After work special

Laurie was the waitress of a desolate diner out past the bend of Crawfish Creek. Twelve hours after she arrived to shift, she left. The summer sun settling into the leaves for the night left a biting chill that swept through her legs under the ill fitting pinafore her meagre paycheques obligated her to wear. It was dark by the road but she'd already adjusted her eyes. Sixteen steps from the door of her work was where the street lamps thinned, by step thirty eight she was almost in complete darkness. She played games with herself as she moved. Challenging the blood in her veins to race and still with the imagery she conjured in her tired, subdued mind. Murderous hands reached out from the gloom and grabbed her, to then caress her with the soft touch of a mother. Then to be replaced by the strike of an enemy, then the grip of a lover maddened only by the consumption of premarital sin. Her mind was always the HBO content she couldn't afford at home. Step sixty seven and she was picturing an army of wolves racing from the trees to devour her. Or was it to recruit her? To let her run beside those snarling peers and be trained and praised as their apostle. Her soft brown eyes would sharpen into haunting shades of glazier amber or the sky blue of an arctic dawn, she'd snarl too and foam from her jagged mouth as she'd been taught.

The last thin line of day screamed through the low clouds as a violent pink. The beauty in those colours was hideous next to the creeping black. Such awe didn't belong by this street. It didn't belong in the plain sky to be absorbed by this plain woman. She was the solo frontier of her own darkness. Step one-hundred-seven and the pink hues of day were bleeding through the dusky advance. Her head changed tricks. What was that sun she saw? A Caribbean mirage, she closed her eyes and listened to the oaks become palms, the pigeons turns parakeets. The power of denial so strong she began to feel grains of sand beneath her toes and could taste the salty lick of the soft sea air embrace her senses and torture her reality. Her skin shivered and she felt for shells with her fingers. Step one-six-one. A crack behind her brought her back. She turned to find no adversary at her rear but the thrill of the moment brought a broad smile to Laurie's grease kissed face. She'd lived by the creek all her life, felt the pinches of leeches as she swam it's contence, the brunt of lovers still burnt her every summer even as she left her early twenties. Laurie had a young heart but a mind as old as the creek itself. She'd never found any danger on this walk, at least not outside of her intensely active imagination, even once she crossed the path of a grizzly they locked eyes as the brave waitress froze and then the beast sauntered away. The creek was safe for a local piece.

She returned her attention to the impossible futures that swam through her skull. In one she was a pinch faced magazine editor, ordering top shelf whiskeys at a flatteringly lit bar and scalding a young waitress for holding her tray so precariously when it housed such an artisanal liquor. In another she was tanned like a vintage leather satchel. Step two hundred. She was in Italy having been whisked away whilst her skin was still porcelain and delectable, she married in the ethereal gleam from venetian waters. Her husband span her around as they kissed with the fury of a thousand war torn couples. She saw children, education, career, tragedy. She was so lost in fantasy by step two hundred twenty that she didn't notice the increase of cracks behind her. Crack, step, crack, step, crack. She'd reached the bend in the creek and her impossible futures saluted her impoverished past right there by the still pool. The moon was trapped in the lake. It sang silently in the rippling tide, calling to the lost souls of the dingy town of Crawfish. Laurie didn't hear it's futile song as the life was choked out of her. She didn't know the grip, it wasn't one she'd imagined before and if it was it certainly didn't feel the way it did in her fantasies. Where was the thrill?  Where was her bravery? She just felt bile burning her throat and the struggle of her lungs pushed all her futures out with their final gasps. All she was or could be floated to the bottom of the creek where she'd learnt to swim, learnt to kiss, and ultimately learnt to die. She met the moon beneath the waterline and the two kissed like old friends brought together for a funeral, each fleck of joy tainted with anguish. The lament from the waters though silent moved the whole town in a grievous samba that night. Laurie was the waitress of a desolate diner, out past the bend of Crawfish Creek.

