She told me: “It doesn’t matter if I die,” and then: “this coffee is really good.”

I stared at her as if she had just stripped naked in front of me.

“What?” she asked, like I was the one being insane, “I’m not scared of death, so it’s fine.”

“Not scared of death?” I repeated like an idiot. “Not scared of death? How can that be possible?”

She curled her manicured finger over the lip of her cup and dipped it into her coffee. “Calm down. It’s not like you don’t know me. You’re the one that’s scared of everything and I’m the one that scared of nothing. You know that. I’m the brave one; it’s why I’m alive.”

I looked down at my own hands, nails bitten down to the roots, fingers covered in ink.

“You can’t die,” I told her.

“And why not?”

“You can’t. I forbid it. I can’t live without you.”

She smiled and looked through my soul. “You’re scared, as always.”

“Yes. Which is why I need you. You’re the one that goes out there when it’s too scary.”

“Stop,” she said, her smile turning into a leer, “pretending to be somebody you’re not.” She downed the rest of her coffee and tapped the table with her nail, leaving drops of leftover liquid on its surface. I had the urge to wipe them off.

“What do you want me to do?” I said finally, piteously.

“I don’t really know,” she said. “Oh, wait. I do. Why don’t you face those fears of yours? I’m tired of doing the dirty work. Face who you truly are, no matter how ugly and horrible that person is. I know you’re ab-so-lutely terrified of what awaits you.”

“No,” I said forcefully, standing up so that my chair clattered, noiselessly, on the ground. “I won’t.”

“You will,” she said confidently, because she was the confident one, not me. “You will, because I am you and you are me. You’re scared, but not as scared as you think you are. Now get out there, and stop being so pathetic. Look at this, your alter ego is stooping so low she’s giving you a pep talk.”

Her face swam before me—maybe a trick of my mind, or maybe a trick of my tears. When the ripples faded, I was standing in my brightly lit bathroom staring at her.

Well, staring at me.

I don’t sleep, but if I do, I dream of my own love. I’m terrified by it.

What is worthy of love? It is the humans: the strange, wonderful creatures!

I captured them and put them in a cage. I held them in my hands and wished to love them! I bound them to me, so that they could never escape. What is love? I wanted to know. Why did I love the humans so? I loved every morsel of them. Their skin, their eyes, their blood, their heart, their bones…I loved them alive and I loved them more dead. I molded them until they warped, until that beautiful blood flowed into ribbons of red. Humans look ravishing in red. I danced with them on feetless legs and lolling heads. I kissed their bruised tongues.

It was wrong! God, I know, it was a mortal sin, and yet I am no longer mortal. I was never mortal. So I watched. I screamed, too, but mine were none as lovely as theirs. Mine were hideous, so I locked myself in. Me. No, the other me. I looked at my hands—are they my hands, or are they hers?

I want to love, but my life is drowned in hate. Why do I do this? I’m scared. I don’t want to fall asleep, because then I will come out. The other me. No. Just me. Me as I always am. Which one is the real one? Who came first?

Who knows?

All the should haves, would haves

Could haves—yet I only regret the One

that drinks from my breathing hand,

Drawing from my smoky breath—

and If I were never graced from the womb

Would I ever have to consider

What I can’t have done?

A scene is defined by space and color. A story is defined by what is told and what is not.

The girl ceased to be a girl when she became a corpse.

The room ceased to be a room when it became a display. A work of art.

The scene was depicted in hastily strewn grays and pastel yellows, the kind that wipes anxiety over the walls. Shadowy curtains whisked down in dripping green.

Floors of marble white were stained in alternating spots of light and dark, almost like a mosaic. In the morning din, the nearly empty room was washed in depression.

Like a sculpture, the corpse lay splayed in the middle the stage, haloed by a single slat of light strewn haphazardly over her face. She made the room seem larger, as if the space were being expanded by her mauled body. Her lips were painted with her lies, and the words of murder were etched deeply into her ashen skin. Her bruised eyelids revealed eyes blinded by pride. Her clutching fingers foretold her endless greed. 

She was dressed in vanity; her dress was the deepest mahogany, almost black in the lighting, and the fabric was crinkled and grandly laid out, a fan of last regrets. The echo of a late-night dance in which she trod on her partner. Her feet were gone at the ankles, bare and empty calves spilling into artful streaks on the floor as if, like Hermes, she could spout wings from her legs and take flight.

If viewed from an angle, her hair seemed a waterfall of gold. It was braided with lilies, an ode to her long-lost innocence. The distance between the falls and the floor seemed to stretch out, just like the wedge between her bent elbow was drawn in by sharp lines.

A thousand tales shuffled on her face, gently caressing her peaked nose, her hairline, the tip of her chin. They whispered and sang her woes. 

Her lips were unbelievably quirked, laughing at a long-lost joke. A human punch-line. 

And that was how the scene was laid, undisturbed. It was magnificent that way. It was glorious. If artists had it so, all art, no matter how morbid, would be left in its natural state. 

Time and government had other ideas.

