LunaNitor

If, for a moment, you could graciously permit me to step outside of these dreaded bones, tendons, and spongy flesh, perhaps my organs will then be splattered across the concrete in a way that will make you see me for what I am worth.

Dawn breaks through the cracks in my porcelain skin. I have awakened outside of the windowless walls that contain    Your Abuse, tightly packed away in this box home, on the sides, a stamped FRAGILE. Is that what I am now? Filed away into spread sheets, statistics, my name reassigned to a case number while my clothes, my once identity, lie in a box labeled EVIDENCE. No.    I am a phoenix. My porcelain skin will shatter and I will rise from the jagged pieces, wings spanning, feathers a hot fire, eyes a steel gray. I will depart from these boxes fierce, reborn, my talons clutching a piece of paper titled LADY LAZARUS.

I came as an echo. My sound, often tenuous, sometimes tepid, festers in the hollow of my aching throat: a vessel for uncommitted actions. I travel, ricocheting along thick foliage, stone walls, and mountaintops, eagerly searching for a comfortable grave in the rusted-red sky, the burnt, sinking Sun, where the stars await my last, dissipating cry. The moon scoops me up and dusts my murmurs across the centuries. I whisper to her, “I came as an echo; I depart as ash.”

I take pictures of myself against the backdrop of the city in which we met. I find comfort in its stillness and the phosphorescent sky mumbling radiance. Your phantom exists somewhere in the background of my pictures while I stand there, full focus, spotlighted: a faucet leaking an array of “I miss you.”   In these pictures I hear your whispers, where I can tangibly pick them up and absorb them while your presence is missing from real life.  In this still life, you are faintly reminiscent like a harmonic wave: Subtle, inviting, and there to complete our orchestrated union.

When you walk, does the earth tremble and break away— It’s tectonic plates forming voluptuous mountains in the hearts of others? Do you leave footprints in the sand, or kick up dust in alleyways— in places no one takes the time to look? If I pressed your footprints back into unrecognizable earth, what would happen? Would you tremble and shake? Would your mind implode upon itself like an interruption of thought? Would the dust you kicked up be lost to the crooks and crannies of time? Maybe, instead, you’ll simply cease to exist. Washed away upon the shore like nothing more than footprints in the sand.

Frank is sitting in a blue sofa chair in a small room.  A door in front of him is open and every now and then someone walks past it.  An unmade, twin bed sits along the wall to the right of the door and for some reason the flowers on the comforter relaxes him.  He doesn’t know where he is and he’s tense, but those pink and blue flowers offer comfort.  He decides he likes them. As Frank is transfixed on the meaning of that floral comforter, a young woman walks in.  He looks up at her.  She’s wearing white, baggy clothes; her hair is pulled back in a messy bun.  The only makeup she has on is red lipstick. “How’re

       Deumos stood on the threshold of the woman’s home. Deumos didn’t care who this lady was or the fact that she was married and had three children. The only fact important to her was at this particular moment, this housewife was alone. Deumos watched her hum softly to herself as she prepared dinner for her family. Like other demons, Deumos was nothing more than a whisper in the woman’s head. A void. While the woman could not physically see Deumos, Deumos could see her shifting uncomfortably underneath the pressure of Deumos’s presence in the room.          The need to devour a soul writhed within Deumos and so she

My wanderer: The trembling in your footprints have taken you from me. I can still hear the reverberating sounds each foot made, step-by-step, as I watched you walk— you wander from me. The swelling of my heart was not enough to ease your disease… No— Your desires. Like bread crumbs, I left pieces of my heart for you along your trail hoping that each piece you crushed with your wandering feet would lead you back to me. “Stay,” my doe eyes plead as you slowly peel off the remains of my heart from underneath your itching feet. You lay them in front of mine, stagnant— Winter falls and the sun sets. I watch

"The Escapist" She reaches into the sky’s abyss her fingers tracing the grains spotted across the Milky Way— an exotic animal she imagines as her fingers— long, slim— delicately caress the stomach of this infinite beast. It embraces her. Slowly, her hands clasp against her chest. Her heart races with the animal            prancing in fields they create— a Union— She swims in this sea of flowers and grass; her dress collecting dust like honeybees collect pollen. But the animal must return to dance across the sky, for he cannot stay where time exists; its consumption is poison. His exotic colors wave goo

"The Depressed" The blankets engulf her, wrapping around her fragile self— Her temperature dropping (seemingly) without warning. Her skin— smooth like paper: The map to her life that is stretched across her face lacks the chiseled ridges of laugh lines. She turns to her side and swallows the nails to her coffin. She lies there— Castaway— lonely and abandoned in the endless rocking of an unchartered ocean. She rises— Two feet on hardwood; Two hands lifting the Shasrara. She stands, reaching for the broken glass above the vanity. Her fingers trace the shape of her jawline and pulls the reflection towards her. W