Waking Suddenly

Night particles seemed to cast broader spells as vast defenses to the needs of offspring and pages of righteousness she devoured. Waking suddenly this night with the thoughts of a genderless child somewhere mucking through swamps of parental baggage, she touches the sweat between her breasts thinking of laughing artists toting brushes; their armour armor raised in quietly shielded sarcasms of brushstroke.

Twisting in coverlets she reads a child's book. It is the tale of manic creative masks, life selections and objections that slide beneath consciousness’s sight. Choosing course chants to recite steady in the safety of her sanctioned bed, she avoids cool tiles that point to loneliness, icy windows that open to a place that functions it seems out there, in her, for her. Sirens repel her in a world desolate of masculine lines and deep rumbling. She cast them to numbness and turns her head.

The worn clichés of this night's dreams haunt her like young wallflowers in yellow dresses plastered against torn wallpaper, virgins big-eyed waiting for rings, marked bodies and babies to hold; a human melding proving worth and roping swine by their throats.

Never painted canvases float above her; she carries them through the halls of her duties, the lines of her consumption, the dreams of her never if only ironies. Colors never focused, only lines and forms and the conception of egg passions verses sperm wanderings.

Secluded words and lyrics sloughing off layers of her unused skin until blood spotted punctuation marks decorate her knees, her elbows, the in-between places nobody noticed. She prefers it this way as her alone equated asylum in her internal algebra. This safe place stroked her in places no one could reach, not her stacks of books , not the him hymns that wandered through her forehead, pulsing under her right eye, not the imaginary long dead cat purring near her feet sucking his own tail in soft nurturing repetition.

Grasping her notebook she writes unpolished far beneath shining metaphor or brilliance. She writes free of a critic or a distinguished eye. Awareness that the one that matters left this place long ago as

time

crumbles

down

her

spine

The bowl at her bedside reminds her of cherries before season. She spits make-believe pits to the floor and watches as they travel through miles of carpeted forest finding their way to polished wood floors hoping to be kicked into waiting fertile soil elsewhere, anywhere.

Her closet remained empty tonight. She can see the space, the emptiness that confirms that she never was one to leave a mark

may, 2011