Trauma

I suppose when I was younger I fancied trauma as a dramatic device. I could proclaim of the changes in weather, the loss of a phone, the subtle betrayal of a barely registered lover to be causes of trauma. Devastating. Unbearable. How little I knew. My new trauma does not flash across my life with a fleeting vengeance, it sits with me always. No stranger to the everyday martyrdom of depression I almost didn't notice my sidekick at first. He fed so delicately that I almost laughed him to death, let him bide his time and drain his strength from the parts of me no cleansing liquor could reach. But there he was still, snuggled somewhere between my broken heart and my barely breathing lungs lived a monster without whom I could never survive. Trauma is not fear. It is not sadness nor anger, trauma is a myth all of its own and with this monster inside me I found I could not stay myself. I grew to accommodate his increasing size, his obnoxious habits and his scathing mannerisms. I grew around him like I was the cancer of his oak, I began to mutate into shapes I never thought possible. The woman who dragged this beast behind her would have been unrecognisable to the girl whose chest the monster made home. You see unlike pain the creature didn't let up. He stayed and fed and eventually became the thing that drove me forward, became my reason for being far beyond keeping my blood pumping. The monster was the reason for my thirst for revenge - he was just a mimicking puppet of a crueler beast but I longed for his blood all the same. Longed for a closure I could never reach as it did not really exist. Just like with the walls that divided nations, the chasms that maim each gorge - even when he passes, if that blissful morning shall ever arise, I'll never truly be rid of him. My trauma is me now.

If I stare hard enough into my pupils I catch glimpses of him cackling away. So codependent. My breath rattles along with his and I feel the shadows of his fingers extend through my nerves as he forces me towards more debauchery. He beckons so softly, with every silky motion he's a nightmarish ballet. We are reaching the closing act and I can't find him as easily these days. Even when I chase him through the bleak sister of my iris it's not enough. We have to meet properly. Soon to dive through acrid waters, I will splash next to him as the final threads of my body decline. 'Wanna play?' he'll sing. And I won't answer, but we'll both know it's my time.

3:40am

My favourite thing about her was the way her lips felt as I tried to inhale them in my desperation. A hard case with a fluid base, caramel cravings in every kiss. She was nothing to me in her image. Bizarre to the eyes and even more deluding in her speech; she spun circles around me with her words until every verb was a trip wire. But she never lay out her strong arms for me to fall in to - instead they led me forcefully into that darkness with her, pulling me by the strings straight through the solid danger of her heart’s abyss. I arose the other side gasping but breathing. I wiped my limbs clean and wept from the burns of her bleach. She cased me in her imperfection and I stung with each touch for though I was far from pure her vitriolic embrace corroded me beyond recognition. No matter of the strength of the chemical’s cleansing my skin glowed to her name, it smiled into the sun with every interjection of memory caused by cancerous E vitamins and dishonest confessions that sept through my membrane ever since I was blessed enough to observe her. 

Her eyes bled ice. She had a habit of starring into the sun and one day I caught a comet within her gaze. It spun stagnant beneath my cautious fingers and I flicked it to the earth as I couldn’t stand the rejection snuggled in her iris. She froze me there with the core of the world and although she would happily let my heart rot beneath my ribs; she was apprehensive to let me dance with traffic. She loved me more than a friend deserved, and buried her face beneath my curves. For that was where I needed her most; her anchor necessary to the shipwreck my heart was causing - the only part of the wreckage unable to watch me drown. I loved the way kindness creased her, how her face fought the sweetness that lay beneath every sweat drenched lick of her. She made my body burn with anticipation, only to be drenched in a molten sea of fingers and skin. How her flesh haunts me now that my sheets can’t be consumed by her. 

Yet she always fled by morning. Even if she lay within reach she was acres away; debating with demons and kissing cyanide. Unable to tell me I was smothering her by gorging on her. But her smile was such a miracle, extracted from a vat of misery I cherished every whisper of it, she could never blame me for hoarding her. Was I just to let her roam? To be free for the bite of another man’s hold? I had to tame her, or to take her. By the end nothing mattered except that I could call her my foal. Even when the waters cooled and her heart became as frosty as her stare I still smiled as she killed me with the ghost of her affection. 

It was over by the morning, but the hours she let me have her kept me going when the only other company I had was the silence of her vacant side of my nights. I longed for her to reach for me, to take my hand in her callus claw and beg that I maim her - brand her with my dedication so that she had no choice but to lay by my side as I finally gave up trying to glue myself back together. She’d gather my torn pieces and sew them up - I’d make a stylish throw for her dinner guests and never lament my purpose as I would have the blessing of her ownership. Her pride and joy; her inanimate toy. 

