benni

and when she drifted into the room, tiny and built with tragedy and dark circles, in an instant i knew...

i wanted to save her.

but i couldnt do anything for her; i stood on wobbly confused legs and wrapped my arms around her waist while she cried, sinking down to the floor and hugging her knees and rocking and wishing i could stand again...

and i thought about the warning hed given me when he said goodbye... with matted hair and dark circles and sweaty pale trembling but none of it had ever happened...

and i thought of him next to me saying my name over and over only growing more frantic when i didnt answer, and finally a sigh of relief when i turned to him unblinking and smiled...

five seconds doesnt sound like a long time so i laughed... but when you forget to breathe an answer that's a long fucking time...

and it felt cloudy the whole way home, sleepy and cotton lined and a million miles away... and as i wake up i feel this stirring in my head...

a mild aching in my soul...

and i think of distance as a mixed blessing. better but terrible because i want it...

and i cant stop thinking of her and her cloudy eyes and her honey laden voice... sinking back onto the bed and nestling my head in her shoulder and breathing her in while she sighed and fumbled with another...

and i float here less certain and more lost than before...

and my thoughts always come back to you.









i writhed in one spot trying to forget the poisons in my body; my head throbbed and my limbs wanted. a thousand voices screamed into my ears, whispers teased and offered and so i lay, blearily aware that i could not get up...

in my dreams i fell in love with the devils brother. they called him frost; he had icy eyes, sharp teeth and a black heart. he loved me too.

there was a moment in which he saved my life, cradling me to his empty chest and running from the fire, but when He killed him there was nothing i could do but run...

the wave was huge and dirty and gray. we saw it rising and we all ran. no one knew where we were going or how to escape... i pushed into a building that was filled with expensive people preparing to dine, and i sighted the stairs; people blindly followed me and we pushed our way up stumbling and crying and screaming and pushing them out of the way...

and suddenly the building was glass and everyone stopped what they were doing and looked outside to see the wave encroaching. they all stood and looked at the stairs...

and we pushed to the top...

and everything fell just beneath us and the water rose to our shoes and we looked in awe out at the darkened watery city... and i cried because i knew that he was dead...

and he appeared to me but not to me in a darkness alone with his brother... and his eyes were icy as they always were but emptier, and he had an expression that i will always remember but never decipher...

He was explaining to him that it wasnt for a long time, but he had been getting out of hand and needed to remember his place here, alone...

and he looked at Him, with those piercing eyes and said only this...

"i was starting to love her."

then he was in front of me, holding my arms to my sides, staring me in the eyes and nodding in reassurance as he licked the blade of a knife with his swollen purple tongue; it glowed red and he began to carve my thigh with it, intricate symbols and pictures that i thought i might understand for a fleeting moment before i lost them...

and then i woke up and remembered to breathe, but did not remember to walk... stumbled from my bed sore and uncertain and fell from my stilts into the wall and to the floor... crawled to the bathroom and vomited and lay there staring at my leg...

tracing the flesh that he had marked...

but had never marked because it was all in my head.