I want to live in the night, where the sun never comes.

Would it be remiss of me to request that no one exist apart from me in this span?

Where I cannot quite call out to anyone and I'm hardly anyone… No one. No one at all.

It would be better to be alone with my feelings to deposit them into the ground.

Because here I could plant seeds to grow the stalk to propel me into the sky, where the only thing in reach is the stars above and the clouds below me.

I guess it's remiss of me to want to abscond from anything and everyone.

So tired of being.

Being there for everyone and not quite there by anyone.

Should I be, I'm just a pity case.

Pitiful. That's all I am. Because if I'm not that, I'm strong.

It's disgusting.

We could go on and on.

On for days and nights.

Minds not forthright.

Because if I was ripping off the band-aid, it'd be all over.

He'd say he fails...

And I'd be making trails to lead him back to his self worth.

At the degradation of my own.

An endless pot.

The giver I guess.

The tree in Shell Silverstein's Book.

Nothing.

Nothing but anything he wants to fold me up into and all I can do is hate it.

I don't think I'm so much codependent anymore, but here.

Alive.

Here.

And here again.

If it weren't for my resolve to live so hard, I don't think I'd mind nature clicking my ticker.

One free of my own doing, of my irresponsibility…

For the love of God.

Let this life leave me naturally.

Horror.

That was the one word I could use to place how tonight felt. Comical, unrehearsed… horror. I don't know what moronic idea came into my mind to make me believe this was the right thing to do, but I was doing a— thing. One action after another, and so far the summation of it all was nothing shy of a humiliation ritual and a strange one at that.

I pressed my shoulder against the passenger door, feeling the tingling sensation pulse through my body as I slowly closed my eyes to the midnight environment whizzing past us.

I shouldn’t have gone. That’s all that kept hitting me every time I tried to think about something, anything really, because I couldn’t dodge the shame that spread through me. It reminded me of the sting of icy cold snow on my palms and knees, seeping into my clothes and past the layers until it chilled me to the bone.

Had I been the person I was before… I would have lashed out, lashed back at those people, people that Dean called… friends.

My throat worked, a knot building up.

They weren’t friends of mine. No. I was merely the uninvited guest in that tiny single-wide cabin. The one I came to find belonged to Duke. The bastard who took over Eden in my place, because people like me didn’t have friends.

I wish I wasn’t so sour about that fact, but considering how my mind couldn’t help but compare myself to every part of him because of it just digging in the knife, opening up old wounds and starting new ones I didn’t think I could have.

Running my thumb over the bottom of my upper lip, I opened my mouth just slightly to tap my fang on the nail as I tried to simmer my building rage. I wasn’t… weak. I wasn’t everyone’s whipping boy, and I didn’t have to take being beat down quietly. That’s what kept repeating in my mind, but then-

I slowly looked away from the window, sneaking a peak at Dean and everything in me started to deflate. I didn’t put myself up on the chopping block for nothing. I put myself there because I—as much as I struggled to admit it until I was gasping for breath—kept drawing back to that one brief moment in time, in which he held me close, warmly, and with all the tenderness I’d watched other people get, but I never be on the receiving end of.

Knowing that he could give me that shattered every bit of myself, of my former self, of my rage, and only left me feeling like I was on the verge of bursting into tears every time I told myself I could go without it, because I knew… I couldn’t.

So I made amends. I made amends with people I otherwise wouldn’t care for, even if it wasn’t going to be pretty, because he was asking them to help me and none of them had to. They did it for him, and so I made amends for him, because it’d be ridiculous to ask him to put up with in-fighting when he was working on my behalf to ask for more than an olive branch.

Looking away, my gaze drifted to my lap as I turned my phone over in my lap to look at it.

A sort of numb, unsettling sensation reverberated through me as I rubbed my forefinger up and down over the sleeping screen. Then, like practiced clockwork, I unlocked my phone to open Eden and stared at the nearly blank feed.

I didn’t have any friends… not aside from Dean now, but I followed a lot of the major outlets and media, and it was sobering to see the world go on without me on the front page of any of it, because had Eden been around back then… I would have been on it. I would have been everywhere, because I was a menace to society.

Lex’s face came to mind then, and I felt my jaw set as I tensed, remembering what he said, even if it wasn’t directly to me.

It's here in the moments where intentions matter most,

Where money moves quicker than mouths and bank accounts go empty.

