My mother thinks I’m safe tonight

as I stand underneath this silver streetlight.

Silver, like the only kind of bullet that can kill a werewolf,
mercury in liquid form,
shiny dresses that I’ve worn.

Now, I am dressed in a flannel shirt that I disappear into,
I like my clothes the way that I like my soul.

It’s wispy and far off,
my best friend tells me how I once said I would never touch the white,
the white I shiver and quake for
in the cold, tonight.

I know that this isn’t right,
that my war with morality
has lost this fight
the way that the blind seer Tiresias lost his sight,
long ago.

I wonder if you know
how that tale goes,
I wonder what the preacher knows

that I do not.

I’ve sat in churches
as numb as I sit down on this asphalt, surely my twisted fate happens to be God’s fault.
As if I believe in that God, as if the plastic Astro-turf laid here on this unholy ground could ever be sod.

Plastic melts,
but green paper stays,
twisted in a hundred ways.
Crisp and flat, straight from the vault,
or rolled up to vacuum into my body
a demon kind of salt.
The only part of me that is still human
screams for me to halt,
I swear that this is god’s fault.

She sang me hyms when I was young,
the sweet notes lilted
off my mother’s tongue.
My grandfather played the harp,
and I swear I can hear it even now
light in my ears
as i am shrouded in the dark.

As the car pulls up
my heart does a somersault,
my body aching for chemical assault
the dopamine I am drowning my brain in
the box I keep my pain in
where I live, it’s always raining
and I know that it is God’s fault.

My mother deserves the world.

anyone wanna talk? inbox me?

A friend’s thoughts on my insomnia

“I just don’t want your life shaped by a decision you made when you were high.” My best friend looks at me, I look to the sky. I know that I cannot meet her eyes with pupils the size of dimes.

Yes, the windows to my soul have the drapes pulled tightly closed, I’ve shed so much of myself, shrouded in cigarette smoke and baggy clothes. I have eyeliner drawn haphazardly up the curve of my brow bone, I gave myself wings. I wear a bow tied in my ponytail, fallen out of place, the color has gone from my face, I belong in outer space, on the island of lost dreams and pretty broken things. My hands have been shaking for days and I’m sure they will tremble for many more. I left my childhood home, walked right out the front door. The place i would return to and see my mother’s form, holding out a plate of cookies that were still warm. I couldn’t go back if I wanted, scars are still visible in the walls that I’ve torn.

The ceramic she held was at my mercy as a kid- she said I could paint anything that I wanted, and so I did. I drew a forest way off the grid, A thick , tree filled paradise where a little fairy hid. She had wings just like the ones I’ve drawn on my face. A look in her eyes like she knew danger and-even then- liked the taste.

When I finished my Magnum opus it turned out it was all a waste, they weren’t even going up on the wall. I added glitter to the edges, making them dance and swirl, how did I know life so well, as just a little girl?

I knew the place that I would go to run when I got older, the place where the moon was always full and the air was so much colder. The darkness waited for me, thinking “Finally, I can hold her.” And the rest of them say, “we told her.” But the weight of this reality is the same as a boulder.

The myth of Sisyphus, forever rolling that wrecked rock up the hillside. He would never, never taste triumph, no matter how hard he tried. I remember my mother’s eyes, how many times for me she cried. Sometimes, I think it would have been easier if I had just died. On my painted on wings I glide, my hair completely ruined from this wicked carnival ride.

My friend is waiting for an answer, I’m trying to decide.

I sigh and turn what should be hazel but instead are dark and dripping. Confess I really hadn’t realized just how far I was slipping, that the iceberg was tipping my titanic, that I was becoming outrageous and manic, that when I finally tried to call for help my emergency radio only played static. My heart began to race as I cried out in panic- this monster’s teeth were simply gigantic! But somehow.. I still found it romantic the way when it breathed smoke into my lungs that changed everything’s colors, another name on a list of girls who broke the hearts of her mothers.
I say this all evenly, not once do I stutter.

She looks at me like I’m already six feet under.

“You are adrift, and you don’t even care. You’re picking at your skin and you are thinning your hair. Everything about you is starting to scare us, you used to be the one I knew I could trust, it’s like you just ran away, hopped on the first bus out of town. You’re broken the way that my old music box is, porcelain ballerina will not spin, you’re lonely the way that an empty diner is, haunted the way that coffee is brown. And you’re always, always high, even now.”

I wish that I could frown but my heart is pushed so deep deep down, held prisoner by trapeze swingers and sad face clowns. I light a cigarette, the tobacco my most innocent vice. Oh, I remember when I used to be nice. So sweet my whole life but i wanted to try the spice. It’s been a long and twisty journey. The endlessness of the dark found me and has certainly turned me.