She must never know of the allegiance to her I’ve sworn. A dutiful addict I’ve kept her a secret even from herself. But in the moments when I feel her flesh convulse, in the flashes of panting bliss that belong only to us and the moon, I don’t need the mornings; the night is still, and she is near. 

All My Rivers Lead to Your Ocean.

Six in the morning,

You leave graveyard shift complete,

Scrubs off khakis on.

Terror

They tell you in medical school ‘Don’t listen to the terror’,

The sharp pull of a dizzy heart,

Recognizing the face of another.

The gloves can hide your human skin,

But they cannot shield your eyes,

Nor the flesh that you tear through.

Nightly sinew fights.

In the waiting room there sits a wife,

Three children clambering on.

She hushes them with vending machine promises –

Crinkled candy calm.

Inside her love my fingers rest,

Poised above a clot –

Never needless my needle nicks,

Blood a-gush.

Nick’s last beat.

Foil reflects the young ones smiles.

They bicker. Oh what to select.

War cry chorus; G19!

They weren’t to know of their father’s death,

Their eyes are just like his –

Not lifeless as my memory interjects.

Were I to take an educated guess;

I’d say their innards were much the same.

They did not know the blood was his.

Speckled across my breast.

They were choosing which sweet to digest.

They did not feel his organs halt,

As I did.

But there she remains,

Mother Fear,

Anguish etched into her brow.

The room passes slowly:

My funeral march on pause.

I let her cherish the blessed unknown,

For one more miraculous minute until she can’t.

They tell you ‘Don’t listen to the terror’ so that you keep a steady hand,

But what they forget to mention is in a hospital,

Terror is the only hope we have.

After a long shift,

You fall asleep at the wheel,

Only for a beat.

Crash

‘Stop looking at me like that’

Screams her softly furrowed brow.

The crease above her nose,

Her lips,

Her eyes,

Her all.

You can’t breathe.

When you look at her.

Snuggled next to the whites of her eyes,

Are pools of a royal blue.

So inviting in this summer heat,

You wish to splash within each iris.

Conquer her seas.

But you can’t breathe.

Down from the crest of her perfect nose,

Dwell two pouting lips.

Hues of new blood,

Oxidizing bliss in each kiss.

Red bled raw,

She’s all you have.

An angel walking on solid ground.

Metal scrapes a haunting choir,

Two rings entwined side-by-side,

Marriage is a heaven scape,

With this woman on your arm.

The flow of locks a golden tint,

The beat of music leads their dance,

Bu bum bu bum bu bum and stop.

Hands harmonious dolphins in play,

Rising to the sun.

You could get lost in her embrace,

You fade within your skull,

She sings to you as she lets you go.

You could not breathe.

Now all is lost.

The winter day cruel,

Darkness not allowing me,

Not to see you drown.

Eulogy

Regress from the blue,

How angry shades can pale,

As I broke through your swell

I was left with nothing at all

Arrived on the other end of the break.

To a reception of one.

Just black.

Cold hard screaming nothing.

Then black.

Where your eyes roll back,

You see the life locked in your skull.

A shackled mess of regret,

A heartbroken swell of girls.

Were you told you weren't to live,

Back you would have ran,

Kissed the blondes and stayed up late -

Grades, awards, all meant none.

Yet here you are, myself and I.

A half-lived wasted man,

Whose only impact on the world,

Was a fifty second news segment,

That his wife broke down to,

As the police had yet to reach her door.

I’m sorry for the life I lost,

Not just that already passed,

The children that I will not make,

The food,

The laughs,

The dance.

I will decay into the soil,

I shall be scattered amongst the grass.

Then day-by-day I’ll be forgotten,

When all is nothing,

And all is black.

Why Greetings new soul,

Welcome to the stardust realm,

I have been waiting.

Epilogue

I am The Moon, I rule The Sky,

Where all souls converge in assent,

Some call me ‘Reaper Grim’,

Others ‘God’,

Others ‘Death’ –

Your souls are fuel for my lunar base,

I feed them to my cogs,

And here eternally you whir,

Controlling tides,

And guiding night.

I am The Tide, I rule The Sea,

All your rivers,

To my ocean, lead.

