i will not promise hate

Prickles soft and wet fill the sky. The hazy mist soaking my clothes making me shiver clear to my bones. All around me the moisture clings as the last survivors pushing to take the morning fight. They will not cower. And I fear they will not fail. Below it all I sit letting my drenched self be forever grateful that nature won’t let the propaganda kill the great orb of the sky. For if it could I would freeze. I would die. But here I sit, my grave below; my chair teetering the edge; my arms flailing for the currency of earth; from my lungs I cry, “bless you sun. Bless you earth. Bless you grass stains streaking my jeans. Bring your heat. Bring your soul. Bring the touch of your ever delicate hand. For you my love will not waiver.” Yet, through the wind, to my heart, the picketed cold screams louder than my voice can bare making the winter stay.

number 465

The fire drawing a line across me parting my body, picketing my soul, so that only my blood dares cross. Who is watching to see if that blood stops sharing its life with both sides of the line. No one. Alone I stand feeling my insides drain. Against my skin the wind pricks raising goose bumps along my surface. How will I live? How will I die? From both I crave those lights that flicker from tree tips to roof tops. And in my final moments the breach between memories come gathering in bursts rather than sequence. I see the witnesses in the room scolding me, my king throwing me from his lap because I race a train across his chest. Notes from napkin used for when words when anger is slapped against my brother’s face. I see games being played in the fragmented bits of my yard. Games my adult self shuns to remember. A fly buzzing killing more of me than I thought it should. Cloak and dagger. In and out. My mother pushing me into a stream; the chill threatening death nearer to me. And yet from the cushion of cliffs my mind rests thinking of the lights flickering in the dark, casting shadows that forever change. Why must this be the last for me? My keepsakes signed, rotted away. One last onset. Interposed with the queen, and I cannot see to see.