Madeline had visions of you falling down the stairs this afternoon. She was sipping her coffee and reading a scrap of paper that had materialized on her table from some article about a meteor somewhere and it hit her like a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks.

Doesn't really matter which.

She gasped back into the present and fell out of her chair spilling the tar-black grog she had been pawing at to the oaken hardwood and sat staring at her hands there for a minute or more.

They were pink against the tan-ish floor.

Pushing against it she regained her footing and reached for the home phone her friends chided her for owning and called me crying you won't believe what I just saw I can't believe what I just saw I think we need to call her do you think she's alright?

I had just gotten off my flight.

I don't know I said I don't know who you mean where are you are you alright I just got back into town I was going to grab my bags and catch a taxi do you need me to pick you up

She finally noticed the fallen cup.

Catching her breath he slowed her pace and started to stammer how she didn't know it didn't matter never mind I need to go and make a call I'll let you know when I get out.

I still had no idea what she was talking about.

She hung up the phone and placed another call after a half hour no six hours no six weeks of ringing someone picked up the line she had dialed and she wept and laughed and asked if everything was okay and if she needed to go and if so how far she was a primed cartridge in a loaded gun

Everything was silent and the room spun

A voice replied something inaudible and Madeline laughed and cried not cried and laughed and wondered how she could have been so rash to believe a daydream like this

She rose and gathered all her bits

And together they walked her down the hall from her sun room to the kitchen down the stairwell-

And she fell.

And for two point five one two three seconds everything stood still but her and the world stopped turning she couldn't hear her own gasp or whether she screamed or laughed or cried she just hung in the balance she hung from gods fingers she hung above a pool of sharks and a pit of lava and everything she had never done she fell far and fast and hit the ground

An no one knows whether that made a sound.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

We are balanced
Precariously
Over the vastness of the unknown.
Every day when we get ourselves up
We have a choice
To continue to walk the tightrope above the abyss
Or to let ourselves
Fall.
This can be both good and bad
Or one or the other
But the important thing is to remember
That the life of the tightrope walker
The fence sitter
The cliff hanger
Is one that is doomed
To regret.
We must cast ourselves in
If we seek to
See what life is and life is always
Unknown.

Last night I dreamt I cohabitated with
Two beasts, both loved.
The one, a young lioness
The other a spry lamb
I had raised the both from infancy
But the lioness, who was then entering her adulthood began to size up the lamb.
And it occurred to me that in order to
save
the lamb from the lioness
That I must **** and eat it myself

It is the inescapable nature of a lion to
Hunt and ****
livestock
So while there was no scruple or problem for me to have these two animals,
They could not abide one another.
So I did it.
I slaughtered the lamb and cut it's flank and got at its tender meat
And I cooked it and served it with Marsala sauce and that night the lioness and I dined on the flesh of our old friend.

And I became aware eventually,
Between my ravenous gnawings at the meat
That the lioness was not eating.
She was
Staring fixedly
Directly at me.

She did not blink.

And I stopped feasting on the lamb.
And as I did I saw her eyes dilate
And she pounced across the table
And she gored me with her great claws
And split my gut and spilled my innards
And she ate me bit by bit still screaming
Still covered in Marsala sauce.

Before it was over I had but a breath in me and I cried,
"But why?!"
And I realized that it is the inescapable nature of the lion
To hunt and to ****.
Not just livestock, not just lambs.

She had hunted and killed us both.

To do nothing but rot.
In moments like these
is all I want.
And it's been said I am wasteful.
The truth is distasteful.
Neglecting reflection for sake of your fables.
Living in a dream
built in your head
somewhere between
half asleep and half dead
just
won't
cut
it.
We are not so different, you and I.
Similarly leading separate lives.
Susceptible to the same old repetitive lies,
as the ones we will hear 'til the day we die
like
"I'm sorry"
"I love you"
"It's my fault"
"I didn't mean to"
"I'll try harder than I used to."
or
"One day I'll love you more,"
Well I've heard the score.
Love you better, love you often.
More affection and more talking.
More attention, more gawking.
More time.
You are mine,
and I haven't felt the truth in that.
And it is moments like these when I wonder
what I am doing
at all.

Glass for looking,
and I saw myself in it.
I wanted to write something real **** poetic,
But your face kept popping up in my head
and I had no good words for the feeling it gave me.
I'm the Queen of Regret.
And that doesn't make you proud,
doesn't make you stay steady.
My guilt would pull us both down because it's
just that heavy.
And I have been sleeping underneath it for far too long.
What have you brought me?
Aside from being happy,
which is all I have ever really been asking.
You've done so well and I am so tired of
beating this dead horse.
Broken and ****** and bashful,
closed off like every "I love you"s a mouthful.
And people ask me how we're doing and I say
"I'm doing fine" which isn't a lie the way it used to be.
You got used to me.
As I've been used to second guessing.
Used to the mess we let ourselves step in.
Well adjusted to the ways
in which we can't communicate.
I allowed for more time,
you allow for more stays.
But I still can't shake that it's
all the same
and it's been a ******* year.
Why do I still feel like i'm wasting it here?