Warpoodle: We're in this for the explosions

I didn’t call her. I didn’t call him…

Erika — Tue, 11 May 2010 09:39:53 +0000

This May is a phlegmy cough, spiked with cold gusts. The flowers, the lilac bushes, skulk like bums under the barrage of crappy weather; I am not at all pleased. My nights are crowded with blurry huddling, hoping I don’t wake the Boy with my stressed-out insomnia. When he stumbles to the door of my cave, naked and yawning, plainly worried why I’d leave bed, guilt hunches my shoulders; he could catch me masturbating and it wouldn’t embarrass me, but this? I’m neglecting my nocturnal duty as heat sink and body pillow.

I like these hours – they make me honest. Too honest, the paranoia wishes to share. I’m addicted to the mysticism of 4am, the atonal yip of coyotes [so close to the city], lukewarm tap water, finally being Left the Fuck Alone. So much psychic noise during the day, phone calls, text messages, seeing if we’re out of milk.

Come to the dark side…you may have the sundogs, but we have the stars.

Don’t tell me that…

Erika — Tue, 11 May 2010 09:06:23 +0000

Here, there was luminal tension, unopened mail left scattered on a counter-top, hands clenching at the sound of footsteps. Nothing was getting better.

There should be no dance this clumsy, this wasteful. Spring rejected both of them.

He, for his part, moved through the world with an excess of energy, bubbling over into the next rooms, loud even in sleep. Clouds shifted when he went outside; the sun burning mist away where he shuffled through the patchy grass. There were war noises wherever he was, his head the echo chamber, body peppered with buckshot scars. Kneeling in surrender, he shoved everything away.

“I still want whatever you might give me,” he’d say, settings spoons on the stove, boiling water while she curled up on the chaise and cried.

There was green on the porch, a carefully cultivated jalapeño plant, wispy chives, mint with ragged leaves; the garden of two novice cooks. They still ate together; he wanted to get rid of the table, citing space. Bent at a right angle over the dark wood, she focused on piles of brown tissue jacket patterns and rolled her eyes hard enough to hurt.

She, she was the one unbending. Snuggled together, she was as still as prey, felt his twitches and fidgets, wondered how to make him catch up without running, wondered if she was capable of Relationship. Usually silent outside her head, she made way for disturbed schedules, late night work sessions, touching him with the same love she had for her sewing machines.

“I make you my top priority, but I know you don’t think like I do,” he’d say, punching on the X-Box while she stared out the patio doors, calculating how far was away.

Ode to You

Erika — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:49:50 +0000

He was cross-eyed, wide hands, wild feet. For years and years on the farm rose he until the bridge to town fell in the ravine. At such a time, the boy, who was only handsome in rain and in danger, tilled the fields til the seeds ran out, fed the cattle til the grain ran out, fed himself til the beef ran out. He swept the yard and locked the door, then slopped a rope around the irascible, dun goat, which didn’t care one way or the other. This was all the help our hero had as he, quick to tongue and quick to stumble over it, left the quiet and dry for the woods of the north.

Go north, go north, heard he, in the lisp of the water slouching over stones, in the furtive whisperings of russet grass. He set out northish, a round of hard, white cheese strapped to his back, punctured with every knife he had found in the house. The goat stalled in the streams, bears nuzzled his hair while he napped, and progress was good, progress was fair, but progress to where?

An inkling of strange came with the bird. A nugget of mercury, stiff on its back, sprawled out in his hand, it was deader than dead, not yet crawling with ants. Silver feathers sleek and impossible to pluck, the boy turned it that way and this, shaking it for sound and getting nothing for his efforts. Into the hollowed-out cheese it went. Our hero stuttered on.

Obvious to us was the second of signs, when the goat, whispy beard smoldering, turned to the boy and spoke.

“I, I am the one of the Underworld, the one your books speak of as the Ending of Time, the worm of your heart. Turn back or be slain. Turn back and all the maidens of your fevered dreams will lick your chest and call you master.”

The death of a strange thing had not moved the boy; the life of another one wouldn’t either. On he went, on he went, certain and more his way would win right.

Third sign came and came and came, when the earth flaked to white and the air twisted tight and chill. Past the curve of the earth was an endless ocean, teeth of jagged floes, gnashing angrily at clouds. A day and year he’d shambled roughly northish, hands wrapped in scraps of goatskin, horns askew in dirty curls, legs hairy, beard heavy, bleating his misery until he learned to walk on ice.

