Jupiter-shines

Her lips slit apart at the taste of purest freedom, and the girl in the white night dress runs faster. Every so often the moonlight catches the hook of her chin through the gap in the net of branches. A quivering lip. A tear of sweat. An eye, pupil swollen with fear. Every glimpse of light reminds her, frightens her, and she runs faster. Imploring claws sprout from tombstones of bark and the acrid stench of rotting flesh stains the forest air. It is among the deathly silence that the first note is birthed; the sigh of a spectre, the kind of sigh that breathes ice along your bones. Before long, the beetles reply, discordant shrills blending w

Murder. Murder. Murder. It's inside me. Right there, brooding beneath my heaving abdomen. I can feel its skeletal fingers coil around the branches of my veins. I can feel it call out; low and deep, an aimless howl that echoes through my bones' barren valleys and crevices. Though I slam my palms against my ears, on it wails, mercilessly, endlessly. I let out the scream that has been trapped within my sticky throat for too long, desperate to silence that painful song. "I feel it, it's there, Mother!" I sob to the watchful darkness. Her hand's warmth is there in an instant, always. "Shh," she whispers and her age-sculpted fingers trace the de

It comes to me in a neat little box, with words that mean nothing plastered across its face. It waits harmlessly by my bedside till the mist of night blankets my little town. And then it finally comes to me, served on my own mother's porcelain hand, glinting up through its sickly green jaws. Oh, how innocent it seems, settled at the bottom of my hand's crevice. The light plays too, swerving with glee through the air to bathe that oval body in an olive halo against my coarse palm. It fits between my defeated lips so easily and it cries in victory as the traitor, the poison water, swirls against the roof of my mouth and carries it through my e

This is the last moment I will ever see him again. I can't tell where you start or where you end; or where my own love itself begins. It is a waterfall of emotion, evaporating into ghostly mist before it touches the material ground. I'm not sure of its existence, of its history or of its fate. One day I'll look back at this moment and wonder whether it was just a dream. Your hand. Your warm fingers melt on my cheek like hot butter. I try to soak it up through my pores but it slides down and down to my heart, to the depths of my stomach until it is lost in my bloodstream. Try as I might my fingers can never grasp its intangible substance. My

Golden embers Forever burning in the furnace of your irises. Raising their slender limbs As they encircle that dark halo- That core Beneath whose murky depths I crave to enter. Like enticing dark hands they stretch out And arrest my heart Before I know what is happening. My sight My thoughts My dreams are all seized by this kind intruder and I step willingly into the hallway Of Your trance

"I wish you'd never come back." Silence. Suffocating silence smothers the house. My fingers trace the shape of the bathroom tiles. Twenty-one blue; nineteen white, counting that broken one in the corner. I reach out to stroke it, my friend. The words are still fresh on my ears, the reaction of thought to heart, heart to salty syrup instantaneous. And the burden of self-loathing and guilt weighs heavy on my cracking bones, wedges itself between the future and me. Like a rat in some horror, I am trapped as the blackness of the trees liquifies into molten shadows and eyes - red, accusing eyes seize me in their glare. ~ "I wish you'd never co

Hey you, Little girl all alone, Dry your tears And look to the sun. The days have Silently passed you, But your life Has only begun. Now fly free Like a leaf in the wind. Done waiting Now lift off and dream. CHORUS The sky was burning Embers yearning to be free Like you and me I spread my wings Let go of things That weighed me down And left the ground The angels From heaven chorused. The bells Of the old school rang out. And the words she'd Never spoken Shrunk till They'd never been there. Listen To the song of the world Resounding for Only you. CHORUS The sky was burning Embers yearning to be free Like yo

The door of the hospital ward glares at me. Its neatly polished wood and perfectly straight edges sniff at my jagged-torn jeans, my wild mane of hair. So quietly, it just sits there, the only remaining boundary between us now and I wonder how something so simple can emit so much evil. My bare hand hovers above the gleaming handle, indecisive, as if its touch might send electric shocks down my being. Oh, snap out of it, I bark at myself. Deep breath. My hand clasps itself over the cold brass. The phone call had taken me completely by surprise. Immediately I had recognized the voice, dripping with childhood memories and the world around me mel

Beep. She lays the phone carefully before her at the foot of the bed. She herself lays quietly down, dead eyes at the ceiling. She stares blankly. And then she cries. She curls up and bows her forehead to her knees and gasps for air in between gut-wrenching sobs. Her eyes scrunch up, banishing the light and she slams her palms against her ears to block that voice out. She runs her hands across her arms. Up and down, up and down. Never-ending. Her lips can find but one word - a word that dispatches streams of tears down her cheeks. My name. I did this, I think and stand stiff, watching through blur. They were only words - only a few harmle

Our light, our precious light is vanishing into the horizon. Though it's hard to believe - somewhere beneath the thick padding of grey lies the bashful sun. He is giving up. He is succumbing to the speedy darkness. I want to yell out my rage, to beg him to persist. But deep down, I too know it. It is all in vain. The wall of clouds is simply too sturdy. It is just not possible. Pathetic, useless sun. She sits there by the window, watching the raindrops dive across the glass. Maybe she wants to be like them. Maybe she just likes the cool against her brittle palm. Or maybe like me, she is wishing that those magic raindrops would rinse all the