"Color within lines,"

bend, forge, them into number-steps,

Hop, connect the dots, Mandatory.

But I tightrope on

border-fringes,

that fence the abyss.

If-When I fall,

I color the darkness outside.

Three bottles of Vodka later, I keep spying the sprawled-out feet bearing lemonade-pink high-heels from every corner. Every turn, I might see where the shovel printed a triangle-tent dent across her skull and rosy lips. I run straight to avert corners, but she'll follow, her accusatory limbs outstretched to suffocate.

He etched,

         Willis, Claudia, Quentin, 

         Mitts (with an asterik, she was the first of his kids to go in adulthood)

         Sheeva, Men, Steven

          Manno-, Maxxan, Maxxax (he stammered over pronunciation

          and preserved misspellings on the offchance he might be right)

         "Children," a composite of non-survivors of the infant mortality rate

Rob, he was a walking, breathing memorial.

But he exhausted the space of his skin

and the names blotted out, 

the Yvonne erased the Ricks in a scribbled shroud.

Mitts overlapped with Pats,

The names overflowed his mind,

he spewed out the Wenton, the Patrice, the another Steven,

He began ripping off the dogtags with the

           Danny, Janet, Landis, the etercas

and continued to slung it 

when his neck shattered

beneath the weight

hands too stiff to shield exposure

lacking traces neutral blush of humiliation

a target practice

a force of marble eye contact

face incapable of contorting into the wrinkles of offense

lovely, pretty, it-she don't mouth for your consent.

pretend it treasures your whistles and compliments

If it don't breathe, do it.

Be a certified Pygmalion

scuplting the already scuplted. 

I forged a key that didn't fit,

into the memory with rust-crusted padlocks

I forged the furtile ring of keys

that never brushed a padlock.

that rusted by the neglect of my hands.

My fingers scratch at them open,

but they freezing their wheels into confidentiality.

the sisters floating out of grip

Ducking behind the cryptic words to compensate for time.

My mind as stationary as a coat-hanger

Shall I commit?

What should I do?

What shall the ink-pen scrabble next?

Do I surrender? Do I slither on?

I still breathe in this liminality of finished and the unfinished?

The old padlocks have rusted.

Time to dig out new ones,

as I await the Muse yet-to-be born

to bestow novelty keys?

Shall I keep forging my keys?

Maybe it was best I crafted my own padlocks

while I'll enter doors with uncharted space.