I'm not afraid of the light, but I prefer the dark--
It seems kinder, often

The cool night air soothes my burning skin,
The quiet caresses my mind
And wrapped in its star spangled cloak
I feel safe while the moon sings to my soul,
Reminiscent of eternity

In the darkness
The light shines brighter inside of me

An abandoned train-track
You roam, winding
Through the wilderness of me

Life is a dance
To the rhythm of existence; nature's choreography

We each dance to our own soul's music,
Compose our personal symphony

As we dance though our lifetimes,
Through melodies of dreams and hopes and fears,
Of loves lost and loves eternal, of shy hellos and sad good-byes,
Of shattered childhoods and safe harbors, kindred spirits and hearts aligned
With flaming desires and passions burning bright,
And of candles blown out or doors that shut tight

You may miss some steps, stomp on a few toes, fall flat on your face;
Feel like hiding on the sidelines, staying in your place--
Darkness comes in and takes your sight,
Away from the dance floor, dimming the light

But the music keeps playing, dancer or not, and becomes a cacophony
Performed on a vacant lot

So pick up your dreams and hopes
And all you have been through
And  keep on dancing, because
Life's not going to wait on you

Whatever possessed me to walk
To you again on that
Overbearingly sunny day
I do not know

You are not
Remotely far away
And I passed you
So many times --
On my way to the store,
Walking in the rain,
Or to catch the bus
To meet new friends --
Not even seeing you, really

You became
An oblique house of memory
That sheltered a shard of self
I broke off me with gut-splitting force
And buried,
Somewhere,
Like an obscure footnote
I hoped no one would ever find--
Not even a nice old couple,
Quite by accident,
Who'd likely feel only
An indulgent kind of pity

Not for other eyes
Are these marks

But I guess on that day
I was lonely enough
To hoard myself back together,
Now that the new friends
Have become old
And gone

I set a nervous foot on your soil
Trying not to flinch
When I passed the place
Where the white-haired wild monster
Of a librarian roared at me for hiding
Among the books at lunch hour
And I sobbed,
Great rolling salty tears,
For all the hate in that small world

You are pretty much gutted, now,
Like the war-zone you were

Where your out-buildings stood lie patches
Of mute gravel
Your playground is mostly just stumps
In dark old sand
And the batting cage
In the yawning field out back
Leans tiredly,
One foot off the ground,
Like a weary old nag

You are a strange sight
Among all these bright white houses
And overly-kept stamps of lawn

Like me you are
A brown and fumbling smudge
On this gleaming suburbia,
Always half in a state
Of abandonment

They say you are what you think you are,
And I believe that's true

When you're down on the bottom and inner demons get a hold--
Sitting on your chest,
Screaming in your face,
Haunting and taunting, parading
All your deepest fears,
Advocating hate--
Don't let them get to you
Or your heart
Will loose its voice

And you can no longer battle them, then
No longer prove they're wrong

Don't let them win or you'll loose everything--
Be forgotten,
As if you where never there--
And go one flight further down,
From your personal purgatory
To your own personal hell

When I start to see the scale dip towards 100 and think of continuing the countdown to zero like a self-destruct sequence in slow motion, a part of me feels victorious. It feels like I am taking some kind of control of the way I have felt inside my whole life. I have always felt like a freak, was treated like one, and was eaten up by a hunger for touch and for connection and for things I cannot even name -- but on the outside I looked perfectly normal. There was no sign of my inner state and I was always judged and rejected if I tried to voice said state or show it emotionally. I have come to enjoy writing it on my skin, instead.

I like to make my body a canvass for the twisted silence in me. I like to look a little desperate. I like to look hungry. I like to remind people of things that unsettle them: Death, famine, poison, pain. When I embody the macabre I feel in tune with my inner self. It's just another method of nonverbal communication, and surely anything deconstructed with enough effect and purpose begins to teeter on the verge of art.

This is the mute horror that cannot be silenced yet cannot be ignored. This is impact. I will crawl under your skin and a part of me will haunt you in your last thoughts before sleep takes you.

When I look deathly pale I smile and feel touched by the mournful watch of the moon. Bones peeking through skin beg the softness of arms to fall into. My scars tell the story of a journey down a path that was not well-traveled. I stumble to you at the end of it looking sallow and blotchy and hollow-eyed, finally not having to utter a word to ask you to feed me, love me, hold me, bring me back to life and make me whole for a little while.