Into what I don’t know, half zombie, half vampire. A hopeless, strung out fucking liar. In olden days they would have already burned me at the pyre, “there is only one way to kill the evil inside her. It is bright and it is vibrant, destroy the demon with her own fire!”

All I know know is that the green, the white, the blue and the metal, they make up my entirety. “Don’t get too close, I don’t want you to catch it.” I say with a bloody nose that I wipe on my jacket. The red that is smeared there is the same red as my hair, the same as my chest is when I play truth or dare. I keep my secrets close so i always choose to kiss the person to my right, streak naked in the night, to float upon a cloud of white.

Told to throw a penny in this haunted wishing well, if you looked at me, do you think you could tell?

Maybe you could, or maybe not. Maybe it snows in the summer, maybe it’s hot. I think I was supposed to do something, I think I forgot. I’ve been every color of the rainbow and every kind of melody played you can play on guitar. I live in the ashes, the skeleton of a dead star.

My best friend asks me to change as we sit in her car, her eyes bright and blue like a tropical ocean, a polar opposite of the commotion in mine, dripping with tar. She asks how I got away so quickly and made it so far. Her tears are like razor blades, cutting into her face so she bleeds, “but maybe that’s just how you are.”

I laugh, well I guess it’s more like a scream, “Sometimes i wake up thinking it was all just a dream, or from a scene in the play that I’m starring in. I’m growing sunflowers and poison ivy in my garden. I’ve been sentenced to death I will never be pardoned.”

Her face is no longer peach, it is crimson and it is human and it is exsanguinating, like a mad artist’s most desperately beautiful painting, it’s sick that I take pride in the soul I am staining. All of my color was stripped away and replaced by fluorescents, and disco balls and anything that is not the absence of pigment.

I am not the same as I was when we met.

The way that I let you bend my limbs into whatever shape you want me to be in, I don’t know where God is now, I can’t even see him.

We pull up to the curb beside the house that will never be home, a place where 7 people live, I still feel alone. She opens her mouth as I open the door, she’s changed her tone,

“well, don’t expect us to be surprised when we’re at your funeral. Knowing you, you will attend it yourself, come back as ghost to see which one of us cared, cried, or shattered the most. You turned from flesh to bone the way bread turns to toast, it’s actually amazing how long you to managed coast. You walked only on the balls of your feet, the ground sliding under them because it was covered completely in sleet. Your mother still goes into your bedroom, hasn’t even made it neat. Your mess, your tornado, clothes filled landfill is the only part of you she gets to keep.”

I let that sink in, then i step away from her as she weeps. I think I’ve gone too far out in the ocean, it’s way, way too deep. I lay silently tonight in my sheets and I think about autumn, the diseased crops I will reap. I think about everything until morning comes and birds start to peep. I certainly do not get any sleep.

Honestly, I’m crazy, and you should be afraid of me. I have held white hot flames to the olive of my skin, watched it sizzle and savored the smell, the smell of pain and dissonance, and the death of thousands of cells. I will throw rocks at Windows of nice houses, with their $3000 curtains they deserve a little use. And use, oh i know all about that. To breathe, to taste, to touch, to seek the very thing that keeps me on my knees. They’re scarred and bloody and scabbed over so many times that there’s no real skin left, just a grayish flesh like substance. I run at full speed away from red and blue lights, small enough to wiggle into spaces that eyes that can’t enter the shadow world i
can’t see. I become a ghost, the worlds newest poltergeist. I will steal your great grandmothers ruby pendant and sell it for twenty five dollars, I will go into your father’s closet and his shirts- cut all the collars. Mischief, mayhem, murder all three carrying degrees of this insanity. You have never known me, even though I was the neighbor girl growing up, even though I toasted at your bar mitzvah cup, because for me your lives were mundane, and could never be enough. So I looked between the cracks that nobody ever bothered to check between, I found a whole society and a crazy world unseen. Yes, these were my people, the ones with missing eyes and robes of purple silk, the woman who got pregnant and sold her babies for a thousand dollars, and every other thief, crook, and all in all society fallers. We made our home underground- no idiot, not literally. You couldn’t tell the difference- I swear!- between you and me. I have neatly brushed back hair and polo shirts are my daily wear and I have a pretty trophy wife who’s smile when I hand her the credit card will soon turn to despair. The black market of all things altering, like capsules, powders leaves- well he looks just like Jolly Jerry! The king of cone ice creams. Oh you silly silly fool, looking around won’t help you now. We didn’t even have to find you. See, we have always known who you are. Maybe you were to born to be this hick towns white night or maybe you just got too big for your already extra large britches- but us over on the enemy lines? Well we really, really hate snitches. Oh sweetheart, babydoll don’t fret! It’s only stitches, across your eyelids- to start. Think twice next before crossing us or I promise that when we meet next, you will not depart. I am crazy, and you should keep me behind an electric fence. But you have no idea who I am? Am I randy the mailman, or Joan, the old woman who makes jam? Am I all of them of am I only one? Am I none of them- oh who cares let’s have some fun! I love the Fourth of July and it’s right around the corner- luckily one of our team is a big, big explosive hoarder. You’ll see sparks and there will be fire and, yes, dearest innocent civilians, there will be death. I’d say get out of town but then so would we- there’s no way to say who can go and who can stay when there’s no proof of who the evil could be. So brace yourselves, and eye your neighbors a little bit more closely, a pretty brunette pruning rose bushes with shears much sharper than the average, across the street is a tiny blonde woman picking cabbage- or is it the nearly identical cousin of the innocent vegetable, that is cyanide level lethal? Gardening, harvesting, taking something from nothing and making it grow into the size and color and shape of your desire. Oh, hahaha, how I am looking forward this great fire. I’m crazy, you should really stay away from me. The problem is I broke my own window- so you will never, never suspect who I may be.