And there life dwells, beyond your eyes,

Perfected over eons of time.

For depths untouched by human war,

But raped by tanks from human shores.

I gave you life,

I let you be.

But drop by drop –

You’re poisoning me.

I am The Sun, I rule The Earth,

Allow for you to breathe,

Warm your crops,

Your skin,

Your world,

And ask for nothing in return.

Although we may seem worlds apart,

We’re not so different you and I,

Both are finite,

And what you don’t know yet;

Is my time has come,

And soon will thine.

My dark side is blessed,

As it never has to watch,

The sickness of Earth. 

Grey

There was nothing but grey at the top of that sleet-drenched shallow slope. You ran in bursts, your pride fighting with your desperation not to miss the train you’d promised none but yourself you’d ride home that day. You always broke promises to yourself. You quit smoking four times a week. You launched a coup against carbs, raged wars against procrastination, and continuously swore never to swear again. Yet here you were.  Cursing under your breath you prayed that the panini you had for lunch would not return for revenge as a stitch in your heaving side, your hot clammy face struggled to draw enough breath for your brisk pace through your black-tar lungs. Determination was all you had to fight off this latest narcissistic disappointment.

   You passed some men in orange dress, all clad with hard hats and judgmental smirks. Now you sped only to avoid them; there was no need for saving face with one as ruddy as yours was then. Your eyes drank in the violent tangerine of their (not so) blue-collar disguise. You felt it bleed into your irises like the contrast dye of an impending CT scan, throbbing through the rods of your retinas and searing your mind with an abhorrent hue. That’s why the grey felt so terrifying at first. As you blinked at it over the final step to the train platform, your chest seizing and your pits swimming, you worried it may be all you’d ever see. How cruel of that orange, to advocate medusa – proving now your world would be nothing but concrete; a blank, dreary monochrome rainbow. Yet your shoes were still blue, albeit worn. Your knuckles were still red and raw with your cold. Your world was the same and the grey was just grey.

   You looked closer at the advance. It seemed to stretch beyond the sky and travel through everything. A prison suspended above the cell of your existence, trapping you in your own desolation. At first you didn’t know why that sky made you feel so helpless; but through your furrowed confusion a name surged into your mind. A name you’d promised you’d never forget. A name that lived in your heart for so long that you thought the letters would sit as scars on the organ until long after you succumbed to the moist dark earth. The grey laughed at you as you remembered the day it was frowning upon, remembered the name of the boy you lost, remembered to feel every convulse of mourning in one throat twisting crack of thunder screamed at you by the hysterical clouds. It was as if his face was sewn into every refraction, his tears seeping on you disguised as innocent rain – the other commuters seemed oblivious to the blood that was drenching the bitter November storm. Your hands were stained with his death but you were so used to the guilt you forgot to see the crimson. It was only as you held them up to test the leaking iron sky - to judge the suitability of fetching your umbrella from the depths of your stuffed travel bag - that you found your hands, not pink with the brunt of the chill, but on fire with the shame of his passing.

   You panicked as you viewed them and scrubbed them manically against your jeans, but no chemical in the world could bleach him from you. Dry sobs cut through your throat as you struggled to clean him from your palms, scraping against the metal ribbed bench you sat on as disturbed onlookers edged down the platform, and averted their gaze from your grazed numb hands. The stone advance had served its purpose, and rightly left you to your grief. The hidden sun fled to traumatize another lonely soul, and all you were left with was a date, and a name, and a black, endless sky. The dark was cold but not malicious, it let you hide in it as long as you kept quiet. But why were you so quiet?
    The moon smiled a soft encouragement as you raised your tired eyes to its stormy castle once more. Droplets fell into your pleading eyes and you realized why you were so aghast at the ashen miasma that first met you where the tracks came in to view; it was so empty, it was so bland, there was nothing there. No noise, no memory, no emotion; your sobs were raw with no lubrication, no tears to help them pass. That was where the true horror resided, you couldn’t cry for the boy you promised you’d love forever – because forever had come far too soon. He was naught but a faded memory. You couldn’t make room for the teenager you’d cherished, not there in the heart of the adult you’d become. You had outgrown him, and in his death he’d never catch up. You felt something snap in your chest and then your face became flooded with hot heavy tears. You laughed at the rain as it buried your cackles; the wind snatching them as they left your quivering lips. Of all the promises you’d ever made to yourself, vowing never to stop loving a ghost was the most liberating obligation to ignore.

