Battered Artist

I see myself reflected in my craft. I touch the pen and feel my pulse, I see my future; anything I will ever be, clutched tightly between my fingers. Scribbling words, everything I've ever wanted, I've ever seen, I've ever yearned for, woven between lines on a page. I sit here in this room, the only one breathing in this class full of drones, silently protesting against the low buzz of monotony that is surrounding me. A number is placed in front of me - a single number - and it slowly crawls off of the page it is printed on and starts towards me, tries to envelop me, wrapping it's cold edges around my throat, pries the pen from my hand, covers my eyes. It holds tightly to me, and as I struggle to breathe, I recite words that I've written and committed to memory, words that sound like nothing but are everything; are my oxygen to breathe and my sorrow to hide, my smoke to exhale and watch swirl in shafts of light sliding in through a closed window. Ink flows like silk on paper, and I am the pen spilling my soul onto the page, scrawled words melting into each other.

Gone at 3 A.M.

I get off of the bus alone, walk about seven minutes to my house with the bright red doors, a gold key turned in a gold doorknob. Behind turned doors I fade, expelling smoke from my lungs, then a short prayer after my next breath. My thoughts melt from my eyes to the floor. I step into the puddle and fall into a pool, beneath the tiles, beneath my conscious being. I find memories of him, of us, crystallized and hung from plastic coral reefs. I see ribbons of blood twirling in the soft current, but I can't find the source of the bleeding.

I pace restlessly back on the surface, images of blood and water and smoke materializing behind my eyelids as I let out a breathy sigh. I see his lips in the stars and I fill my lungs again with smoke in hopes of him meeting me halfway, just on the outside of the atmosphere, but I keep ending up alone above the world, above the soil our love sprouted from. Even when I'm high up, closer to God than I've ever been before, I fear His hand will suddenly shift its delicate touch to something much heavier, and I fear bending beneath His palm. So there in the atmosphere, I beg for His mercy, for both me and my love.

He couldn't meet me in the sky, so he finds me in my dreams. I crawl beneath the blankets, and my pillow hums me a familiar lullaby. I sink below the sheets, and I keep sinking until I land softly in his arms. His presence wraps itself around me, and the world surrounding him is bright and colorful, the sun's light tinted with silver. He speaks to me and I see his lips moving, but I can't hear anything. His words penetrate my chest, oozing into the hollow space just below my throat, soothing me; healing me. The gold lining his pupils is vibrant, casting a warm glow across my face as he looks into my eyes.

(Work In Progress)