Everything is vivid, shaking slightly, like the world itself has swallowed much too much caffeine. There are black voids where the hazel should have been and the slow motion seems to be slowly pulling downwards, millimeter by millimeter your unclad feet are submerged deeper into what clearly is not a solid floor. This house resides over a lake, with floating corpses and funnel cakes. Once a circus, always lit up, always bright and always there to turn to if you were looking for technicolor fights.

But one night the teddy bears started to move on their own, inches only at first. Then they were square across from where they should have been, from where anything that made sense would have put them. This is the shadow realm, one where stuffed toys eyes follow you as you pass by to get cotton candy- made of spiderwebs. You spit the filth onto the ground and it blends in seamlessly- when did this place become so grimy?

There are no sidewalks, only uneven dirt paths littered with sharp rocks that crack easily with the slightest touch of your toe. Crack, crack, crack them all, this new carnivals idea of popcorn are these pieces of the earth, well really, the kind of earth that man made.

And oh, here comes the elephant show, now,now watch out for his feet. Oh dear, what’s this, he’s losing grip! Someone has covered his walkway with sleet! Dive out of the way, a mighty tusk nearly missing your head and making your bloody grey matter just another decoration for this morbid funland.

Next is the house of mirrors and you have no business there- you cannot see your reflection, not anymore, no, now a bleary eyed stranger stares back. She has your hair and your skin, only oily and unkempt. She’s missing teeth and is much too thin, and clearly hasn’t slept. She’s shiny- but not like a diamond, more like a slimy piece of moss, she rode the tilt a whirl over and over, with not one regard to the final cost.

Now she is permanently dizzy, trapped inside this glass…and this glass… Why is she following you? Have you angered one of the mystery gouls that keeps this place so drenched in shadow? You raise your right hand then your left, your arms now held up in the sign of surrender, and you watched, horrified as she does the same thing on both sides. This can’t be you, you only played once or twice… A day.

You are floating in the lake now, your body bloated with the contaminated water, and two cities away next to a stone made of gray stand your mother and your father.

So tell me, little big top lover, was the tossing of the 8 ball worth all that it has manifested? Well, no longer can you answer, your lips sewed shut in crude black lines by the doll seamstress meant to hide you away, so that no one would see your face and know who you once were, what you once did or what you could have become.

If you thought the wretched doppelgänger in the reflective glass was bad, well please darling, shut your eyes. Your plastic, too-green doll eyes. Your cheeks are bright red- fresh blood and rouge make an excellently disgusting combination. Your hair is gone, replaced by yarn that was miserably tangled together long ago and now lays in a useless pile at your footless legs.

You are immobile. You are a toy. And you are broken and confused and you didn’t know that the longer you abused the longer it would take to make your way back, and then you got so wrapped up in the spinning that you never even tried. Your family doesn’t know for sure, but it’s easier to say you died. You wish you had, but the small piece of heart that you have left still beats sporadically, radically shaking your fragile skeleton, worn down to nearly dust by the years in the cranks at the party place.

You are alone, a quiet street corner- it is a Thursday afternoon. A woman walks by- you outstretch the old rusted bucket that serves as your bank account. She puts her hands up as if they’re empty, as if a woman who looks like that could ever, ever know the meaning of the word empty. Then your bolted jaw drops open, the one direction it will move.