She was unexpected, fresh as sunrise, sweet as sleep, oh so still in the masoleum built around her body. Skin bleached to brilliance, wishes hissed in the space between them. The hero crouched on blood-cracked heels, swallowed safe dreams, waited for his turn to speak.

“You didn’t call me, but I came.”

And then he went, not for the hands, not for the lips, but stroked her eyes behind the film of frost.

When she awoke, the world woke with her.

Don’t listen to your kids at bedtime…

Erika — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:24:47 +0000

They talk about seeing shadows on the walls, cast by flickering fires built to ward away the wild beasts. To us, these hairy, low-browed ancestors are so much science fiction, communicating in grunts and rough hand gestures, girded in chewed skins, bits of bone, staring out through the smoke at starlight. The neurons that fired then in the swelling brains, at what point did they start asking why?

Him, green-skinned in the corner, grinning perfect teeth, insists the first story was also the first lie. Fantastical twins spat from the same oral womb [or traced on the rock] [or pantomimed against the cave wall], it has the ring of the beautiful and the right and the realistic to it. But the Trickster won’t distract me: it’s so much bullshit, however bound in a pretty prehistoric facade.

It goes back before then, when the realization of This to That came to be, sharing the same neurological spawn pool as choice, the glacier-like evolution of thought.

He’s laughing now, laughing at me for making our job so much more difficult. ‘Even gods have a beginning!’ Trickster shrieks, ‘you can’t say Story doesn’t follow the way of all things. You damn yourself away from an end.’

Well yes, my frog-foot, my moon-thief, my mud-eater, that’s kind of the point.

A moment of selfishness…

Erika — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:56:00 +0000

She was comelier than window dressing; twice as useful, her smile thirty-one shards of glass. Her left hand stammered as she wrote and it was all alone she celebrated the small details.
“Everything around me goes to hell,” sipping water, the other hand shaking, “perhaps what really plagues us is not reacting to the right depth.”

“I read it in a comic. I read everything indiscriminately. It’s all learning.”

Watching how you dress, the shape of your mouth as you drink. Her cheeks go hollow; eyes feeding on your idiosyncrasies.

“You can be angry all you want because he’s the only one who observes. Be angry at yourself for not being interesting enough.”

We do not affiliate ourselves with such an opinion. We are busy on a novel; on self-improvement; on not complaining about the weather; on trembling the right amount when kissed; on shaping rice; on doing doing doing and not going away until everyone’s okay.

“I still want to punch him. I’ll be dead the day I don’t.”

She grins and leaves. We think she’s given up.

No one was happier than I…

Erika — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:30:49 +0000

In this room, she wanders without worry. The predators are outside, swinging from tree to tree, yammering, hooting laughter, not yet over the thrill of their opposable thumbs. Sometimes, one will overestimate their leap and go crashing down into fragrant grasses dotted with pale green blossoms. The gardener takes very good care of the lawn. Still stunned when the rose vines reach them; to a one, they start shrieking when the thorns indulge in their methodical dismemberment.

Trapped here, with dingy white and gold fleur-de-lis wallpaper, warped wooden floorboards, leaky [yet still impenetrable] windows, she is repulsed by what she sees. The house grumbles along with her. Not always was the world this dangerous, the apes used to be so gentle, the earth stayed under your feet where it damn well belonged. Was she too old-fashioned for this riotous world?

A weak thumping caught her attention – there on the floor, her latest project was slowly bleeding to death. It, he, was staring urgently at her, the whites of his eyes visible all around. Unable to move or speak, it was his heart making the noise. She cursed the house and herself.

“Why do you let me wander away when I’m in the middle of something?” Crouching by the supine body, she stuck the heart with a slender needle and the beating ceased, the man’s face awash with relief.

“Here, next time, *you* remind me,” she said, pulling the mouth open, showing even, yellow teeth. With an expert touch, the tongue was attached and the man – she would have to name him soon – swallowed dryly, spasmodically.

“How is it out there?” he croaked.

“Still a war going on.” She worked swiftly as they talked, soldering nerves, sealing limbs, shoring up the central organs.

“Isn’t that always the way?” He grimaced. “And there go the nerves; I barely felt that. You really are one of the best, aren’t you?”

“I’m integrating muscle control right now,” she said, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t wriggle about. Motion is a privilege, not a right.”