We're going down.

Down. Down to the bottom of the empty well, where the coins would have been gathered up had I not already gone before, but the savings we had made on wishes and promises of a bright future are long gone now.

Hell.

I try not to cry, cry into my hands spent on every option, on every moment of opportunity that I've attempted to filter through, touching corner to corner for viability in a market so gone that all my investments are crumbling in the mound of dying businesses.

Why?

Why would they be allowed to do this?

Did they not understand that we weren't in a position to pick up where the large corporations left? Empty is their space, now my coffers too.

There was no meeting of the middle.

No agreements and negotiations.

My well is empty, and of all their "good intentions" brings about the downfall of my house and I cannot get out fast enough. So I drag myself up from the well, standing in the barren pocket of valley where mountains demand patronage to pass them out. To go on over them and out. Out. Out.

White, as a sheet.

Formerly known as paper.

Contract. Addendum. A formation of the verbal ladder.

Long since held, is the band where we both gather.

Crippling is its weight, both in the matter.

Where we shall gather and say our vows,

healthy life goes down, down down.

And sometimes, I might retire that heavy old band.

Not because marriage is through,

but because of the heaviness in my hand.

And so I can't write, so I can't type... So I might... writhe a little more.

Carpal tunnel is a bitch, but I can't take it no more.

And so... I write this missive to the one so named,

the one who gave wedding bands a place where my finger falls further towards the grave.

Shiver. Shiver cold.

Echoes the long body ache.

One that rustles the bones.

Halt in all the ways that make you tremble,

Toes curl,

And you might stiffen to abstain the pain.

Up until it has you twist, turning in again.

Never sane.

Restless in all the ways that might drive a man mad.

Pain upon pain, makes you wish it wasn't so endlessly had.

For what which might make you cut a a tongue in two,

Might omit you the sanctity of telling those of you.

Silent in all its whispers.

Taking you so.

Toxic goes your body.

No. No. No.

As a writer, I find that there is a constant within the field. Well, within any field that requires you to bare yourself whole to criticisms, to see your flaws and attempts to affix yourself to mainstream medias.

To become one with the... formula, the one that brings in so many who could tenderly love and adore your writings. Because who does it for fame versus who does it to spread tales far and wide are two different beings, but one goal in the same.

In this, I find that it is hard to ever drive yourself into self-confidence without the support of an audience. Little or big, it is... always difficult, but never not worth the effort.

Artists of the music origin so often attempt to be seen, unable to be found until larger entities than themselves draw them in, and in that... Some creative abilities might be stripped away, and some might stay.

The ones that linger and allow them to stay preserve an artists for who they truly are. Those are rare.

So even if my audience is small, even if it is large. Even if those who might come to despise me might draw near and linger, if only to find something to laugh about will... very much find what they look for (maybe), but I only hope the ones who stay and watch in earnest love my writings for what they are.

A little sad. A little dark.

A mirror. A very much reflection of myself, of my world, and the others that I have so aptly peeked into. (For sake of empathy of the many paths a man or woman may walk in their span of waking life.)

Thank you for being here. There. Dropping in once, twice, and sometimes more frequently than often.

Thank you.

You inspire me.

Give me courage.

And I love it all the same.

Even if I'm here in brief moments, and then gone again.

Morning glistens on the shadow of an approaching dawn,

and somehow... in a way, I can stare up into it, knowing that even if I'd rather miss it, it is the expedited beginning of the coming of my nearing end.

Summers come.

Summers gone.

Ever in the lasting impression of my mind, you might believe you are unworthy.

Uncapable and incapable of traversing the stretch of long narrow paths that wind, that sometimes become wide and yet...

I ask you to be here.

With me.

Forever and in the now.

For in our faults,

in the line of shadows that crease our ever dampening features, we can see that through our own self-belief, our intrinsic value is immeasurable for the few we harbor under our wings. For we can break breath under no Gods or Kings, but only in the self value that blossoms beautifully in the ever coming spring.

In all the things that come and go, in seasons beginning and ends,

we are an ever blossoming garden, tended by meager hands striving for that artistic value until our end.

Beautiful can it be.

Sad and melancholy,

but I have resigned myself to seek out beauty not in the everlasting bliss, but in knowing that I never stayed complacent in a garden rife with sixths... sevenths... deaths of things once tried and never removed.