This is your mother, the woman who grew your life inside of her. Her hair is gray now and the lines in her face as deep as the freak show at the park goes underground. She furrows her brow and scurries away without another sound. You try to swallow, but you never have any moisture in your mouth, never.

Everything is gone and you are all alone, you once had a mother who can’t even recognize you now and you once had a real home. With a chimney and a fireplace that Santa came through on Christmas Eve, if you could turn back time you’d sit on your father’s armchair and never, never leave.

But the best you have is memory my poor,poor tragic soul, and at this point in the recollection we heard the doorbell toll. A handsome boy, with bright green eyes and hair messy and unkempt stands in the doorway. He’s much too thin and his smile is off- something is screaming danger. But in your naive, dreamer heart you took his arm and walked to his car, which looked about as good as he did.

An abandoned parking lot, a piece of glass melted into a tiny pipe, and weird little white rocks that you slide inside. Clouds come out of your lungs as you are lifted into the sky. You learned the only lesson you ever honored in your life then- that nothing , nothing was better than getting high. Creepy green eyes grabs your hand and puts it on his thigh. “You know, this place used to be a carnival- that is, until someone died.”

Do you have two people living inside you, because I do. Sometimes I’m walking to do something that I know will lead me to a path of darkness, the problem is I have moon ringed eyes so it is the darkness to which I am attracted. Dazzling, spinning, different kinds of gems and different vials of liquid sloshing around in these jars, my eyes dart, searching for someone that knows me as a regular. He sells “ice cream” even has a cart, but if you were to lift the lid an inch the most crystal meth you have ever seen would be glaring back at you, daring you to come back if you’d left, daring you to try if you never had. It’s magnetic, and I swear there is a force behind it, a spirit or rather, a demon probably. There’s no way something inanimate can hold such power and destroy so easily. I hand over a crisp $100 to the ice cream man- this cone had better be something fucking special. I swear my pupils go all the way black just looking at the ice, huge chunky shards milky clear and tiny little white sprinkles at the bottom of the bag, a twisted version of the crumbs of your chips. This stuff has to be almost 100% pure, I have terminal boredom and my god, we’ve found a cure. I leave him with my prize in hand, my heart beating as if I have already taken it, as if it is a part of me now. It has trained me like a dog to sit, stay, run, fetch, and especially…roll over. I head back to my house, slip through the door and into my room, that closely resembles an ocean of trash and has posters of Greece on the wall. I pull out my little friend, the piece that makes it all possible. I could snort I know, and it’s a better use of the stuff, but I hate the god damn bloody noses and how it burns for hours afterward. When you smoke it you create these clouds that I could swear have other worlds in them sometimes. Fantasy lands and a place with flying cars, I will watch them intently until the cloud evaporates, and I wonder where they have gone to. I start to load this prime product into the end of the glass pipe when my wrist stops moving. In fact, my whole body has gone incredibly slow. And here it comes, like a wave at the ocean that hits you from behind while you’re on your way back to the sand. The guilt is enough to make my head hang, drooping like the plant I got then never watered- I crossed my heart, I swore to her, I promised id be a better daughter. ~ It is late and it is raining and I am all alone and afraid, in the darkness of a phone booth at a gas station four towns away. Just got jacked by some guys I met at a party and they drove around and roughed me up and.. Well you can put the puzzle pieces together. Her phone goes to voicemail, and I leave a message begging for a ride, then I cross my arms and head inside. I buya pack of cigarettes and walk out of the shop- ramming square into the torso of a cop. He mutters apologies and turns his eyes up to meet mine. Shit, shit, shit, my pupils are as big as dimes! He looks at me, studying, like I’m some kind of lab rat. Then there’s the flashlight test and that I fail before I can even take it, the walking on the line was easy but it’s not enough to eradicate the fact that I have been twitching, trembling, and sweating my body weight in toxins. Then my tox screen is ready, even though i knew the answer to each question and, I failed it, miserably So here I am, been here alone for a while, sing it wonderful, I’m in juvie the same night that I was gang raped. Pretty fair right? They let me take the cuffs off since I’m In a little locked room. And I hate it, I hate small spaces, I always imagine I’m trapped in a can of food. The police station has a very potent old, ripe smell so I’ve come to the conclusion that I am a sardine, crammed inside this can with nasty juice and no room to move no way, no way to ever leave. Mom shows up about 45 minutes into my sardine can jamboree. Her eyes fill up with tears and her body shakes with sobs the second she sees me. I must look like hell, and yeah part of that was all the Crystal, but nobody knew the rest of the story, nobody knew the horror that those straight toothed smiles and gorgeous locks had in store, they were sadists that never were punished so trust me, as far as victims? There will be many more. So my clothes are torn and my knees are bloody and I have a cut on my left upper arm, my skin is dripping sweat and oil and I know my eyes must look just like an eclipse. I sit here , not knowing what to do, if I hug her will she shy away, not wanting to be touched by someone tainted? Eventually I walk to her and put my hand on her