Dreams Of Ink

The first time I see the sky, It’s a warm blossom of colors. Orange, red, yellow, pink. Names that meant nothing before. The sun is dancing, Ever so slowly, Back to the dark place it despises. But it will always rise, And dance again. I recall this to a stranger. She murmurs condolences, And I don’t understand. “Were you really living?” She asks me, And I, confused, reply, “What’s living?” She wraps kind arms around me, Squeezing me tight. “I’m living,” She says. “And you’re living.” Living - warmth The next time I see the sky, I am lying on cold kitchen tiles. It swirls with inky blues and blacks, And I can feel it Drip, dripping on my skin. It’s cold, distantly cold, And I can’t help but feel That the cold tiles below me Hurt more than the burning pain on my weak body. “Pain is only proof that you’re alive.” The ink-spiller echoes in my head. My bloodstained cheeks, And the sky on my body Are proof that I am...

Let us eat, drink, and be merry, For tomorrow, we die. . . . An empty glass is raised in the air by a blistered hand, and a man stands up beside it. He smiles shakily, being the only one that hasn't gotten himself absolutely smashed. He used to drink, though, so much that he had gotten himself in trouble nearly every day of the week. I suppose today warrants just a bit of something different. He starts to talk, and all eyes shift to him. "I know-" His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. "I know that we're all-" He swallows. "-in a bit of a tough place right now. And, I know that, that this time, we're not getting out of here, that pride and spirit isn't gonna get us out of this one." The silent bar that reeked of expensive scotch and vodka looked downward, a gleam of acknowledgment in their eyes. One of these men looked at his brothers, who looked very much like they were biting back tears, and shouted from the...

I lay on the couch of an apartment far too big for me, a cup of tea and a newspaper on top of the coffee table. My bleary eyes barely register the rolled up newspaper, before filling with tears. I turn to the other side, facing the couch, and squeeze my eyes shut. But it's too late. The mind is cruel that way, always drifting, always searching, for the one thing you don't want to think of, managing to pinpoint and photograph the one thing you don't want to see. In my case, it was the newspaper article; one in the very corner of the post, so small that it could barely be read beside the huge sports headline about an athlete breaking yet another world record. My mind asks me, over and over again. Is that it? Is that all he's worth? Is that all he left behind? And of course, the answer is no. Because he left me behind too. It was a badly written article, sentences choppy and short, as if the writer was barely managing to huff and puff the words out. ...

(Naming emotions that I don't know what to call is what I consider to be one of my coping mechanisms. It helps, I think, to give labels to emotions that I can't describe. Mini posts like this will be labelled Mood: blank. Sorry it's different from all the other stuff I post here.) Waking up in the morning feeling blergh often means that you will go to bed feeling blergh too. It's slightly worse than numbness, and it isn't indifferent. Feeling blergh means dragging yourself through a day. It feels like trudging through muck, your boots so heavy and thick with dirt that you just want to give up walking. You feel bad, but you don't know what kind of bad. It's not anxiety. It's not sadness. It's just that everything is murky, and every emotion resembles a dull throb. Anxiety is a sharp emotion. It pricks, and it stabs. Sadness is a hot, suffocating emotion. It aches your heart, and feels like drowning. Blergh is not anything. Blergh is a d...

A frontier of pink and yellow, A battlefield of cotton candy One doesn’t normally see The sunrise as a warning She’ll tiptoe into your sheets On hooves of white gold My heart always told me, She was the eye of the storm Her expression was glazed with milk, And her breast was soft as feathers I often lay there in the blizzard As if she were my own mother One day she led me to the room in the corner Dust gathered, and doors locked, I watched as she trotted the crystal corridor Inside there were boxes, tied with ribbons of straw It seemed to be gold, but inside, there was nothing at all A child I was, gasping with glee I gave her a quick embrace, A kiss on the cheek She smiled, as animals do, with a glint in her eye I flew into the room without a goodbye Tearing open the gifts was a short-lived occasion I spun around to see the snow quickly rising It roared and it ripped and it banged and it swore I ran to the windows to see her disappearing She was melting She...

I'm scared of a lot of things. I'm scared of the ocean, I'm scared of lifelike dolls, I'm scared of the dark, I'm scared of broom closets. When I'm scared of something, I tend to avoid it. Like any normal person, I'm not really interested in "facing my fears" or doing anything particularly heroic. So, I avoid the ocean, I avoid doll sections in toy stores, I try to sleep before dark, and I always walk quickly past broom closets. It's always been easy. Just walk away from your fears, and everything will turn out okay. My fears themselves aren't that scary if I reassure myself like this. What's scary is if I one day find a fear that I can't just turn away from. ... As I grow older, I'll start to understand little things that confused me when I was younger. I have this clear memory of a day in first grade, where our teacher was explaining fire and lockdown drills to us. She was smiling, she was relaxed, and sh...