Other than the occasional tick of a fingernail against the floor and the muffled screaming of the apes, there were several minutes of silence in the back bedroom. Memories started to trickle in behind his eyes; there’d be a grandfather clock in the hallway that was always fifteen minutes behind, gun racks in the dining room; his clothing had been washed and pressed and was folded by the door, the door that wasn’t fucking working anymore. With memory came anger. As her careful fingers checked his seams, tested muscles, checked and double-checked synapse responses, he was already sitting up, eyes fixed past her shoulder on the wavy glass window.

“You’re sending me out there again, yeah?” he asked, wiping flecks of dried blood from his chest. She’d really done an incredible job; there were no tremors or gaps in his memory to indicate he’d been dead at all.

“I wish I had a choice.” She looked surprisingly fresh for someone who’d spent the past week and a half in surgery. He paused on his way out to land a sloppy, forceful kiss on her thin smile.

“I’ll be back for you.”

“You always will.”

Just a hobby…

Erika — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:33:31 +0000

There is a list. There is always a list, fluttering off the desktop to the thread-covered carpet. Here, bleach stains from the ants, headset wires, bits of popcorn. A messy microcosm – I am no good at getting rid of it, perhaps paper the room with my well-intentioned lists? The dishevelry is still underneath; we are happy agents of chaos [we even collect dice].

[This is a tangent of we. When did it become us; the unit is still divisible. Still the impulse to run. Still the impulse to run.]

Life is assembling a pattern. Don’t mind the iron burns, the folded newsprint, scraps of fabric, scent of serger oil; it’s all incidental devilry in the hopes the finished product is [never, it'll never be] perfect, wearable, something gentle despite its umbilical scissor separation from the wholecloth it came from. Something out for a date, perhaps? Fantasies caught into seams, whispered wishes crammed in the hem, I’m amazed it drapes so well with all the fevered dreams filling out the bodice.

[It's possible it might never be. In fact, it's very likely. Whatever direction you choose, it's Away.]

I wonder what you see when you look out your window.