shoulder, she looks up at me and the expression that she wears runs over me like a boulder. “You are on a fast track to the worst kind of life you can possibly imagine. You think you can just do drugs like this causally? Well then you’re very much mistaken young lady. Methamphetamine is not like marajuana, come and go as you please. This drug has claws, special claws that don’t cause pain on their way in, so every time you touch it the claws dig deeper until they reach clean down to the bone. Soon you will find yourself with no money because you shoved it all up your nose, on the streets with $20 and a trashbag of clothes. And what do you think you use your precious pennies for? In the alley your balance comes up to zero as you pick up your score. So now you think you’ll be alright, at least while you’re stuck outside you’ll be high. You sleep behind the Walmart with your winter coat on in place of a bed, have a little bit of the monster in your system before you’re out there again, picking through city trash cans to find soda bottles to recycle for 10 cents a piece- to get a bag of the good stuff you just need two hundred of these! You do that for a while, the can collecting thing, when one day a man approaches you, decked out in cartoon pimp style, purple jacket, cane, several gold plated rings. He says you can make money, that you can make a lot, that you have something special, oh baby you are hot! He wants you to be his girl, to turn tricks for him. You blink, your icy cold brain rapidly trying to process this man and his request. You feel something in your chest that sounds like a no but it comes out as a "yes.” So now you’re a hooker, and you do that several times a day, sometimes even ten. But you can get used to how horrible anything is, and you just count every minute as another little shard. That’s how the final chapter of this urban story goes, a client spots a rock on the table. He smiles and introduces himself- even you recognize his name, he’s the biggest Crystal distributor on the west coast and he says he can get you out of this game. Said he liked your moxy, said you reminded him of a sullen cat stuck outside in the rain. So that’s how you went from holding only the Crystal that was going to be consumed and fumed and then exhumed by just your ragged nose and decaying mouth, to holding a hefty jail sentence in your personal possession. There’s one message attached to the product- “don’t do your own shit or you’re paying for it. And do not fuck up.” You live in a house where the front door is a doorway to hell, a place where they play the monsters lullaby. And this is fine, you make much more money and you don’t feel nearly as bad. Well except when kids come in to buy, that really makes you sad. One day youve your precious pipe loaded at the ready, when there is a thud on the door and it sounds much too loud and heavy. “Police!” echoes down the halls and you go numb, this is it, you are done. With your history of prostituion arrests the judge assures that you will pay for selling drugs to wives, sons, children by denying you the light of day, for twenty years. You havent been alive that long, and you’ll never get to live the rest of it. Now tell me does that little situation sound worth it to you? Do you want another hit? She kicks a chair and I suspect she is pretending it is me, she looks at me with so much despair in her eyes, she is dripping with defeat. “You are my daughter, and I love you. You are a beautiful, sweet, caring girl, a talented and smart girl. I don’t know how you got so lost but we can find you, we have to find the moment that you lost your sanity, the moment you were stripped of all humanity, when your only interest was who, what, where and when, and what should I wear? Vanity personified. We will find you, and we will bring you back to life because the girl standing in front of me right now is not my daughter, and never will I consider her to be.” I swallow, an amazing feat considering my mouth is dry as Sahara desert heat. Everything she’s Said tonight, it’s hit me square in my heart, I never thought that I could quit but she sounded so sure, full of hope the way that a rainbow promises that every shower will eventually cease, I mean if colors can cut through all that pressure, all those hydrogen bonds knit together to make it feel as if the rain will never stop, never- then surely I can at least open my eyes and close my nostrils, maybe stop acting as though anything that I once thought was beautiful was now an enemy turned hostile. My eyes fill up with water, must be my body’s last supply, maybe this is where the rainwater goes after all, to those nearly dead from dehydration but desperately in need of tears to fall. I hug my mother in such a way that I haven’t since I was a child chasing fairy lights and simply wandered off. I had thought that we were separated for then and for forever. So I sat myself upon a graffiti wall, my eyes revolving like the solar system around the neon shapes, to plan my life as a carnie. I could stick my feet behind my head after all. I prayed that they had pity upon the lost orphan (by I guess accidental default) whose rounded angelic features bore quite a resemblance to a classic Russian doll. I had my head between my miniature sized palms, when my ears picked up the harmonic tones of one of her originally written, oh so lovely, oh so lonely, it was my mother’s psalms. Her caramel eyes locked onto the tiny topaz pools that were mine, they were filled and overflowing with relief, It was then that I learned what would become my life’s first basic truth- I must never lose my mother, else I would surely die soon after, a victim of only grief. I realize that I feel this way because, well I was lost. I guess some part of me felt that I belonged with the carnies, that my strangeness would never have a home here in this town that I swear was made on a computer, then copy pasted fifty miles each way. The part of me that wants to fly, to jump off