[x]

This Common BloodI am young when I first hear the word 'adoption'. I am so very young, perhaps three, maybe four. I accept it easily when my mother sits me down and explains that I did not grow beneath her heart, but rather in it. I nod my head, smile big, and ask when I'm getting a little sister. My mother kisses me on the forehead and puts her hand on my head as she stands up. "If you wish on a star, Sarah, maybe she will be here very soon." I practice my wishing until night's companions wink merrily in the sky.

Dear Anna,
I turned seventeen just recently. I thought of you when I woke up, and I wondered if you were thinking of me. I like to think that you

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

think youre a slam poet nowwell, my father
he thought he was a cowboy,
he thought he was a yank
he thought everyone he met was his partner in crime
and life was an all end all shoot-em-up
he told stories
and he taught me how to dance with drunks.
well my mother,
she thought i was a changeling,
she thought the world was out to get her
she taught me
well she taught me that innocence is fragile
and that what is sweet often sours,
that madness is not the kind of disease we think it is.
and i grew up
wanting to create something beautiful
or hideous
or both at the same time
with my little hands, and big eyes
and that used to scare me
terrify me,
cause contradictions in my head
at night, when i dream't
with my hand against my ear
thinking the pounding of blood vessels
was the pounding of the big bad wolf coming to get me
and i would dream of the world
ending
with the trampling of a flower,
no sir,
these eyes
they are not haunted
but they are inhabited,
because
i have a soul sir,
and i won't sell it
not for your pennies

rootslike drowned men who have lost their
clothes and faces, they lay suspended
facing the sun and grinning without
eyes through the ripples of the water.

those passing by wonder how they got here,
these homeless men without fingers or toes
long spindly stumps twisting into lost roots:

reaching to the east, to the south,
to the homes they have forgotten.

IfWe can
draw lines and give them names
like elements
as they are discovered

Or etch into our skins
this soloecal desire
until it is impossible to tell
where words stop
and life begins.

I would

Find a common rhythm that includes
you in my arms, my hands
and lungs and thoughts
tracing the outline of you
entangled with me
colliding like two lost particles
locked in a shared gravity
drifting through the vacuum
of space.

I could.

Exhale, and
remember
sentence structure.

in the seams(a) when I was young I was a robin that stole the eggs from another's nest.
fitted upon my stare there was a warning –
personal's too personal for me, well i
would not use wings if i had 'em.

a child of rye with a silhouette spoiled by the sun, I was, I am.

and sometimes I see some vengeful sparrows still under my fingernails;
their glistening beaks snap melodies that rib a hundred bird-bone cages,
so light you could blow 'em away with a twist of your lungs.

and there are still words jailed between my teeth and my tongue and I do not speak of,
do not think of
them,
but they rattle between bone and flesh and I
drown them s

WhitewashWhen you're five years old you set a promise in the dark, your sister's ice-queen eyes witness. Millie is sitting straight-backed against the headboard, face wide and earnest, and it seems as if the world has heaped itself on her shoulders, or maybe it's the strangeness of midnight.

"We can't make our wills or anything like that until we're eighteen," she says fiercely. "But I might forget this by then."

In later years you will find time to reflect that you're not as whimsical as Millie; young, you only think then that you could never forget something this important. But you can't argue with the three-years-older she holds above your head (

if only, if only.i.
we drove nowhere
and we spoke a language
that nobody understood
underneath a foreign sky
blanketed in the scent of pine.

ii.
you told me
my eyes were like envelopes—
because they were always
opening
closing
fluttering to the sound
of breaking seals
and ink stained fingertips.

iii.
i told you
we should run away
to a new land
with new faces
because
i was enamored
with people i had never encountered
and places i had never gone.

iv.
you laughed at me
and said that
if i didn't spend
so much time with my head
buried in world maps
i would realize
that i was living on one.

v.
i remember
it rained that day
and the tea went cold
but the

JuliaMetMichaelSamaraSawTheStarsGenevieveFoundFeari.

                               Tonight is different.
Genevieve pauses, staring as layers of fog encroach forward.  The ominous mist slinks onward only to settle against her taunt muscles.  Vapor coils along her skin like venom; tangible and prickling.
She allows her lungs timid inhales of February.  Every breath sparks artic shockwaves throughout her nervous system    Glacial streaks start to sprout within her tissues, ever-so-silent and sickening.  She slows, listening to iced-oxygen hardening between blood cells.

