I Want To Change.

Even in its darkest hour, the world carries good people on it. And we must fight for them. Love is sustainable, a replenishing and revitalizing energy. Hatred ravages the wielder just as much as those it is wielded against. It can propel you, surely, but for how long? How long can you hold the fire before you, too, are turned to ash?

I feel pressure to act not as a person, but as woman. To fill every void left by our absence, too little leaders of us, too little comedians of us, too little scientists of us; am I meant to choose what loss to make up for with just my one life?

How does a siren know your song? The proper words, the perfect intonation to pull you from the safety of your vessel into the sea? It is no small task, tainting minds with tongue, but a siren knows this well. Every sailor she devours shares with her his innermost desires, simply by being eaten. His mind is consumed by her, his memories dissolved and swallowed. Internalized. And when you’ve had one man, you’ve had them all. Or so she thought.

-Diary of a Siren

I’ve a pin with a ball end pinched between my index and thumb. Ego inflating like boils in me, I pop every idea that I am something good, worthwhile. I wonder if a harsh inner critic is a blessing or a curse as she darts pushpins in my spirit, and punches holes in my identity until I am paper thin and hollow. Light as a feather taken by the slightest idea of greener grass; convinced going anywhere is better than here.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

What a pretty little lie we peddle children as loves are ended by mouth, laws are written on paper, and wars are declared in ink.

I find comfort in rotten men, with nothing to their name but their love for me. They are corpses of their former ambitions, if they had any to begin with not that I’d care, and I rest my head on their bloated bellies and dig my nails in their cracked old skin until scabfulls of pride fall off. What sour smell fills my nose oh I can’t get enough of it. They adore me you see, and I never have to worry about them running off. Their legs don’t often work, stationary fellows don’t often stray. Good of them not to, for if they ever did I’d put them deeper in the ground than even the most desperate woman would be willing to dig. I can’t help but be the romantic that I am, and what is there not to love in an utterly rotted man. It is addicting the level of devotion they provide, the sort only an abandoned man can. How sweet is the love of a loveless one, untouched and untainted in wait for me.

It took three. The first killed her parents, in the home they used to share. The second took her legs, leaving only her arms to hold her. The third took her life. It took three bombs for Israel to murder a little girl. But it only takes the death of one child to devastate a world.

There is no wound so healed that the body does not remember its shape.

There is a kinder world within all of us, but we must agree to be as kind as it is to see it.

What use is death to a creature like me?

Well, I’ll tell you:

Death is an old bedfellow, a partner, a wife;

Is there anything so sweet as a union born in blood?

A promise to always be at each other’s finger tips?

Tool the marble into statue, we sculpt the world,

To improve it, cull those unfit for life by scythe point.

A silly question to ask me, what use is death to a

Creature? Without it, I would not have a life at all.

Like a mutant calf, my village shunned and cast

Me out to meet her, Lady Death.