buildings, to free those innocent and maybe not so, to move to a different planet where greed has not melted through the ozone, well that part is the current one in charge, inducted in just after I had stumbled upon the theatre troop that were as close as I could get to magic freaks- though they look like ordinary freaks if you asked me. I hold my mother the way I did when I believed I was lost, because I guess that’s where I have been. And I cry for her, but secretly I’m crying more so for Crystal, and for having to say goodbye. ~ So that was two weeks ago and I’ve been doing really great. Home from school at 3:30, homework done by 8. Mom finally thinks I’m well enough to be left on my own, no one to make sure I’m not prowling the streets, looking for the cold that I have left behind in favor of the smell of spring. She’s going out tonight, a half bald dude from her office. I shrug, she could do way better but it’s none of my business anyway. I hear an engine start, and see a silver Toyota clear the corner… They must have taken his car. Interesting…I blink, I stop myself- it’s foolish and it’s risky. But I do happen to know exactly where she keeps a spare key, which also has a key for the lockbox with the emergency cash, if I move fast, in less than an hour, I can have a stash. I weigh it on my shoulders, a tug of war of Olympic proportions going on across my shoulder blades. And then I see their faces, never even dulled by memory, surrounded by flames, snapping photographs of the horrific acts they’d performed on me, telling me that I was better than taking fifteen Molly. And then it was no question, I slid on on my shoes. I was in the car and driving in less than a minute. I pull up to the doorway to hell, tap the sides three times for luck and cross the threshold into the iciest version of hell that there’s ever been. Familiar faces greet me, some pretend not to see me, and others still, accuse me of narcing, becoming a greenie. A rat for the police, paid in cash for easy information passed. I shake my head and say that I’m only here to score, a sour faced man by the name of Randy takes my money, gives me the Crystal and says I’m not welcome here anymore. Shunned, I hold my little taste in the palm of my clammy hand and drive the car home in silence, a silence somehow deeper than words not being spoken to fill the stale evening air. It’s as if I am empty, like I have no hum of soul energy coming from my body. So that’s how I got here, pipe in hand, poised in the air as my eyes are darting everywhere, Greece posters, the computer, the carpet, one of moms nice coasters. Coaster… Like roller? Oh so fast and what a rush. I push that guilt so deep down that it’s with the things that only eat me alive as I lie awake at night, pain that’s saved for private. I bring the glass to my lips, tasting the chemical smoke and breathe it in as if it were my first oxygen after nearly drowning. Well, I guess I’m still nearly drowning. I’ve continued using, hard as ever, which is every single day, I’ve been eating protein shakes and taking sleeping pills, to keep the side effects that are the most noticeable far off at bay. But now, when i listen to my mother talk, about how her boyfriend got them baseball tickets, or asking if the garden needs some new sod, her voice sounds fuzzy and so far away and sometimes even gone. It must be that feeling I had in the car, the one where I was there and yet I wasn’t. I don’t know where I go when I disappear but I know it must be better than here. I think I’ll die of frostbite tonight, I will lock my lungs in the cold and never breathe again, not see again here. I couldn’t do better by my mother, and so she’ll have to settle for my best. I’ll write her a letter, and tell her that I love her so much, that she is my world, that there is only one other person that could shape my life so much, and that’s Crystal, that you two are my my girls. And you couldn’t get along for me.“ And I can’t play the notes to the song where everything works out, so I will do the coward thing, and simply check out. The paper is messy, smeared with blotted ink, damn, dehydration won’t deny my tears, taking one last look at my life. The grade school yearbooks on my shelf, days of milk cartons and dodgeball and Valentine’s Day parties. My eyes scan over my trophy desk- In swimming, ice skating, student of the year, and celebrated academic of the year. I sit on my bed (for maybe the last time, how weird is that?) and grab a stuffed dog by his fuzzy head. Now you know my mom but I don’t think it’s fair for me to leave this incredibly loose end and not tell you a little about my dad. He was gone when I was small, smaller than a cabbage patch doll was. One day mom came home from the park with me, and my father had swept the house all around into piles and thrown haphazardly across the floor, the staircase, the table by the door. It looked like a tornado hit, and in a way it had. It wouldn’t have turned out so rough if all we’d lost that day was my dad. My mother’s cash stash went missing, and any jewelry of value was quickly discovered to have been taken as well. He took her favorite blanket too, and I think that pissed her off most of all. I never saw my dad then, never in the next 16 years. Then one evening in October, he knocked on our door with a twelve pack of beer. I shut my chemistry book, gave him a good look and said I think he’d gotten the wrong house. He looked at me, his eyes considering something, then the corners of his dry crackled mouth went up the sides of his face, revealing rotted looking rocks and gums and lots and lots of empty space where I assumed teeth used to be. "It’s my mouse! All grown up! Get over here and give your daddy some love.” I eyed him in absolute shock, turned to look at the clock as an excuse to leave the room “uh sorry, mom said to get her at seven thirty.” I pushed into the kitchen and like a cancer patient in remission I was in awe and in shock and somewhere deep beneath the