Tell me a story,
won't you? Please?
The one about strangers amongst the leaves.
Where neither smog, nor smoke
has touched the air,
and no one cares about the grass
that's stuck in your hair.

Tell me all about elves,
the pixies, the fae.
Their adventures and games,
their songs, their names.

I want to fly with them,
with wings on my back.
Explore all the forests,
and deep lakes of black.

Of what I might find there,
I'm not afraid.
Because no matter what they must face
on their darkest of days,
it must be worth it.
Or else why would they stay?

Their gifts of magic,
youth and flight,
the way they must shine
through even the blackest of nights,
is the type of fantasy world that given half the chance
I would make mine.

See that menu there?
It's got everything we have.
Read it. Then we'll talk.

Tic-toc-
won't you stop
the damned ticking of that clock?
It never halts to chime the hour,
and never has needed battery power.
The ringing in my-
-tic-toc-
ears won't stop
as long as those hands mover 'round the clock.

I took it off the wall today,
to no avail.
It continues onward, without a halt.
But I'm determined to
-tic-toc-
destroy the wretched thing tonight.
Through fire- or water- or a really big rock.
I'm going to silence that evil-
-tic-toc-

Shhhh.... listen.
What do you hear in the white noise around you?

In the dead air between your breaths
as you float from wakefulness to peaceful sleep.
When your eyes are resting in darkness,
and your mind drifts from thought to thought
as it reaches for dreams just out of reach.
But your ears still scout the silence for anything worth noticing.
The air sounds stale in the night,
compared to when the sun shines high above you.
Like the darkness has smothered the life from the earth around you.
A thick pillow clenched in unseen hands,
pressed tightly against a helpless face,
until the struggling ends.

The creak of the house is enough to yank you away from unconsciousness.
If silence is the enemy tonight,
then maybe music will vanquish it?
Earbuds are gently pressed into place,
and you settle down again,
hoping to find peace this time around.

It seems to work,
as your heartbeat begins to slow,
and your lungs move gently within your ribs,
a counter-rhythm to the music you hear.

But within the static between songs,
little blips and shrieks lay just beyond your understanding.
Voices pleading and begging
where no one can hear,
in an airless binary vacuum.
Ghosts in the machine call for you,
the unwilling listener,
to send help,
to look out,
to do anything other than just sit and listen.

Then the next song begins,
drowning out the other voices.
And finally, your mind lets you rest.
You fall into a deep dark pool of obliviousness to the outside world.

The ghosts are gone.
The creaks are gone.
And soon, you'll be gone too.
Because now,
your ears will no longer be able to hear
the nearly silent padding of feet outside your door,
or the creak of it opening,
or your breaths as they're stopped.

The click of fingers meeting keys,
or the scritching of pens against paper,
is a melody to me.
A lullaby that calms my racing mind,
and takes me away from my anxieties,
even if just for a moment.

I can dwell within the mind of someone else for a change,
watch them struggle with apocalypse level crises,
or the slaying of monsters that could eat me with one bite.

It makes me see the events of my life through a different lens.
If someone could do such heroic deeds,
and change the world through magic or wit,
then it means that I can get through my day, too.
And maybe even my week,
if I just look for the glimpses of fantasy that this world was to offer.

I feel like I'm crawling through thick,
steaming soup.
And not the delicious kind that you get to eat.
It's the kind that feels a lot like it's eating you.
Covering you in slick salt,
whether you're moving or not.

Even breathing seems to coat your skin in more of this substance,
like it's somehow trying to help,
instead of making you feel like you need a nice hot shower
and a steel wire brush to get it off of your skin.

When there are heat sources all around you,
filling the very air you breath,
and stealing each hint of sweet, sweet moisture from your lips,
there's very little you can do.
Except stay away from the grill,
guzzle all the water you can,
and eventually escape the metal box on wheels
where you have been talking to assholes all day.
Because nothing tops off a hot day better
​than customer service.

Lately, it's been hard to make words go.
They feel trapped and fuzzy inside
my skull. Like a swarm of bees
refusing to calm down.
I had no idea
I'd kicked the hive.
Looks like it's
time to
​run.

Metal titans are
all careening down the streets.
​Too accident prone.

Pick apart the puzzle pieces of my mind.
Arrange them how you like
in pretty little perfect lines
and tell me what they say.

Read my insides like tea leaves
or flame-cracked marrow bones.

They've all got to mean something, right?
All the slivers and breaks that riddle me
and somehow keep me standing.

Each fault that helps define me,
builds me from the ground up,
into this patchwork quilt of parts that don't quite fit.

There's a pain that's settled itself inside my skull,
like a thin, sharp needle poked into my brain
and rattled around
until everything was nice and pulpy.
It's the perfect ingredient for a recipe that I'm not partial to.
But it must be important,
because the damn thing won't flee from the tidal waves of water and aspirin I've tossed its way.