                     The cold feels like boulders in my lungs.
Genevieve feels so unexpectedly heavy in her skin.  Wadi

Boylan BooksI first see Neal across the open sparkle mall floor, paused in serious contemplation thought speaking solely to self, whispers not for ears or voices only thoughts, shining thoughts, open thoughts thinking marvelous wonders of books and dust and corporate-but-not bookstores. His hair is green not really but blue and green pirate green, red bandanna is he a pirate? asks the little girl with pigtails and chocolate snot embarrassed mother shoo be nice that's rude tugging hand with look of so sorry, she's five, not smart enough yet, please forgive and Neal with open half-grin smiling not really there but almost, not speaking but almost, not acce

bedIt's a stabbing sight
Letting in the morning with a crack of the shades
And you forget you could page-turn horizons
Waft through free territory
Where acres are just beds
Made of fresh land

Wrinkles in the river
Tell remembered times
About old languages that could make you cry
About soft beds that carve away canyons
A speaking voice lifted from the earth
Begging you to remember

earth circuitAnd when the sun sinks, the earth's skin crawls:

I.
I wonder if this awkward creature would notice me the way I notice him.
He's so tragic at his throne
I stare after him longingly.
And yet,
He never realizes that I'm the one
Who forever basks in his brilliant beams.
If only he knew how much brighter he could burn
[with me]
He'd light up the universe.

II.
I heard him speak of thirst, once.
The quenching lust of the stars had run dry.
So that night, I brought along a jar of acid.
(And how it gleamed in his glow).
I handed it to him, wrapped in taffeta ribbons,
screaming
I wish curdling joy
On my gurgling boy

comfort, crawfish boils, and port vincentand you and me, we got the whole of
Saturday, you and me, we got car grease
streaked straight up to our grins and

let's high five when you triumph over
mom's sneaky nose, her teasing and coy and
i wanna be that kind of wife to a man

like you. i wanna be the kind of woman worth
changing with, sacrificing for, going crazy
over as the years collect in bank rolls of nickels.

i've been called a menagerie of names by
the older, the wiser, the wrinkled; they
call me pretty girl, sweetheart, dollface,

sugarplum as i stir splenda into their
brewed coffees, but they ain't got nothin'

on your horse master hands, the ones that could

WaitingWe are still waiting for the thunder from the distant stars,
The echo of mortality,
the whispers of a storm, half-remembered,
in sepia-coloured hallways in buildings that smell like books.
Time gets slow in waiting,
ghosts are formed from the wanting,
taking shape in the spaces where sunlight,
or moonlight doesn't touch.
The stars shake from the vibration,
and the ghosts shimmer in anticipation,
but we can't hear your voice in the dead of the night.

When your hands can mimic birdsWhen your hands can mimic birds,
you lose the need for sound.
A flight of words that bear no chirp
are none the less profound.

They don't perch on a pitch.
They don't possess the need .
They fly until you've seen their song,
then silently recede.

No one could find more freedom than
the freedom granted flight.
No one can see more beauty than in
words passed left to right.

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Dandelion GirlSamantha had deep end-dark hair and skin pale as the stomach of a summer seashell, her eyes marbles sunk deep in their sockets, the color of the seaweed that sunk her parent's boat. She stood on two too tall legs with knobby knees, loosely covered in boyish cargo shorts and bandages. Puberty had hit her early, right in the chest. At twelve, she had what the boys called "bazookas" and "bon-bons" -and hips that jutted out like mountain peaks; they stretched across for miles.

Samantha wore thick-soled winter boots all year long. "For practicality", she would tell her mothers, though she would never explain why. She would plod down the street,

Lovesick without the LoveDear you,

I am writing letters to someone who won't mind if my mouth sometimes tastes like puke.

Someone who will love me, even when I stand, bent over the bathroom's porcelain bowl, spilling bits of my soul out through my mouth. Someone, someone who will brush back my hair, hold me tight, and kiss my acrid mouth. Someone who knows better than to keep mirrors in the house or to buy Girl Scout cookies and ice cream in tandem –someone who knows not to believe me when I say Oh, I've eaten already, with a smile and a strained voice, like a tourniquet is wrapped tight around my throat.

Dear you,

I need someone who won't

AshesI would have liked to have pressed
you between the pages of a book.