crumbling surprise, happy. My mom walked in in her nice blue dress and that robe she likes that I got her for Christmas last year off of the QVC. “Mom, there’s this man here… And I think that he knows me.” Her face lit up, “a boy is here? Oh how lovely darling. We’ll see if he’s good enough, oh dear I hope he’s charming!” I shook my head and opened my mouth to explain, but by then she’d crossed the barrier between the two rooms. Unfortunately there was no barrier of security to stop what ensued. My mother, tiny, pixie-like, prim and strict went right up to this stranger’s (dad?) face and kicked. Like a horse, there was blood covering every surface. He looked at me as he held tissue to his broken nose. He handed me a crumbled note with an address scrawled on the top. It read “you are welcome anytime. It’s about time I get to know my own daughter.” So on that Saturday when mom went To the gym and then the nail salon Afterwards, I looked up the address online and hopped onto a bus. The ride was long, long enough to give me time to reconsider my decision- was it really a good idea, after all his time, to try to reconnect with him? Well, my decision was made for me as the doors slid open and my stop was called. I planted my feet on the sidewalk, and stared up at the house. It looked terrible, there were definitely vermin…I took a deep breath and then several shallow ones, proceeded up the walkway and rang the doorbell. It played rock music loud enough to echo outside of the house, and as I stood I tapped my foot along. The door swung open and there he was, the man from dinner and if it was possible he looked even more ragged and several pounds thinner. His eyes were oddly focused, as if he was concentrating very hard, he asked me if I was here about that fraud with discover card. I eyed hm warily and explained the dinner and the brawl, the address and how the note said explicitly not to call. His face turned to happiness and there was that grotesque attempt at a smile directed towards me again. “I am so glad you came little mouse…only thing is you came while I was a bit busy…unless, you know the game?” I perked up a bit at this, board games are great ice breakers. I nodded my head so he led me inside, to a living room with just an old couch, a tv and a table, littered with little white shards, like bigger versions of the content of a salt shaker. He sat down on the couch that I was certain was not clean, then patted the worn cushion to his left. I watched as he took a card (discover- wonder what he bought with the fraud money) and crushed the little shards until they were nearly powder, arranged them in a neat line and rolled up a dollar. It was surreal, watching it lift from the table to his nostril. almost like watching a vacuuming cleaner, except it was a human, with a brain and a heart, a person who once had a job and a family ,that was sucking up the dirt, or rather some very cheap looking Stuff that turned out to be quite pricey. He then tilted his head back, laughed and turned to me. He smiled and he passed the dollar bill turned snorting agent, and told me to do as much as I wanted. I knew what I should do, get up and never come back, I knew what I could do, refuse but cut my dad some slack, he’s human (he’s a tweaker). But the thing that caught me off guard? I knew what I wanted to do too, more than I knew anything else in the world at that moment. so I took the maxed out plastic, and a big chunk of this white stuff, crushed it up, then came the dollar and the burn inside my nostril that made me want to dance and holler . I didn’t. I sat, prim and proper and cool as a cucumber when my heart felt like it was going to either blow up or stop completely. I spent the rest of my night getting high with my father, he told me of his escapades which mostly included some type of money launder. When I left there were no stars, and the streetlights there didn’t work. I gave my dad A hug- and not the kind You’d think. Not an awkward, forced hug, this was a hug like he had been my father my whole life, like he had taught me how to ride a bike. But I had met this man three days ago, and the neighbor taught me how to ride. Well, a bicycle anyway. Then that perfect puzzle piece fit, that Crystal clarity. It was an instant bond because of the kind of energy that goes on in rooms like that dirty square crafted in stucco. Maybe it wasn’t like how to ride a bike, but my father had just taught me how to zoom, zoom, zoom…all the way to the moon. He gave me a party favor- a little bag of rocky white delight, he wished me luck in school and thanked me for the night. I walked into the blackness, the starless asphalt road with no streetlight on the side, no point of reference at all. That was where I was always gong to be from then on, trying to make my way home from some strange place in blackness, with no light to guide me. ~ So that’s how it all started, now that that’s said I feel okay about letting you all know how it ended- I’m going to fix a shot, something I’ve only done once or twice, and load it with 5 times much as should of the vice. I’m confident that will give me a heart attack. If that plan fails, when I get out of the hospital after that proved death couldn’t be a result of a binge I can always find a bring to jump off of So now it’s done and you know it all, how fast we slip and how hard we fall. How we come from everywhere, yes trailer parks but also chartered yachts, and the majority of us are in modest, middle class spots. I don’t even feel like I have control of my life any longer, Tina rules my every action and thought, seconds seconds, adding up the hours. When you’re up you want to climb higher, reach heights never achieved, and when you’re fiending for something icy cool, take out your last twenty and make the trade you fool. She traps you ensnares you, and your life will never ever be the same. So that’s why I did this because, I have tried every other way. Death is the only way out of crystal’s game.

