Missing You/Call Me Vain

I told you to stay there
Quietly
Until it was safe to come out.
Where have you gone, my love?

It's been too long, I must admit
Empty hollow
Friendless
At least, company just doesn't count
When You aren't here

Come, come back to me--
We can be one again
No one has to know
Just so you're mine again
please.

Yes, I know you're shy
I promise--
It won't happen again.
We'll be more careful, won't we?
I can't lose you again.

I can't believe I left you
Neglected for so long
When I said
I'd never
leave you
forlorn.

No wonder you eluded me
I don't deserve you
But really, you know
We can't live without each other
separation is death.

Return, dear heart
I swear on you
you're all I need...

And--if ever
Adventure strikes
Even with the death of me
You will survive.

Telltale beating
I know you're here
Welcome home...
You're all I am.

Through Memory or Dreams

I can't do this. There's so much locked inside, but nothing worth saying. I can't tell the truth and I can't lie, but most of all I can't have anyone know that I'm lost and empty--that half the laughs are hollow and most the smiles are fake. Can anyone tell? I watch them all, try to check that no one has cracked my mask, but I cannot see myself the way they do--my reflection looks so flat and lifeless, blurry and dissolving...It's snowing outside and I'm trapped. The hot cocoa that burns away my sorrow has suddenly turned bitterly sweet, just like memory...I am falling, over and over, and the chair I toppled from disappeared, and there is a canyon wall, and a river, and the sky, and my sister calling my name, and the bushes too close, and--CRASH--I would sit there in the attic for hours and listen to the snow drip--off and off the roof, crunching as it hit the snow--because there was nothing else to hear. I was ten and curled up with a book and a blanket wrapped around my mind, a numbing, blissful agony. Time crawled so slowly...there was nothing to see,  nothing to think and nothing inside but old broken dreams, a dumping ground for everyone's problems which lay rotting in my heart. This is why I can't tell--my secrets aren't even mine--but can't not tell...and let truth decay. My own truths are hidden among everyone else's, but there is no one to open the lid on this summer soda can. (They're all afraid of the spray.) So I sit and wait in the attic, falling and spinning...This must be what it's like to be guardian of Hell.

Note to reader: Confused? Think of Inception.

Singing in the Rain

And that's how the world remembered him: defiant. Down to the last moment, the last note--oh yes, there was indeed an end--he never accepted defeat. Never once in that bitter rainstorm; never among the hungry crows; never, as the man without a soul extinguished his own, did he flinch.
He stood proudly on the plank, the rope necklace he didn't quite deserve hanging conspicuously on his spindly neck. He smiled crookedly, as if his girl were approaching from afar in a breezy sundress on a windblown beach.
The figure was not his girl, but his downfall. The man was a black ghost: eerily silent, garbed in silky black cloth that did not budge in the roaring gale and did not dampen in the deluge. Although the defiant man could not hear, the figure was muttering a prayer under his hood, the one he always whispered before the board came down: "They succumb for their sins, let them fall; for in their weakness You are strong. Let regret welcome them in Hell."
But those worry lines were erased from this brave man's face. No regret would welcome him, for it seemed he had never experienced regret. He smiled his crooked smile and waved jauntily at the shadowy figure, then broke into song--a song of his own creation, about the power of truth--the tune harmonized charming innocence with subtle wisdom. Had he been able, he would have skipped. Had anyone been there, they would have wept at the irony.
The dark cloak halted directly in front of the man's shoes, and glanced up, just enough so his mouth leered up at the singing carcass. His lips were cracked and bleeding, but pulled back in a leering grin. He removed the board.
At this point, he would usually stalk away with the same unsettling quietness, mutely thanking the Lord that one more criminal met justice, and never think on the man left swinging there for weeks. This time, he paused. For just one minute, the rain became tears and regret that streaked down his upturned face. Finally, slowly, he turned heel and sauntered back to town, his mouth reshaping the words of the song he silenced, the song that offered such promise.
~

Idea credits to Bearamaneramagarrett

naked

I roll sideways off the swing, closing the book as its last words are disclosed. Time for an unwinding, a creation--shucking the shriveling corn ear to bear delicious fruit.
I grab gloves, chemicals, a paintbrush. Then she's handed to me. She lies, beautiful and broken and waiting.
~

Stripped bare--down to the last shadow of what once was. But--with love, care, and a little shellac--the lingering shadows melt away to reveal her true light. She seizes her victory stick and sings at the top of her lungs. She is simple--strong. She is brave--fearless. She is pure, pure delight. Some shrink at her name, but all my hours have no shame. She is thankful for that--for the new home within my heart--and does her best to sing ever clearer, ever stronger, in gratitude. Her hollow heart welcomes the hands that caress her neck, back, ribs; those hands that brought her from shamble and ruin, healed all her fissures and impurities; my hands that cured her.