THE INTRODUCTION:
Standard procedure.
Close arteries - open wound - implant heart.
Open arteries - close wound - extract heart.
A whisper meant for the dead; The sirens have discontinued…
But the surgeon remains the lone survivor of this operation.
Chapter 1: The Discovery
Regrets flood my only basement.
A lonely seat on a train that has not moved for days.
A crack in the sidewalk that grows with every passing memory.
Time may heal all wounds, but a few pokes and prods are all it takes
to undo the stitching.
Vivid flashbacks of what was once beautiful
is now just compensation for ambulances.
A seatbelt for a vehicle with no wheels.
Stagnant.
Reaching for a resolution is alcohol for the homeless.
There is no “fixing” this.
No room for stained love.
A white flag is raised in honor of my mistakes.
__________
He couldn’t help but stare.
The record player has been running for over an hour, and still he does not feel like dancing.
The clock keeps ticking, yet he still does not want to keep track of it.
His life keeps sprinting by him, and he does nothing but stare as it bleeds into him.
His guilt is the only thing he did not stare at—- He grinned at his guilt.
No longer bothered by his trivial wrong-doings, he felt he had the right to stare at everyone else’s mistakes; But not his own.
He chose to look at his own past in this manner because he had stared at his mistakes so long,
they appeared to have melted into a mirage of something that resembles beauty.
He grins at his beautiful misfortunes, and stares at the rest of life.
The way a man would act if instead of the phrase “It’s not you, it’s me” …. he was told “It’s not you… it’s him.”
Sometimes disaster is all a man needs to look upon life with soft eyes… once more.
__________
The Burning Star Rises Only To See Me Engulfed In Flames.
The walls speak of moral condensation, only to be coersed into burying our scars.
I have been cleansed—- No longer searching for that diamond in the mud, for I have been found by something much greater.
Silence.
I have been imploding at the seams for years, yearning for brass stitches.
Beneath the flood, stripped of love, the burning star rises only to taste our blood.
She wants to be bought.
They want to be taught.
Everything I’ve ever loved,
Is now showing signs of tropical rot.
I deserve this profound hatred of the light. You deserve this open mouth that never again will speak your name.
I have done nothing but all I can… and I don’t owe you a God Damn thing.
Chapter 2: The Realization
She had found her muse.
After two decades of searching, she found the body bag she dreamed of. A lesser woman may have settled for less, but she knew nothing but this could satisfy her. She climbed in to get a feel for her new home. Her new life. Her new forever. It felt warm; Comforting to the senses she could still claim were intact.
It was caliginous—- So her eyes were well adjusted. She would never have to look at the hideous facade of herself in the mirror again.
It was silent—- So her ears were pleased at notion of never hearing the words “I love you” spoken to her again.
It was anosmic—- So her nose could not smell the Roses she had once received from him.
It was famined—- So her taste buds would never become entangled in his kiss again.
The most beautiful thing about the body bag she loved was—- It was numb.
She would never feel like herself again.
__________
The world seemed so hollow through his eyes.
Colors appeared grey; Birds never sang; Food tasted like what he imagined normal people calling “styrofoam”—- Everything was bland.
Everything was transparent. Everything was He. It wasn’t always this way.
At one point, he called himself content.
Content bled into complacent.
Complacency melted to static.
Static took form of a fire.
After all was said and done, all he held in his hands were ashes.
Particles of the “content” he had once called himself were nothing more than a rhetorical theory
that burst into flames every time he tried to capture it.
Dust would be jealous of how fine a powder his “content” had become.
We knew karma was a bitch, but who knew she held such petty grudges?
__________
He had lost himself before, but never amongst so many trees.
Their branches drenched in a fine red wine, and the fallen leaves covered in thick frost.
A deep breath, followed by the icy shadow of his whisper.
He doesn’t say much; Just what he thinks will grab your attention.
Nobody hears him.
Trees cannot listen. How could anyone expect them to?
Only He, who is surrounded by a living, breathing forest could.
Expecting unreasonable results is what got him lost in the first place, so now he just whispers them.
It couldn’t hurt to try, right?
One day, these trees might speak back.
They may tell him about travelers who had been stuck in this frozen forest before, and which way they had to go to escape.
They may tell him him a hint of a hidden passage, beneath the snow-packed gravel.
They may tell him how their branches became soaked with wine.
They may even tell him he’s beautiful.
They may tell him nothing, yet he still expects a familiar voice to be heard from those strange trees.
Every time a whisper is heard, a scream becomes silent.
Chapter 3: Love Sonnets For The Deceased
Sometimes I speak just to hear myself think. Many ideas are passed through my breath without any thought, because that is the true impulse of my tongue. As quickly as those words flee my mouth, I realize I have said something that I did not mean to say; yet I meant every letter. Each syllable begins with an emphasis, as if a widow were placing the final nail into her husband’s coffin. Every millisecond of my malicious wordplay is forever carved into the the novel I’ll never write.