Good boy

The dirt collected in clumps between his joints. He was panting as he snuffled around at the feet of his masters. Humans with hungry eyes - salivating excitement at the loyal beast snaking between their legs. His body rippled like a caterpillar. His rear raised ever so slightly in the air, for the curve of his spine strained as his nerves were set on fire. His mind was set on validation, the stroke of a hand across his skull or the offer of treats as hands caressed his pink middle. The muzzle he wore kept his waterfall jaws cemented shut so as he longed for attention all he could muster was a whimpering somewhere deep in his dry throat. 

He starved for their touch. He lived for their devotion. Yet all he felt as he begged on command, or thrashed to his back praying to be relieved of his torturous longing - was shame. Yes all he felt was shame. They saw he was unhappy, the eyes that owned him, they saw his despair and they relished in it. They held themselves how he longed to be held and they touched each other almost thoughtlessly, no prompt needed, no head tilt or straining stare. It seemed they mocked him with their equality. Did he want to belong to them, or with them? He licked their shoes and fetched their toys but was it only their affection he required?

No. He needed the shame. He needed the way they withheld their touch and kicked him as he begged. The leash they strapped round him was fatuous, as he would never run from the gift of their torture. He was a good boy for them, so that in time they'd let him be bad. He heeled for his mistress because as she stroked his hairless skin, her hand occasionally brushed his erection. He knew she purposefully teased him, she could grab it and pump it and put him out of his misery. But he was not lame, he need not be put down yet. The curl of her lip as he convulsed in excitement was only a prelude to the smile that ripped apart her commanding face as she withdrew her touch. He yelped through closed lips as if physically pained, writhing where he lay like a pig in shit. He belonged to her, but he knew she liked to share. His limbs grew sad as she turned her cold back to him, but then she invited the crowd to have a go.

'Spread' - she barked. 

The animal in her was a mighty lioness and her roar sent shivers through the rat that he was. She was his goddess and he lived to serve. But as the humans drew arms, of leather and lubricant and the creature kicked his legs in the air - he knew it was all worth it, as his reward was about to begin.  

For you

'Please don't hurt yourself.'
The walls begged me in their noiseless scream as I tried to melt the plastic from reluctant blades.
'But why?' I asked. Hoping beneath my hate that they'd give an answer that could save me. My hands shook with each rough forced flame, the flicker no more violent than the storm within my chambers. I wanted to die, but death was terrifying. No monsters or ghosts could cause me to feel my bones within my skin the way I did that night. But when I pondered waking in the morning I felt vile - day was my phobia, the anticipation of continuing hours; such seemingly endless torture. The walls were so soft with their pleading for my safety, but they spoke mainly of how little people cared for me. I was 'weak, weak, weak' and they told me with every note of their silent orchestra. And I could not argue. So ever present were my snarling shadows, accompanied by only deafening isolation. Yet in that incoherent hiss I heard them call to me, entice something long sleeping dormant beneath the first few layers of my worn out skin.
'Please.' I heard myself beg; 'Give me a reason not to.'
The paint on the walls seemed to sigh with thought. Even my own demons had no reason to keep me.
'Because of your deposit.' they spoke. 'Blood stains us walls.' The controlled pitch of how I was offered this causation led me further into demise. But my walls were honest and I could not bicker with them anymore, no matter how afraid I was now i had no one left to protect me. The flames beckoned death, like a rattling cart with the devil at its bit. He'd known where to find me for a while. I felt him watching, but the souls he reaps must first be diced. Here I was, a sous-chef's fetish. Yet my mind was strong at first and took decades to die - my body however, mere seconds. Did I have a deposit? Yes. The walls could not lie. I asked them, with the last breath of my lungs that belonged to the living;
'What should I do?' They thought for a few stolen beats of my heart, their mind my mind and therefore their life as false.
'Hang yourself. Please, do it for us.' I smiled at the vacant beige of my room, so plain and ordinary. I envied the walls with their inanimate innocence.
'Okay.' I spoke with my neck in a noose. 'I'll do this for you.'