This is how everything began…

Erika — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:16:50 +0000

“That is the man? He is very ugly, brother.”
“He…he is. But he is the one we need.”
“I don’t want to, brother. I would rather not need at all.”
He is crouched on his broad, flat feet, keeping balance with long, stained fingers perched lightly on the sands, watching the playful roll of the tide, the slender white swell of the foam writing strange writhing letters on the shore. He looks to be reading them, his sunburnt ears twitching in thought and giving him an air of comic wisdom. The muscles in his arms are tense, stacked like children’s fists on the bone, accentuating the careful and hypnotic scar patterns that wind up from the fingertips and disappear into his shirt. He squints [always squinting] towards the blood red ball of the sun, looking for all the world as if he were about to leap over the endless sea and swallow it. His grin says maybe he will run across the sky and pluck stars like posies and have the moon for desert, perhaps use his massive fists to pound the clouds so hard it rains.
In truth, Grimmek Makch is enjoying the sunset, idly pondering if the greatest of the elders could use sunlight for their magics, creating great hurricanes and showers of gold, make the dead whole again, create mountains in the desert. His finger absently draws a circle and a peak and a stick figure with its arms out-stretched, as if calling on the grains of sand that form the shape of its sketchy little life to grow and condense and burst into a great, snow-ravaged peak like the wild ranges of the north. As quickly as it’s drawn, the middle finger sweeps idly over the sand and removes the tiny magician and his miniature miracles from existence.
More likely, thinks Grimmek, the sunlight has already mixed with everything in the world, and is magic and miraculous enough. The hazy violet clouds of twilight are rolling in over the sea and he stands, having won his staring contest with what the southern people call the Great Fiery Eye of Von, the one-eyed, shaggy-maned beast that prowls the sky during the day, watching for people to foolishly leave their homes that he might paint the sunsets with their entrails and feast on their souls.
Grimmek, one of the Weed People, knows there are no such things as gods and chuckles, thinking of the wide-eyed pale worshipers of Von who walk and work only under the soft light and madness of the moon. Long ago, he swam for two days to visit their port capital of Hamman, a strange whispery city of heavy black woolen doors and no windows, listened to the soft silver flutes that announced the ending of the day and coaxed the stars that hid in the deep void beyond the sky to come and be joyful, the great monster has gone. He had annointed the front steps of the homes of the sick with a warding spell and they had given him a dagger that never lost its sharpness, as bright and curved and slender as the crescent moon.
He had gone home to the sand forest and since then had taken amusement in watching the antics of the god-beast, Von. Could the all-seeing entity watch the earth for victims on an over-cast day, for instance? Grimmek stretched and grunted in pleasure as his long limbs contorted and his joints popped with rhythmic regularity. He sauntered up the beach, his fingers tapping his knees. The beginning of the sand forest was as abrupt and sharp as a stone wall. No willy-nilly undergrowth spoiled the smooth ridges of silica. The massive smooth-trunked trees drove their roots deep, showing nothing aboveground as if disdaining the possiblity of tangling with another’s roots, these silent lords so careful of never stepping on each other’s feet. Even in the growing dark, a murky green haze filled the air, seeming to whisper in the forest’s silence.
The Weed man brushed his fingertips against the silky gray trees as he passed, his perpetual day squint widening slightly in the dusk. Were the trees not in the way, he liked to joke to his very rare company, one could see for miles through the forest. As it was, he had learned to adapt his vision for this strange place and signs of any passing beast or being were noted by him from nearly a mile away. Grimmek was not the forest’s keeper [for the forest kept itself better than his whole tribe could have tried] but he was certainly his own and liked to know who would seek here or for him. A small golden bloom of light a half-mile away betrayed a campfire and two small shadows against the silvery trees. Children, or pictsies then. Either way, he would not go to greet them without protection.
He crouched facing one of the stately beachwoods to keep any hidden watchers from observing his effect, and scraped at the powdery dust packed against the base. Wispy puffs floated upward and he snorted, stifling a sneeze. When a suitable pile was collected, he slid the shimmering knife from his belt and stared thoughtfully at the scar patterns along his inner arm. To extend that swirl near the wrist or work upward near the armpit, adding to the elaborate swirling knot of scarflesh that radiated out to the shoulder and the chest? He frowned in concentration and carved carefully around the wristbone, a brilliant red crescent seeping droplets onto the dirt pile. He wiped the knife on his shorts and bent closer to the dust now darkening with his blood. His voice was deep and smooth as milk.
