it's been months since I bothered opening my eyes before the birds have finished their song and the sun is casting 5 o'clock shadows on the faces of those who work and strain and cry and just want to put food on the table for their loved ones. I never thought about what was just below the surface what was edging towards the eerie fog about the lake just as I turned my back. you told me flowers always sprout when rain and snow and hail and sleet and every form of tears god could throw at us whip your face and you're still not crying and why aren't you crying you're bleeding and I'm aching and have you ever thought about how clouds are just vessels for rain and how maybe you're a cloud and I'm a torrential downpour but I'm more like a thunderstorm without the lighting because nothing shines like your eyes when you hear your favourite passage read aloud and I hope you hear my voice in your head I hope that omnipresence you always complained about comforts you when your bed is the last place you want to be and I hope you dream harder than rocks falling down mountains until maybe the figures you see in sleep become real. until the apparitions you claim have plagued your mind are left with no safe house and no real home and you can box them up like pictures and firewood and the couch cushions with the stains on them like Why the **** didn't we get those cleaned. why didn't we clean up our mess why is the window still shattered it's getting cool at night and the blankets are itchy and the grass looks comfier than cots in prison cells and what kind of prison cell is this with birds and lights and piers with boats that never seem to come in and lighthouses that never seem to guide them home. like nothing could ever guide you home, like nothing but light and wind and waves crashing and you'll probably never see the captain again. the ship is never sinking but the captain died many years ago sending smoke signals swallowed up by the clouds who lost their rain.

In left footed underwear,
Left on the floor,
My legs can't find the way out, my palms hardened from the mans work;
Dark and *****, the floor is full of ash,
From a fire we had in front of a fight,
That was lit from the fire in your naked belly,
And the golden spark of guilt in your darkened eyes.
And there is a threadbare mattress that was once clothed,
By our bodies and our sweat, and sleep,
And on the wall in the night, as you vehemently slept,
A thousand decisions were written on the peeling paint,
In calligraphic cursive writing, 'A medieval love affair',
As the heart drew breath in doubting love across the air.
Bare legged jeans, double ending tshirt and a naked bra,
An imprint left on your floor; a lack of interest,
Makeup left in a leather bag,
primal ******, a primary requirement of admittance,
A threadbare rug holds the handprints of many girls before,
Raw knees scuffed the richly spiced darkened stained wool.
Walking away with a left footed boot and a right handed eye,
Casting a backwards look from behind a blue glassed veneer,
Left with a scuffed heel and Viennese waltz dancing in my ears,
The last doorknob I ever touched, wonderland being left to the Cheshire Cat.
Drink me.
Eat me.
Swallow me.
And as I fall he demands,
He said,
'Where are you going?'
'Down the rabbit hole"