There, you could sleep between
semicolons and rest on the beak of
an R, let your body dry out from
spring to summer until I opened up
to just the right page again.

I could keep you between two
panes of glass on my wall,
jammed inside a frame with
bluebells and larkspur.

And then you would never have to be
ashes,
ashes,
and I would never have to fall down.

You Probably Don'tRemember:

The first five years of my life, you were indestructible.

Remember:

When I was eight, I used to splay out in the wild wheat behind our home, picking primroses and foxgloves. I would lay face down to kiss the Earth, dig my fingers into the ground to feel the dirt cool beneath my hands and breathe.

I found myself looking for my mother in inanimate things –the trees, the grass, lily pads.

You weren't there.

Remember:

You used to lay in your room with its popcorn ceiling and wish the pain would float up to the sky with your cigarette smoke, eyes heavy with narcotics and Embrel. The door was shut, the television blaring, the

Morse CodeYou tell me in three words
what I cannot
explain in a thousand.

Beneath folds of flesh,
contained within arteries,
I find answers woven
betwixt my bones.

Unhinging my porcelain jaw,
I let lose my replies in something
deeper than body language.
I tell you with my spine,
my decaying teeth that
I cannot let go.

My arrhythmic heart calls
to you in Morse code,

dot dot dot dot
dot
dot dash d-dot
dot da-dash dot

da-dash
dot

On StarsI was once told not to reach for the stars because I would get burned.

The sun is a star, my Father reminded me, his hair white dwarfs atop his head, fizzling out towards the front to show his age. Stars are balls of gas that'll burn your pretty litl' frame to a crisp; don't get hurt, aim for something concrete, solid.

I was thirteen. I had told him how I wanted to be a writer. He called me a dreamer, caught up in the Milkyway.

But Dad, I pleaded, and I could feel lunar quakes wrack me from my core. I love it. I love the feel of a pen in my hand, the crinkle of paper under my palms, the ink blotches on my fingers. I love all of it. It make

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Submitted: April 20, 2012
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Roses

by ~AlloenDreams, Apr 20, 2012, 6:12:39 PM
Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Emotional

You love too much, I am told by a man with a briar heart, thorny sinews and collapsed ventricles bearing down on him, hardly beating in his tight chest. He looks at me with flat, slate eyes, chipping and eroding. His hands are dark with cigarette burns and rough with calluses; I feel them on my shoulders as he looks down at me, face collapsing in at his eyes like a dead man's.

For the first time, I realize he is dead. His briar heart dried up when winter killed his rose; my father, he is all thorns.

He squeezes my shoulders, too tight. You look like your mother, you know, he whispers, eyes shifting to the garden, to the yellow rose I planted for her. It is a rambler, sending shoots to the sky that sink back down. We never gave it a trellis. I loved her too much. And there are tears in his eyes, wet, heavy things that slip down his cheeks and on to the grass below us.

I don't know what to say, so I think of the rose, of her. I think that I'd like to send this year's flowers out to sea, so the petals can sink in the ocean and settle over her eyelids, wherever she is. And I'm crying, too, because my mother is in pieces, in the ocean, scattered like petals in the wind, and my father is every bit as dead as she is.

I did, too, and I smile a little, bat away my tears with tight fists. But I don't regret it –I love everyone as much as I love her, instead. She'd like that. She always told me I had a big heart, and that I should share it. I smile more, because I remember telling my mother once that I love everyone. She had just hugged me. We both knew I would get hurt. I love everyone –everyone I'll ever meet, I want to give a piece of myself to. Whether it is physical or just something inside me that no one can see; I want people to know they are loved.

He drops his hands, looks at me, and wipes his eyes. You're going to get hurt.

Yeah, I am. Mom told me. I'm okay with that.

I hug him quickly, then pull away. I walk over to the rose, dig my thumbnail into the stem just below a blossom, and twist until the flower comes off into my hand. My father looks at me, lights a cigarette, then puts it out under his foot when he sees me coming back.

I tell him to hold out his hands, and he does. I place the blossom into his palms. She loves you and I do, too.

Rosesby ~AlloenDreams

Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Emotional

Fiction and non-fiction meet again.

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-12-10

Roses by *AlloenDreams Suggester Writes: Desperately sad yet brimming with hope, the imagery is superb and the message a vitally important one. ( Suggested by =LadyofGaerdon and Featured by ^Beccalicious )