I’m caught between the fingers of an addict

Embers still alight but when he’s done he’ll soon forget he even had it

Stab it down into the ashtray, pale gray

All the taste burned out upon his lips and for such low pay

You don’t say

The birds should sing your songs until they tire

And the fire only flourishes when fed with wood not iron

Not a fist around the copper, crumpled paper

Die now, we’ll pay you later

Perpetrator of the murder of the choir

They all want so much more of us, a pack a day for single digit dollars

Smoke us down into oblivion, expect us when they holler

I hear screams and stare at sunbeams for pennies at the dawn

But my heart and soul are still worth less than means to carry on

And though I fight, scratch and bite, my blood alone will still be drawn

Because once a cigarette is lit, you use it ’til it’s gone

The doctor was joyful

My mother's new hope

They pulled me from blood

And pronounced me "kaleidoscope."

Capsule of beauty

Object of stares

My pieces distorted

And nobody cares

For if I'm to be lovely

I must be concealed

The mundane mechanics

Cannot be revealed

Mystery, mystery

That's all you view

You refuse to see less

Than a plaything for you

So twist me and turn me

To fit your desires

I will be glitter

And gemstones and fire

This mystery disqualifies me from power

But mystery hungers you 'til you devour

Kaleidoscope woman, irrational blur

You won't change the lens, and you'll never know her.

It's not even a pretty diamond. Just a crystalline mound, really. Disgustingly large and cut unevenly to preserve every piece of it, more of a testament to the rarity of the find than a show of elegance or use. But if value comes from scarcity, it's the perfect score.

I hook my rope to the skylight and begin to slide down. Ten minutes before the mansion's security systems reboot, no matter how thoroughly my forced power surge took them out. If these cameras catch me, the police station lineup will be little more than ceremony.

I turn on my flashlight as I near the ground, careful not to misjudge my landing in the almost pitch black room. I hate the sound when my own boots strike the tile. It's the sound of a pressure plate, a sensor. An error. Close calls batter one's nerves.

So does the figure across the room.

I choke back a startled noise and level my flashlight at it. But the fear devolves into irritation when I recognize him.

"Oh, don't balk at me," he says with his insufferable British accent and his ridiculous toothy grin. "Surely you knew I couldn't ignore this find, either. Donbury, out of town overnight? An empty house? It's irresistible."

I glare. "Ryker, stay out of my job before I put a hot ball of lead through your chest."

It's the windup to a punch I can't land, and he knows it.

"Don't play, Tonya. You can't hide a body in ten minutes. Settle with me, and you can go home to your quaint little dugout with ten percent profit and no prison. Deal?"

I don't let my shoulders slump. Five minutes left on the clock, and I'm tired of running. If he doesn't bend, we both go out.

"Ninety."

Talent. Tantalizing, too tall to reach, and yet

Ceases to be itself when you climb for it

The envy of the average, the drug of the exceptional

A gift from God grasped by the fingers of Want

Want although we do not know its meaning

Want although we question its mattering

It lies deep within us

Tangled up in our obsessions and drives

The minotaur in the maze, the string that we follow, and the bride who waits with held breath

Its size does not matter, it fills us the same as it leaves us empty

The talent to sing is not the talent to smile

The talent of mind is not the talent of hands

But these talents, living in our bodies like a spirit of their own

Are nothing more than the insatiability for skill

And a raw hope that we may one day see what our Want already does

A palm is put up, that no pity could make it through

“How can you console her knowing death is afraid of you?”

I did not compose these words, yet they are mine

Uttered in a dream, one echoing line

Spoken by Death herself, while she holds a girl’s hand

She looks only twelve, and the child smaller stands

An audience watches, a statement, a show

To a pit at the bottom the children all go

The sand does not sort them by age or by name

They fall, listless, down, to be buried the same

Death never asked us for these bodies, so small

What she asks is a question, overworked and appalled

“I am but a reaper, a guideman, a door

What terrors are you who keep sending me more?”

So her palm is an army that will not make way for you

“How can you console her knowing Death is afraid of you?”

How can we console her, us watching the news

With our guns in the closet we’ve never had to use?

It was not our bullets that broke through her chest

But we fought for the weapon that laid her to rest

How can you console her, you preachers who pray

When you say that the young must retrieve those astray?

How can you tell a child, while wishing them well

That their weakness and fear sends their playmates to hell?

Were none of us sacred before we were grown?

Are none of them sacred now, not on their own?

Is innocence meaningless, the perfect white page

That we write on and fight on, turn black as our rage?

Are they pawns? Are they dough? To be molded and used,

Or abused, until like us they grow? Death begs no.