The way the wind blows, child

You'll never get out.

Walking through a rainy day,

While the fire blows south.

There is no regretting all the things that you've done,

Betting on the lonely boy,

Who's burning down the sun.

You are covered in the ashes of thirty years burned. You drown out the sound of your life spiraling down and you mourn the loss of yourself. You wake up with dreams tinged in horror and strain for the sound of delight. There are no bidders in the market of wallow and the spaces of joy are all filled. So here you stand in your dress and your ashes, your eyes the same color as your skin, waiting for someone to notice or want you, praying for life to begin.

I can see you standing back there,

Agasint the garden gate,

The roses gnarled, the sage abandoned,

And you are feeling just the very same.

I can hold you in my memory,

And wish for days long past,

But going forward you have to know,

Wind this weak flies only half mast.

The sun is for the sinners,

The emboldended midnight riders,

Slink back under the pale light of the moon.

And when October comes knocking,

The riders wait for daylight,

And the sinners once again fade into night.

I know the words I wish to hear.

My secret side is hungry,

The flippant scores of concerts past still hang here in this hall of glory.

And it feels like trash to me,

A feast for kings spread across twelve tables with goblets of gold and finery,

But it tastes like ash to me.

Ungrateful, undeserving, spoiled, selfish,

I know what I am.

The ruffles on this dress they itch,

The ringlets in my hair too tight,

My feet yearn to touch forest floor, mud, rock, stream, dirt.

Yet here I sit, jaw clenched, fingers tapping,

Singing songs in a round in my mind,

How long will I wait to be free?

How many times will I be told I should be happy?

How many more days will I stare out this window?

Looking at my mother, how her eyes have sunken,

Her skin has paled, her lips have thinned,

Her laugh has hollowed, her smile has strained,

It could be forever, and a very long time after that.

I have a secret,

festering in my mind,

bugging me all the time,

I know it’s not right,

But it fills me up inside,

Twists me like lemon rind,

And you’d find it all so funny,

Your eyes, so dark they’re almost muddy,

My heart, so broken bruised and bloody,

When you left,

Your footprints on the ground I’d study,

For clues, for anything,

For just one fucking thing,

To make it hurt a little less,

To find relief among distress,

To wring the rags and hide the mess,

The mess of a thing you left behind...

This girl, one sad girl,

Wounds cut long ago healed now enough to show,

My face and eyes hold steady glow,

But my mind of course was last to know,

You hang here now, and you won’t go,

You are the secret I hold within my mind...

I should not miss you, we cannot talk,

But I catch glimpses, roads we used to walk,

Our memories still etched in chalk one day before the rain...

And on these nights you fill my head,

It makes no sense,

There’s a beautiful boy here in my bed,

He loves me more than you ever did,

But still I hang on to what you said

One million lifetimes ago.

Looking for softness,

My eyes scan the room,

Waiting to smell her, her wofty perfume,

But all seek to gaze, and shoulders block foreheads and I fall to pieces,

I am nothing but furniture as she passes right by,

There is much more to see, but I cannot care,

Can't bear to look, simply cannot bear.

There was a page ripped from your spell book 

Moth wings across the table,

A black dove watched us from a tree

As the light from the candle burned low. 

I picked at a snail shell,

Bits of earth fell from the folds, 

I believed in you wholly in that moment as the grey clouds rolled in,

A beckoning from the sky as the rain came down, threatening our skin. 

I shivered as you lit another candle and dropped the mangled match to the ground,

We were tucked away in the woods in the cabin your grandfather had built with his hands

Outside the trees swayed knowingly as the wind slipped through the branches, 

You opened your eyes and took my hand sending a sharp breath to out the candle,

The dark sky offered little light as we passed through the door hanging crooked on its hinges and I shivered again wondering what this all meant, and followed you into a clearing. The dove had flown home and the creatures of the night had come crawling, waiting for us to surrender. Shadow people stood just beyond the circle of stone you had made in the morning, and a feeling in the air was a clear message of warning. But I could not run now, I had given you everything, blood drops like candle wax on the scroll from your old book, and a strand of my hair, collected bones with you down by the river...

The old trees were alive I could feel them bending to get a better look at the lady in grey. 

I was thin like prairie grass, bending to the will of the wind, the air had grown thick and embers whooshed past my face leaving tiny marks like fireflies in the dark. I prayed for my soul but knew there was no telling just how far we had traveled down the road to the end. When the wind finally slowed and the branches gave way there was only a clearing there. Just a stone and a thistle with feather in the middle and the rain fell steadily onto the grass. No one heard the calling, the night sky swallowed the last breath of the lady in grey and the woman who came with her to meet her own death.