Come, come, bright things,
your home of earth has made you
face and waist and eyes and legs
You will watch me, birthed of my blood,
and mixed with the dust,
your sight is sharp, you follow,
know my right and wrong,
and keep me safe.
Come and see, my fellows.
The dustpile seemed to suck the blood into its growing center. Now mud, now darkening a heavy red, shapes moved under the surface and split off from one another. Nine lumps scarcely a foot high shaped themselves crude arms and legs and saggy round heads with two smooth dents for eyes. They made a soft slurping sound as they moved, nothing that couldn’t be mistaken for the whispering of leaves and stared at his face with a singular intensity, following an invisible point located somewhere on his brow. He nodded and stood, sheathed his knife and set off towards the glow of the fire.
Several minutes later, his spirits pattering and squelching along behind him, leaving no marks of passage in the sand with their strange, pointed feet, Grimmek came upon the clearing. A small, pale girl in a shapeless black dress sat barefoot in front of a silent fire, polishing a tiny, patent leather ankle boot. She sat on a dingy satchel almost larger than she was and grimaced at her work. She ignored him entirely, an angry silence hovering between them. He sighed and grinned and waved a large hand towards the fire.
“May I sit with you here?”
Her washed-out rosebud lips were bent into an ugly scowl and she glared at him, seemingly incensed that he would force her to acknowledge his presence. Spitting fiercely on the shiny black leather, she rubbed vigorously for a few moments before allowing herself a tiny nod in his direction. He crouched in feigned gratuity before the bright flames, the moon was rising but it was several hours till the midnight chill. The girl thumped the boot down loudly and threw the rag perilously close to the fire. She shifted silently on her satchel perch and pulled out a pair of thin, dingy stockings. She seemed to wrestle them on to her feet, the toes no larger than pearls, one poking through the cotton. Grimmek watched her out of the corner of his eye, seeing her button her boots on with great care and then stand, stamping her feet once, twice, against the hard-packed sand, then shaking out her voluminous sack-like dress and her straw-coloured hair.
The girl turned away from him and her high voice pierced the silence.
“What is his name?”
Grimmek looked up, wondered if she was mad, and almost swallowed his tongue as a tall boy with slick dark hair clad in dusty white clothes stepped out from a patch of darkness, his deep-set eyes glittering strangely in the firelight as his gaze flitted from the Weed man to the girl.
“He..he’s Grimmek Makch, one of the plant people who farm the corral and weave bright flags and do…strange…magics…”
His pronunciation of Makch was with a hard ‘k’ instead of the proper back of the throat inflection, and Grimmek reminded himself to correct the kid before they parted. The boy’s words tumbled over themselves strangely, as if wanting to leave his mouth as quickly as possible. He stood and held a hand out with the palm up to show courtesy to them both. The girl simply stared as if she had never seen such a gesture before, but the boy seized it hurriedly, his palm soft and slightly damp.
“I assume you saw our fire and came to…”
“He has *things* with him,” the girl snapped, “I don’t like them.”
The boy gazed questioningly at Grimmek, and the Weed man realized why his eyes looked so strange. They were horribly bloodshot, filling the whites with angry reds and giving him an almost animal appearance.
“Are those your…wards, Grimmek?” asked the lad.
“They spirits I always bring with me,” replied Grimmek, “they do no harm to those that don’t harm me.”
The boy glanced towards the girl, his fingers knotting furiously about each other.
“She……will not have…”
“They stay. If you’re wanting help, and you’re looking as wanting as a dying fire, you’d learn to not insult your host.”
The Weed Man smiled disarmingly at the brother, who stared back blankly. Grimmek’s smile was wide and fascinatingly perfect, the too many teeth forming straight pearly rows.
“But,” the boy stammered, “it is our fire. We are the…”
“Sssshh,” hissed Grimmek, raising a long, stained finger, “then you don’t know the sand forest to be dumb enough to say that.”
The pale girl stamped her foot again and glared at Grimmek.
“What do you want then, ugly man? We are lost and you are no help.” He’d never heard so much venom in such a sweet voice before but his grin widdened.
“Now we get to the bartering…too fast and with no meal shared, but better than the welcome.”
Grimmek settled back against a tree, long, broad feet spread dangerously close to the fire.
“Then this then,” he said, “you tell me how you came to this place and I’ll help as I can.”

