant fingers reach sheepishly toward the exposed flesh.

Porcelain. Inquisitive pools dance selfishly across his bones; innocent in origin. She wants to consume him, sinfully, in a way that's so completely new that it stirs a frightened murmur in her intestines. Fingers search idly, navigating open flesh in the hope of port, curious and nervous. She runs a dry tongue over the peak of her pink lips, anxiety bubbling like a nervous tick in the apex of her throat. Every part of her flesh craves, longs from afar, under the sheets where they can't hurt her. Where words are no more than an idyllic lullaby murmured into deaf ears. Where pain is nothing more than something imagined by macabre minds.

Broken promises murmur behind her ears, whisper cruelties covered in charred flesh. His face is just another -- melted and shifted until he could be absolutely anyone. But he's not. He's not. Every inch of her screams, writhes within the prison she's locked herself in. He advances, a sign of his muffled impatience. And she wishes nothing more than to respond, to let roaming fingers wander, to let hidden shades disguise her hesitation. She wishes that there wasn't a lock within a heart: a wall constructed of stone, built with bruised fingers and broken bones that wanted nothing more than a safety that they had never been provided. 

White Lies.

It's in the silence that he hears words. Murmurs, whispers. Delicate promises spoken earnestly under the kitchen glare. 

"Genius," he manages to mumble between paralyzed lips.

They watch him tediously. Dark pupils secluded to evacuated corners, shrouded in a familiar film. He wishes to touch them; to extend a forearm and brush his fingertips of their corpses, return the welcome they had so graciously given him. But he would not. More accurately, could not. It was perhaps because his wrist was not connected to his hands, and instead the white models hung lifeless at the end of each arm. Paralyzed, like his lips, with a morbidly buried fear.

Time slips like a ribbon through his conscious. Recluse eyes observe that the time is exactly eight oh three. He peers only a moment later, and the numbers have morphed, and it now reads twelve fourteen. He wonders, remotely, if he has moved within these four hours, or if every muscle within his skin has ceased to work. His physique in denial, rebelling against the tenacity of his vivacious thought pattern.

"Come," they beg.

He obeys.

He slinks purposefully across the wooden floor, scraping bruised knees and cut elbows. Brown eyes dance tirelessly from the repetitive detail of the floor to the caricatures of his reanimated hands. It's at this moment that he notices their color.

Maroon.

A sound gurgles from the precipice of his cracked lips. It resembles a scream.