It's okay to look at the corners, the edges that brandish our mistakes, because even if the container cannot be changed, the soil can be renewed and refreshed in our ever waking gaze.

I pushed off the back of the motorcycle as it came to a stop in my front yard. Honestly, out of all the things I'd done in my life once and then been quite unsure of the skills I'd need to stick with it, this… this wasn't one of them. Despite how little experience that I had on a motorcycle, I found myself quite used to the sensation of it now.

Really. I mean, if someone wanted to try to steal this feeling, this– this sensation and newfound skill—if you could even call it that—from me right now, they'd have trouble doing it. They have trouble because I felt like nothing else in this world bonded me more to this Earth—right now—than the bodily sensations heavy in my limbs. From the heavy strain in my legs from riding to the strong scent of Wren's body heat that seeped into me, all of it kept me warm and comfortable right down to the sights and sounds that surrounded us along the road. Sensations that all left me vibrating, practically alive with the breath of the world until I felt like I was humming in sequence with it.

I pulled the helmet off my head then, placing it on the seat and steadily walked into the front lawn and turned under the trees, spinning on my heel as my surroundings twirled around me in all their vibrancy. God, I felt so warm. So… out of this world.

Feeling a twinge of heavy enthusiasm bubble up in me, I turned my gaze out to the dock, spying dad's watercraft. It was still there. I want to. I want more time.

Glancing to my left at the house, a wild promiscuous thought hit me. One that had me smiling until I could almost feel myself on the verge of grinning.

“Do you want to go check out my dad’s boat?” I asked on a spur of the moment invitation. I didn't want my time with him to end just yet.

Wren finished tugging off his helmet, then looked up at me and his eyes were as captivating as I always seemed to remember them these last few days. That innocent squint of his eyes before he managed to put his glasses on again had my heart pounding as he gave me a rather languid look with those pretty blue eyes of his.

Almost without reservation, I finally grinned unabashedly to which he scoffed.

God, those handsome lips spread wider from the corners until I could see the tip of his canines and then that pearly white smile shined through. I was tripping over myself practically just watching him.

“Yeah, sure,” he told me after a moment right before he shoved down the kickstand. When he pulled off the bike, I perked up a little, feeling a wild idea strike me. I can't believe I'm going to do this. I started to giggle under my breath, taking a step back.

One step followed another until I was slowly turning away, cheeks high with rosiness from the blood likely pooling in them, and then, without a second thought, I took off down the cleared pathway where the leaves had been only hours prior before I swept them all out of the way this morning.

“Hurry up then!” I called out to him as I put my hands up, grabbing one of the tree trunks for leverage to catch myself before I leapt down the small slope. I felt the cool shore air whip across my face and I smiled brighter, practically feeling my body glow with this… this bliss. Like I was living in the highest moment of my life and I laughed loudly, feeling thrilled.

It wasn't long until I heard his footsteps quickly gain pace and I twisted to the left and down, narrowly avoiding the edge of his fingers brushing my side. Almost!

I slid, nearly losing my balance as I tried to maneuver away and under another tree before warmth in the form his palms caught me by my middle, tugging me back into his chest and I gave a rather excited squeal. The way that noise erupted from my chest made me jump, but honestly, I couldn't contain myself.

I turned my head back into him, grinning wildly as his right hand slid up my center to my shoulder, rapidly until he caught my wrist. Wren squeezed my wrist tenderly as I huffed in utter bliss in his hold. Then… without hesitation, his lips warmly pressed against my full cheek, and warmth peppered my cheek from his laughter.

“Caught you.”

Skin prickling from the chill that ran over me, I dipped my head in, trying to shy my ear from the tickle of his lips near my face.

Wren tugged me into him as he seemed to lean over me, making me bend over his arm that quickly wrapped snuggly around my waist.

Grabbing that forearm with my left, I laughed as the wind kicked up, blowing my hair in my face as I felt everything from today just… pour out of me. Everything. The fear, the happiness. My silly ego that kept trying to dampen my expectations. All of it.

This wild love. This… experience was anything but normal. It was the best thing I'd ever felt and I didn't let the fear that it would ever end creep up on me because I was determined to keep it from ending, even if I had to temper myself every step of the way. He was so… perfect. So– everything. New and fresh. Freeing even.

“Hi Wren,” I giggled, my voice light. “Nice to see you,” I played off, trying to be cute.