Diary of a Holocaust

Honestly, I’m crazy, and you should be afraid of me. I have held white hot flames to the olive of my skin, watched it sizzle and savored the smell, the smell of pain and dissonance, and the death of thousands of cells. I will throw rocks at Windows of nice houses, with their $3000 curtains they deserve a little use. And use, oh i know all about that. To breathe, to taste, to touch, to seek the very thing that keeps me on my knees. They’re scarred and bloody and scabbed over so many times that there’s no real skin left, just a grayish flesh like substance. I run at full speed away from red and blue lights, small enough to wiggle into spaces that eyes that can’t enter the shadow world i
can’t see. I become a ghost, the worlds newest poltergeist. I will steal your great grandmothers ruby pendant and sell it for twenty five dollars, I will go into your father’s closet and his shirts- cut all the collars. Mischief, mayhem, murder all three carrying degrees of this insanity. You have never known me, even though I was the neighbor girl growing up, even though I toasted at your bar mitzvah cup, because for me your lives were mundane, and could never be enough. So I looked between the cracks that nobody ever bothered to check , I found a whole society and a crazy world unseen. Yes, these were my people, the ones with missing eyes and robes of purple silk, the woman who got pregnant and sold her babies for  a thousand dollars, and every other thief, crook, and all in all society fallers. We made our home underground- no idiot, not literally. You couldn’t tell the difference- I swear!- between you and me. I have neatly brushed back hair and polo shirts are my daily wear and I have a pretty trophy wife who’s smile when I hand her the credit card will soon turn to despair. The black market of all things altering, like capsules, powders leaves- well he looks just like Jolly Jerry! The king of cone ice creams. Oh you silly silly fool, looking around won’t help you now. We didn’t even have to find you. See, we have always known who you are. Maybe you were to born to be this hick towns white night or maybe you just got too big for your already extra large britches- but us over on the enemy lines? Well we really, really hate snitches. Oh sweetheart, babydoll don’t fret! It’s only stitches, across your eyelids- to start. Think twice next before crossing us or I promise that when we meet next, you will not depart. I am crazy, and you should keep me behind an electric fence. But you have no idea who I am? Am I randy the mailman, or Joan, the old woman who makes jam?  Am I none of them- oh who cares let’s have some fun! I love the Fourth of July and it’s right around the corner- luckily one of our team is a big, big explosive hoarder. You’ll see sparks and there will be fire and, yes, dearest innocent civilians, there will be death. I’d say get out of town but then so would we- there’s no way to say who can go and who can stay when there’s no proof of who the evil could be. So brace yourselves, and eye your neighbors a little bit more closely, a pretty brunette pruning rose bushes with shears much sharper than the average, across the street is a tiny blonde woman picking cabbage. Gardening, harvesting, taking something from nothing and making it grow into the size and color and shape of your desire. Oh, hahaha, how I am looking forward this great fire. I’m crazy, you should really stay away from me. The problem is I broke my own window- so you will never, never suspect who I may be.