It was something straight out of the legends…

Erika — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:22:18 +0000

There were things that grew in the forest other than the lordly trees. Vines, dark and leaking red sap, wrapped around pale trunks and branches, often spreading from tree to tree across an acre or more of woodland. Miniature deer would lap at the sweet sap trails that glowed faintly in the shade and birds fought over clusters of berries. The vines were a parasitic growth, feeding off the stately beachwoods until they covered them completely, blocking out the sunlight and the monsoon rains. The roots could be boiled for beer, the leaves pounded into serviceable paper. The berries caused hallucinations and hysterical paranoia when eaten by humans and were avoided except as bait for traps. Wildlife thrived only because of the vines, even as they made massive, moldering corpses of the trees.
Kids would sometimes create treehouses by laying loose sticks across the lowest branches, anemone paste holding the rough mess together, using the vines as rope bridges from platform to platform. Hidden from the ground by the thick leaves, they hunted small game, dreamed away their days, invented dangerous games. Some would use the sap to paint their tree with secret codes. The beachwoods closest to the Weed People settlements were layered with generations of these made-up languages. With a bit of care, the forest could be navigated by the amount of markings, which was useful and occasionally necessary during sandstorms or when the rainy season came. Few adults bothered to remember what they meant and only Grimmek and Sedtu recorded the sets of forgotten symbols, carefully copying them down, comparing the evolution of their shapes and meanings. Sedtu’s copious memory ensured she was never lost, even in the darkness of tonight’s hunt.
The hunters, carrying a torch for each pair, wouldn’t need any help navigating but Sedtu, confined to skulking from shadow to shade, kept one hand always on the bark, tracing the raised edges of the hardened sap. Anyone else would have followed the hunters, crouching out of view of their wavering firelight. Sedtu played a different game. It took all of her skill to throw the other hunters off, making sure that no one would find Corske before or while she took her vengeance. She tracked him easily by the heavy thud of his footsteps, the ragged whispers of his breathing, taunted him, guided him with a touch on the back of his neck, a brush against his foot. He’d started out a sweating, trembling wreck, had stopped hiding hours before to wait for whichever hunters found him. But something in the way Sedtu moved, Corske knew it was her and throughout the night, dashed further away from the coast. Even leaving the blood in her hair, Grimmek struggled to keep up with his daughter and he cursed to himself.
Hig legs were beginning to hurt when the first hint of light flitered through the forest. At dawn, if Corske had gotten away, his blood status would be restored and anyone stupid enough to kill him would suffer the weakening curse. Grimmek rubbed his bleary, crusted eyes, squinting for a sign of Sedtu. There was a flash across his vision, like the tracings of a firefly, before it bounced away again. The light darted in and out; Corske must have found some strength in desperation and was forcing Sedtu to fight. Grimmek rubbed his calves to banish the pins and needles and took off towards the muffled thumps of their melee.
Corske, his leech-pale skin glowing in the pre-dawn through wet smudges of dust, rivulets and smears of his own blood, had taken a wide stance at the center of the clearing, a chipped stone knife gripped in one massive paw. His mouth hung open with panting and his head swiveled from side to side like a bull’s, one ear dangling uselessly from a thread of sinew, a clump of scalp missing. Sedtu was a dark blur, focused entirely on Corske. The other hunters were far away, cleverly mislead. She slid in across the sand, slicing the tendon in his left heel before moving out of his reach. Corske swiveled on his uninured foot, exposing a horrific mess of cuts. His groin was covered in crusting blood, a scuffed puddle and a small lump in the sand was all that remained of his genitals. The rumor was Evert had been raped and although her body had been too mutilated to tell, Grimmek wouldn’t doubt it. Sedtu had apparently come to the same conclusion; that wound was a few hours old at least.
Sedtu, panting, slick with sweat, came to rest a moment near where Grimmek stood.
“You have to end this soon. The sun is coming up,” he whispered.
Her eyes were curiously blank and he waited as she dashed towards Corske, grabbing the edge of a cut and ripping a long ribbon of skin from his back. It fluttered wetly before sticking to his buttocks, a grotesque banner in the growing light. He collapsed to his knees, pain swallowing the remains of his adrenaline. Sedtu was at Grimmek’s side, almost motionless as she caught her breath.
“He hasn’t suffered enough. He will never suffer enough.”
It was the first intelligible phrase she had spoken since Evert’s death.
“Goodbye, father.”
Her feet exploded off the sand and she landed on Corske’s shoulders. One hand dug into the remains of his hair, with the other she yanked the blade across his throat, the force of it severing his head almost to the spine. The blood was sluggish coming; he had lost too much already. As his body gave way beneath her weight, a subtle glimmer of sunlight illuminated Sedtu’s gore-streaked hands and she leaped away from the corpse, dropping her dagger.
There was a moment of silence as Grimmek waited, but his daughter’s skin stayed flushed and well, her arms long, muscles thick under the skin. Her knees trembled slightly with exhaustion and she turned her face towards the sunrise, disbelieving, still waiting for the curse to come.
She would have stayed there waiting with a dazed expression if Grimmek hadn’t heard the shuffling footsteps. He crouched further in the waning shadow of the beachwood and shook his hands at Sedtu.
“Go! Go! They find you, and that’ll be your body there,” he said.
She nodded slowly and with still-graceful motions, scaled the trunk of the nearest tree and disappeared among the vines. Grimmek watched the heat impression of her fade into the distance. She had headed east. No one would find her.
The hunters, a cluster of three young men, their torch sputtering and nearly gone, sent shouts through the forest when they found Corske’s body. The leader of the hunt confirmed his death and while no one confessed to killing him, no one questioned it either. Sand was kicked over the body – the only thing given resembling a burial, and left to be swallowed by the earth.
Grimmek, weary, broken-hearted, made his careful way back to Kede’s house. It was the last time he saw Sedtu.

I know all about it. I know all about you…

Erika — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:37:45 +0000

She with the one white eye, superimposed over the horizon, glares through the window at me. I know better, I do, but it swirls through the air around me, polishing the skin on my fingers, bleaching the fine hairs at my temples. Did you ever meet such a freak? They were not as pretty, I promise.

To forgive myself for standing motionless, the forest my very own heart as it shreds the skin from their shins, drinks the blood they leave for a trail. You, I could never harm you. If only this secret wish would leave me and I could mock you across the fire. The stories you tell don’t add up and I am angry, so angry, that burning every memory I had didn’t get rid of your brand.

You don’t understand, you don’t understand, or you do understand and I am stuck your dog.