Facism is a blade we carry, we are born with it in our hands. We are all capable of using it, rallying behind it, bleeding our brothers and sisters with its tip. It is up to us to drop it, to refuse violence against our fellow man, and to instead offer an open palm. An opportunity for peace, and prosperity without the boot of a dictator on the neck of a people.
What is all this?
It’s bioluminescence. You never seen it before?
No, I haven’t.
It’s little tiny creatures, every time something moves through the water they light up like itty bitty stars.
Do you eat them?
Do I-? No! They’re beautiful!
You don’t eat beautiful things?
You’re still here aren’t you?
-conversations with a siren
I want to change.
You can.
But I am afraid.
You ought to be.
I can't change.
Yes you can.
My legs are shaking. My feet are stuck in the ground.
Unstick them. Walk. Move. Change. Now!
Now?
Now.
There is something so shameful in trying. In putting forth the effort out in the open where the onlookers look and dig their forks into my darlings. My creation dies in the end, regardless. Whether they relish every morsel or idly masticate while their eyes are drawn to the street walkers, just like all that came before her, my idea is eaten. And I am left alone to wonder if a piece of my soul had any flavor worth talking about.
My innocence was taken by hands no bigger than my own, another child who’s eyes swam blue with cold apathy. She couldn’t have known what she was doing was wrong, for I recognize now, the same things were being done to her. How can I raise my fists to the one who hurt me when she had no innocence to begin with, and I had something to lose. She was damned from the start.
I was his worry stone.
he couldn’t pick my face out of a crowd,
Or name a single interest of mine;
he couldn’t bother to wash his mug in the sink,
Or put the coffee on in the first place;
he couldn’t braid my hair while he spoke,
Or untangle the nest he made.
All he could do was rub his hands together,
And wonder where I’d gone,
after eroding me away.
The Girl who Cried Wolf
Was never met with hurried steps coming to her aid in the dead of night. The first night she watched for the beast, his golden eyes burned from a breath beyond the treeline. She shouted out for pitchforks, torches, and only felt wind and moonlight rushing to her side. Nobody believed her the first time.
The candyfolk though sweet in stature were bitter hearted, something was very rotten about them. Though that didn’t stop them from whittling each other down with their tongues. Hungry, constantly. This place I’ve fallen into, it must be hell. Or if they taste well enough, a very brief heaven, and then purgatory.
I watch the climate crisis march to my doorstep, and
invite itself into my living room.
The blaze is outrageous, but not nearly as much as his friend, the politician.
He insists the fire isn’t here, that my brown felt couches have always been black and crackling,
That the water from my kitchen faucet has always been boiling from its spout.
I watch my world turn to ashes, and the fire take its leave, and the politician smiles with heavy pockets.
Insisting he wasn’t paid to let him in in the first place.
Indecision, my worst enemy, my bedfellow, my self. I look in the mirror and am met with a series of incomplete paths, loose ends, commitments unfinished. I am torn each way and no way, my spirit has been drawn and quartered. I watch my friends walk the straight and narrow line. I envy their distance, as I sit in the stagnant waters that grow higher and higher. Instead of standing up and walking away from it all, I tread water. You can always stay in the same place, contemplate the same questions, mull over the same potential paths, but the comfort the old routine brings you will fade away. That is one certainty I hold in my bundle of uncertainties. This life I live will get worse.
Depression is driving a car dry, no oil, no gas, just habit. Nothing slows, people die, jobs disappear, experiences pass. Everything is a miraculous colorful blur that illicits no feeling in you. You remember that it used to and this pricks your fingers with drops of sadness. It grinds you down, your body grows weary. What doesn’t kill you right away doesn’t make you stronger, it just takes it’s time. And that’s all you have, sitting in your hands like a steering wheel stuck straight, propelling you ever forward. Never caring to ask if you’re ready, if it hurts. Depression is driving a car dry because that’s all you know how to do. To keep going even though you’ve nothing left.