By mid-afternoon, the harsh light of day burned the serenity. The loudness of life blared across the floor. They came in groups, destroying the masterpiece, until they removed all of the artist's signature. They stripped the canvas of paint, and drew it raw.

So long as heroes continue to exist, so does those who cannot be saved.

I am but another lie, another far-flung hope, another vestigial dream.

In a land far away (so far that not even satellites can connect, land of neither network nor Wi-Fi)

there lived a primitive species of men.

These grisly affairs contend, smelt like the teenage male, battled like the female soul, and raged with a child’s demented mind;

these crude souls deprived, of air conditioning, sewage, and delight, of that glorious delight!

So with a kindly mind, brought I to this age, such creations of a glowing bright;

Not knowing that the blind knew naught the Sight

Indulged in craze and in hormonal rage, in plight and war-like desire to simply fight,

That civilization crushed by and took to flight, this dismal world was left in dark, dark night—

Of all my gifts they took just measly One, and twas to perish with them all

My Cheese Tacos, at each other they, like ogres and beasts, flung—

Storms of stringy yellow grew, as tempests and tornadoes, and I was appalled

At last the berserkers calmed their minds, yet then their world in tatters hung,

Like a store after Black Friday, the mobs had done their deeds,

And because they could not starve, they ate their weapons!

Thus all perished from food poisoning,

From that Expired Cheese.

Your disabilities do not define you. When you introduce yourself, you don’t say: Hello, my name is…and I have ovarian cancer. Or I’m autistic. Or I’m paralyzed from the waist down. No, you don’t say that, because that not all you are; in fact, it’s barely even an important part of you.

Our world is full of people, people of all ages, of all races, of all sizes and shapes and personalities.

It is full of people who can speak for themselves: self-assured, self-confidant people. But it is also full of people who can’t contribute. Can’t contribute because they can’t speak, can’t hear, or can’t see. Can’t contribute because they can’t get on their feet or they’re deathly afraid of crowds. Can’t reach out because nobody believes in them, because they’ve been pushed down all their lives. Can’t try because they’re bound by the law.

But does this mean they aren’t speaking? This world is full of people screaming! Screaming their lungs out, and we don’t hear.

Let me ask you this: What exactly would happened if we stopped our busy lives for a moment? If we leaned back, took our earbuds out, and just listened to all these voices? All these fresh voices with fresh ideas that we have never heard before?

What would happen?

Worldly contraction--

entrapped--Eye--

(other lost to lies)

Cyclic

thus--moving

past; glorious contagion  

--eternally?

unknown, as one

and all our own,

Reason Distorted

Without a Home.

If I had a dollar for every dollar weed I ever pulled up, I'd be a billionaire. Then, I wouldn't have to pull up dollar weeds at all.

Esme was the one who suggested as a remedial anger-relieving program. I wouldn't go to a therapist, so she dragged me to her backyard and engaged me in weed-pulling. She has this entire colony of dollar weeds under her rose bushes and all around, forming a cheerful carpet of green over the red mulch. 

The thing about weeding, though, is once you start, it's hard to stop. It brings out the OCD in me. I have learned to hate weeds with a fiery passion, especially the round green sprouts that have translucent white roots: the dollar weed.

There is something satisfying about pulling up a dollar weed. Maybe it's because if you do it right, they come out in long snakes, all at once. It's something about power, I think. Like you're in power of your life when you can pull a weed out of the ground all at once. Like victory is achieved when you rip them out of the ground. Yep; something about power.

So to all who have no control over their lives, I suggest this:

Go find some dollar weeds. Pull most of them up. Wait for them to grow back. Repeat steps two and three.

Trust me. It'll be a novel experience. 

Some people like to swim in the summer. But if you've ever been to the beach on a hot summer day, you see my dilemma. Crowds. I can't stand crowds. I can't stand heat, either, and that's why you'll find me all alone on the shore in the middle of January. The waves get all riled up then, frothing icy monsters that battle it out to the pure white sands. In the mornings, the sky sets up a beautiful glow up over the dark waters, the light shivering in the din. Sometimes, if it's snowing, I'll watch the flakes of white disappear into the vast ocean, swallowed in its entity.

Winter Leviathan. I know it's what they call me when they think I can't hear. They'll never call me that to my face, because they don't want to wash up dead on the shore one day. But despite the stories the locals tell, I've never actually killed anyone. All I do is stand barefoot on the beach in the winter and then occasionally jump in, clothes and all, because you can never be too cold. Maybe people have died in that ocean, but it was never directly linked to me.

Most people have the idea in their minds that I'm some sort of stupid lunatic sociopath, but really, I'm perfectly intelligent. My common sense just doesn't extend to the ocean. 

In the summer, nobody ever sees me. I'm told they wonder where I go. Home, maybe, they say. There are rumors going around that I buy a ton of ice and take ice baths all day.

But it's all fake.

On the last day of winter, I plunge headfirst into the ocean, and I don't come back up. I bask in the deep, icy depths of the sea.

The next anybody will see of me is in December.