I Often Love Men I Know I Have No Future With. I Build Castles In The Sand Near Rising Tides, And I Watch

Though yellow grass grows

She wanders barefooted, on dry and cutting blades

Something has died here, in the glades of her old memories

Its terrain water-hungry, fertile with long-lost mistakes

Sweet aroma of morning dew has forsaken this place.

But she returns, like sunken ship to lighthouse unmanned,

though only yellow grass grows in her past.

She was a moth that waited for the light to find her. And when she died it was dark as always.

I lost my boy today. He wasn’t overly fond of me, more so my mother was his favorite, but he had his moments. Moments when he’d remember the day I saved him, abandoned by his mother as a kitten only days old. Whatever happened to her, I don’t know. Maybe she knew he was sick. That one day his heart would fail, and she didn’t want to stick around for the ticking time bomb to finally go off. The one only of his litter to survive the cold of the night, finally joining his brothers and sisters on the other side. I loved him more than you can imagine. And I cherished his tender moments with me, every one. I do not care that his heart was enlarged and he would live to only 7. I would save him every time I found him in every universe that I did. He will always be worth the pain of loving him. Always.

That was when I met him. My undoing. He was like a father to me, but I was not like a daughter to him. He knew this. He knew what I saw when I looked into his eyes, and he did not look into mine, drawn into the gaps between my blouse’s buttons like black holes for morality. I was always to blame for his touches. I had always thought of myself as a girl, as a person, but really, I was a place. A place for innocence to die.

I seldom love those I admire. What is there to hold in the greats? Achievement sits on the shelf while a lover rests under my bed covers, I cannot converse with trophies though their gold sheens are beautiful, they are empty things. I need a mess, I need something to fill my aching hands so full I could never hope to grasp it all. Keep me busy, keep me warm. That is all I ask of the one I love.

I don’t mind when her leather jacket burns my finger tips, that’s just the summer sun gettin’ jealous of us making love in this old red truck. A lick of hell on the way to heaven don’t scare me. Only being without her does.

-Confessions of a Southern Belle

Taken by salt water taffy, bring me to the childhood I never had

Unable to find love on land, and told she was unappetizing by her siren of the sea, the sailor girl sought out a lake to mope around in. In the water she so loved and away from the aching salty tide at her ankles, she found respite. But another dwelled in the muck of the lake’s bottom, and rose to meet her. A fresh water siren. Friendly as spit, with water’s wake that tasted of sugar and blood, she invited the sailor girl in. Her hair was red and curled, like a devil’s smile. White freckles sat on her face frankly, like table salt.

She reached out to the girl, and began to braid her long blonde hair, dragging her deeper into the water as she did, with a smile full of teeth.

I thought life would be easier than this. That opportunities would fall in my lap, that I would never make mistakes. Typing it out now the ideas seem so foolish, but I truly believed them. The invincibility of youth waxes and wanes like the moon, beautiful, but an illusion. A display of only crescent truths and half-honesties. Once in the blue, darkness disrobes the white lies, and I am reminded of my poor decisions and silly aspirations in their naked blackness. Phases of judgment are all that is left of me, my future self peering backward at everything I have done and haven't done. I wait only for sunrise.

There was a worse fate than death, I found, as the god I once worshipped laid his hands on my very soul.

To be unmade.