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Lrsneny LEevEs Lnrr

Trees shutter as he walks down the crooked path. Gallons of dead leaves pour from the tree tops as he passes them by. The carcasses are crushed by his brutal steps. He picks one up, one that's screaming red-orange, and just whispering yellow. There's a few miniscule tears down it, but he picks it up and matches it to his grimace, then cackles and shoves it in his pocket. He always had leaves in his pockets. Later he would set up on the firm wood desk at the library and press them, into all his favorite comic books. Years later he goes back and looks at the skeleton of what life once was. The brittle bones can barely withstand even being looked at. But they hold together, until the toddlers grimy fingers tear them to pieces. Leaving shards of dead tree all over the library floor. Nar.e.tv Bnvpn

ANxrnry srrs NExr ro ME

Anxiety sits next to me, and peels against the walls of my brain. He slumps over my desk and waits. His fingertips curl as they draw against the grain, I look at him. I see his eyes sunken beyond his skull, a vest of broken skin, with pulsing veins throb against his rocky chest.

His throat sings with fire, jostles out charred symphonies ofbroken chords

He says: "Your brain coddles me in its sickly tissue. Claw the skin at your knees you hold close to your chest to stop thinking about me.I want my reJlection imprinted on your eyelid. Make me love you with those quivering legs."

He smiles. Blunt lip and seethes about things that are living.

I cradle my body, feel him crawl in my head. The knock of fingertips, stroking and stroking. I cannot stand his breath leeching to my spine. With every test that sits on my desk, or when someone smiles at me from across the lunch table.

I'm afraid to stare and see a flushed skull gazing back, quicken my pace as his tongue lashes at my eardrums.

Every day my skin boils. This man is staring at how fat I look. Arms clenched to my chest, with wrists slit, wrapped as nooses string blood down my palms. I am pennyroyal, and sickening red.

He speaks: "Come home to me, trust these chains that rust to your neck, and squeeze. Make this cherry-stone torture leap from your veins and come home to me.

I want to make you scream until the walls bleed, leave your burnt skin slouched and your back salt-licked rigid. "

I am stuck with anxiety, as he looms me over every steep railing, lures me to step through his crooked teeth and paint the floors with my skull.

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I walk along the strand as dusk arrives. Sweet rays of fleeting sunlight shade the earth. The sky, so vast, fades, and the light derives From yellow-gold to orange-scarlet mirth. Though fast retreating from the fear of night, The sun slows slightly, gazing one last time Upon the world to which it shed its light, Reflecting on its daily playful climb. Exhausted from its transit tross earth's face, But wanting to stay past wise nature's call, Horizon takes the sun in its embrace, And guides it to the celestial hall. The purple haze, now black with nightlights bright, Awaits the rising of the newborn light. Nrcrroras Tntvruts

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VnNus AND MTNERvA

Venus and Minerva rented a skiff And took out over Neptunet western sky. "It'll be a laughl' They said, with winks and nods Their fingers clinked on aluminum seats, "We'll be home before lunch." At the horizon they met A spanning stab of rock and sand, Land so warped and lumped That silver straw rose from the grasses in hateful choruses, clumping towers And lonely bolts of riveted iron. This was a world scarred into space With crumbling, wrinkled hands, Set in nails, roads, and sheets of copper. It ached out offissures, in steam And veils of vapor. Stony plates from the soil Lurched into the clouds, Frowning,limping walls with sores on their feet And laws on their shoulders. Venus and Minerva could not bring themselves To laugh. They had brought paints, Skins and brushes and brass horns, drums Wrapped up in suede, fiddles and glass jars. These they abandoned, Now in the face of ragged consumption: Engorged and swollen streets. And the jars, the strings and fur, Skins and oil, Sunk from their minds: weighted by goodness, They turned away. Venus and Minerva untied the knots, Ropes slipping out of coils and over The stained shores Out over breakers, snowy stars That stung, sprays and waves and ripples and tides Until the sky swelled In a hush of breath And bloomed into glass. And they were home before lunch. Rtcrurc Wrupotocx

SuprvEo

Uncle Tom shushes those who cabin his spine. They grease him and quiet him.

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CanrNc Fon GnaNDMA

My grandma's favorite flower was pink tulip. She said they represent caring. Shed pluck them from her garden, glide them into my palms, and say "l will always care about you". My dad brings home a bouquet of pink tulips, thrusts them into a vase and says "Take care of them. "

Their petals are penciled. They wall the insides. Their leaves thorn straight protrude for their thighs,like grandma when she was younger.

The tulips have started breathing, the petals have begun to peel outwards, stealing sunlight they are learning that it is ok to be open.

The wind tumbles offtheir trunks, the petals shiver like grandma's silver curls. The carpel is stretching it's fingers, pushing a smell, cradles my face like grandma use too.

These petals are flexible, their backs are straining, the pink is looking more red. The leaves fight with the wind, trying to hold onto something that's being stripped from their chest.

The petals digress into crimson. The stem is beginning to bow, but the carpel is throbbing like a artery struggling to push. Dad said "Thry usually only last a week. "

The petals are holding hands only with their yellow

leaves, the pink has gone pale. They have tied themselves around each other.

Dad calls the house phone. The tulips have wilted, petals plummeting. I see them reach for me as they cave into the table. The stems

snap, collapse in on themselves like a hospital bed. I drop the phone; it craters the ground like metal. The carpel stops beating. Ltrnov Ro.arxsox

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My grandmothert cross,

sits tight against her clavicle. It is her cross that drips at my grandpa's funeral. I stare, wondering if there is a God whispering through it. It leaks sermons, oozing its gold religious melodies down her chest. Each saying that God wanted it this way.

I kneel giving prayers, each word a question. As I leave the service I count the number of times I have been in a church on one hand. I wonder if there is a God to hate me for this.

My best friend wears a cross around her neck. It dangles against her sternum. It is her cross that nicks into my eyes as we visit her sick grandmother. I stare, and I wonder if there is a God whispering through it. The stale smell of the nursing home, falls ample at my feet. I watch as my friend leans at her grandmother's bedside, a bible spoiling into the nightstand. Her cross is nursing nothing, the bibles nursing nothing, is there a God nursing anlthing?

As we leave the home I count the number of times i have prayed for someone on one hand. I wonder if there is a God, to hate me for this. I wear a silver necklace, around my neck. It is hammered with the word love I am certain there is no God who whispers through it.

It is this necklace that hardens as I discuss the meaning of life, with my ex-boyfriend. I tell him that there is no point in anything we do. I watch as his feet clasp my dashboard. His thoughts silenced like every sermon Ite tried to hear.

I speak again hoping my atheism will baptize the unspoken, "People are religious for answers, they need someone to blamel' His head lapses into agreement as he says, "Delaney, life is like a scrapbooki'

As I drive away I analyze this, wondering if this was the last time I would ever speak to him The street lights drip with the touch of calamity. I picture my grandmothert cross oozlng, the bibles spoiling.

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