“Hello Kat,” he whispered into my ear as he bent over me more and my stomach twisted as heat spread through me, and through my center as I squeezed my legs together. I tried to hold back the wanton feeling threatening to drown me, but I think that ship… sailed a little earlier than I knew.

“Mm,” I groaned, arching in the chest that pushed warmth and heavy masculine scents that I couldn't quite place my finger on. Scents that were intoxicating and very him.

I turned in his grip slightly, pushing him a step back until he firmed, not letting me get away with overpowering him. He drew me into him instead, hooking that forearm from my front into my back nearly fully as I kissed his cheek firmly; warmly and with everything brimming in me.

“Fine day we're having,” I told him, wildly departing from my nerves. From the fear of rejection right now, and in that moment of wildness… I teasingly licked his cheek before I could reign myself in. “Aren't we?” I heaved, feeling my chest shudder as he squeezed me to him tighter.

“Mm,” he breathed, a chuckle breaking through his deepening voice. “Indeed.”

I peeked a glance at the now closed eyes of the guy who… gave me everything I didn't know I could experience.

He looked like he was riding this… this high—or whatever you could call it—with me. Like we'd been waiting all day to get back to this point.

I had to gently pry his hand off my waist so I could turn around fully, but he was right back to pulling us together again. His hand on my lower left back pocket and my hands on his chest until our hips met.

When he squeezed my ass, I felt devious and those charming gaslight blue eyes opened slowly to stare at me. Hungrily.

“Would you like to come away with me?” I asked him teasingly, rolling my eyes and from the way he looked at me, he seemed genuinely sold on the idea from the way his gaze dragged down my front and then back up it.

Biting my lip, I moved my hips side to side. “On our own little private boat off a tiny island?” I added, slowly pushing my palms up over his shoulders until I was hanging my arms off them by my wrists as I leaned back.

His chest started to expand as he drew in a tight breath, his other hand on my waist squeezed and I had to try to bite back the groan that was nearly elicited from my lips.

“As long as I have you all to myself,” he told me, leaning forward to close the distance between us. My gaze fell to his lips, and I started to imagine the outline of them pressed to my own lips, warm, needy and… My eyes fluttered shut as he kissed me and I leaned into his hold, crushing my chest into his as I melted against him.

Shoveling away at the hole sinking in on itself,

I believe I piled away another heaping load twice my height and half my weight behind me.

This... digging, was a sort of way to assuage my lack of prospects in so many other holes. Holes were I found rocky surfaces that spanned long across the area of my circular zone. Spaces were my spade couldn't break through, until I had to abandon it all together entirely.

This... This was the prospects of longevity in my networking of "work." The availability of "jobs" as they might call it over a long ten year span.

Work where I was motivated to do so, but my body said no.

Work where I was able to get in, but couldn't stay because they said so.

One way, to the other. Tipping scales left and tipping scales to the right, I could see a myriad of doors I was trying no different than anyone else before me.

And in each attempt, sometimes I was well kept, and others... not so much.

Was this the easy fall from grace people spoke about?

Nah. Couldn't be. I hadn't fallen far enough, but I was dangerously close to the edge, a place where I had no foothold if I was very unlucky, but we weren't there yet.

And in all my nonsensical chattering, in my head, here, below the eaves of a house so beautiful I know I'd never see anything like it twice, I could tremble at the shoulders and hold my head in my hands knowing that this wasn't going to be much longer. And that I wouldn't know where I'd go next, but it wouldn't be easier. Not prettier... Not enough.

Because where stability is, it always gets pulled out from beneath you before you get just enough. Enough to finally be on the up trend. Enough to be stable. Almost like it's a mockery of the help you receive from others, like it should be just enough, but never is. Not when you're a hair away from standing on your own, no longer digging holes in your fields to find the water to grow. For growth to come in.

Summer could be the dream for many.

The promise of time well spent,

time meant to be well kept together.

Friends.

Family.

Nothing short of the shy remark of freedom from some tie of extracurriculars.

And shy should it be when those wanting to meet those they believe they ought to be destined be, to meet, to be welcomed upon with the whole health of the ones they mean to gather with, together, under shade, with laughter and without sorrow.

For cheers in the way that we swallow our mounting fears to escape into adventures untallied.

Together...

Forever, in this ever bright summer glow.