"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too.
They live inside us, and sometimes, they win."
... Stephen King

She couldn't recall where she was on a night blessed by rain so pure that it caused the wilted flowers to
rise on their toes in excitement, and her to wither into depression. The night was a lightning-show of
blue-white flash from a thousand cloud cameras. And the gravel beneath her feet was simply the
degraded souls that she had slaughtered on nights before, torn from her spine like vertebrae and left to tot until they mirrored the hollow she carried inside.

::the rain could never wash away::
::the smell of her skin-cense::

And, today was no different. So, she drowned herself in black rose petals and broken glass, just so she
could suffer in beautiful elegance. The freckles on her shoulders were the pinprick memories she
insisted on forgetting, the forever-after tally-mark scars documenting how often she was horrid.

::millions::

of gold flecks in her eyes, because secretly, she's always been a bit of a gold-digger and it's just her
soul's way of showing her true colors; gold-diggers and mysterious blue marbles that quiver in the light
of the rising sun with her pupils dilating into ink-black agony. And the sound of her heart vibrating in
her ears with that horrible, hiccupping rhythm she had grown to hate causes her to shake in an anxious anticipation.

::and it means nothing::
::it couldn't possibly::

She lives in her memories, torn at the edges of the filmstrip clubs and ***** little secrets that she forces
between her lips. A kiss. She’s such a . . .

::faded thought::

Lost in translation. She’s (a) patient with her medication calling home in the middle of the night to say
she missed you. But, never as much as you missed her mind.

::and she's quite queer::

Dangling Star of Davids and Pentagrams from her collarbone
A set of rosary beads clenched in her pocket
Trying to cast out the demons
Trying to cast new actors for this endless play
A play she couldn’t stop rehearsing

::act(ing) natural::

Because it's much easier to smile
Than to explain those dreaded tears
Falling off her face (of the earth)

::she falls (fails)::

And withers once more, a tumbleweed who is far too fragile
who could resist
trying to break her
I never could.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

I have a room inside me that never learns to stay lit –
the bulbs hum like old refrigerators, tired and polite.
It is not only sadness; it is the slow settling of stone,
the placing of a palm on a wound I cannot name.

My smile is a borrowed coin pressed into the mouth of a beggar,
metal cool and unfamiliar. I practice saying fine –
the syllables are tidy, a drawer snapped shut against the dark.
Talking feels like choosing which limb to cut off first.

Mornings arrive like tax bills: inevitable and cruel.
I open my eyes and the world is a ledger of small violences –
the sun a pale creditor, the coffee bitter and obedient.
Breathing is a job I clock in for and instantly forget why.

There is a weight that knows the map of my bones better than I do,
it presses where directions used to be, flattens neighborhoods of hope.
Pain has become a general ledger: no line item, only balance
always a number red and endless, always due.

Sometimes I imagine carving a window into that room –
letting a sliver of weather in to see if weather remembers me.
But the shutters are welded with sentences I did not finish,
and the key is small and lost in the pocket of some other life.

The worst is the geography of it: no sharp edge to point at,
no bruise with a date, no neat explanation for why the rain keeps staying.
Only the knowing that whatever I touch comes away colder,
and I learn, slowly, how to fold myself into an acceptable silence.

If I could name the hurt, I’d dress it in words and parade it out –
but language is thin clothing for a storm this old.
So I wrap myself in softer lies and hand them to strangers,
say I'm fine and watch them believe me because they want to.

Tonight, I will tread the house of my own chest and count the rooms
the kitchen where hunger goes to sleep, the attic of all the almosts,
the cellar where my laughter ferments into objects I no longer own.
I will not find an answer. I will find the weight again, patient and exact.

Existing has become empty, a hollow rhythm,
a clock with no hands.
The worst is not knowing where the wound begins,
only that it’s everywhere –
a bruise spread across my soul, aching without edges,
bleeding without proof.

It hurts,
always hurts,
and I cannot name it.
I only know
it never leaves.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

I remember a day—
still and silver as morning light,
when my loneliness felt almost sweet,
a quiet refuge where I could lose myself in you.

At our parting you swore,
“This time, I will keep my word.”
You bound that vow by the wings of birds,
as if the open sky itself would bear witness
to the truth of your promise.

But I know—
you have spoken such words before:
to flowers, to birds,
to the old banyan that has stood a hundred years,
to the half-read novel gathering dust on your shelf.
And now I understand—
you are one who can promise anyone,
perhaps even love itself.

Tell me then,
in the end, whose promise did you truly keep?
Did you hold to it, or let it slip away,
just another small thing, too light to matter?
Does the breaking of words never trouble your mind?
If not, how can a person walk so freely through the days,
while the world grows heavy beneath the weight
of what you left unkept?

And still—
I remember the day you promised the flowers,
you promised the birds.
I wonder—did you find the road of no return,
or did you simply forget?
For you gave so many promises,
but not a single one was ever kept.