transfixed.

you burned me in the light with my eyes wide open.  you told me lies fettered with the fat of illusion so that your sustenance would not affect me until after I had died.  you grew wings of red pallor and soared above me, towering me with your ingratitude.  you were a lie.  you were disease. you were the coward I feared in myself and you were the chance I needed to be.  Passivity, in return became my makeshift.   I left passion out on the pasture, cutting off her knees, swearing her to chains, and leaving her in solitude as she spoke in tongues to the breeze.  For months I left her sitting, dormant and alone. I denied my association to her. I dissembled my core.  I took apart my puzzle and placated my soul by pretending passion was superfluous, her fumes too futile, toxic to the soul.  but now that I am in the aftermath of the emptiness she has left, I realize her importance. I recognize her course. I am transfixed with the beauty of how passion lives in me. I come to life in her wake and her innocence overwhelms the lion I so feared her out to be.

~Angela Rachelle 
(circa 2009)

 

photo: www.3bp.blogspot.com

a haunting.

the black wind that surrounds me, pelts my skin in the hours before birds sing, in the predawn of birth, during the heat of winter as I sit still in silence alone in my room. I have become an escapist, surviving life by suffocating myself in as many moments as I can clutch. I’m hurrying through my days, not allowing the implication of what you’ve done to fester inside me, afraid of the depth that your death will have on me. but. it is your deminse that lives inside of me; haunting my core as the fiends of hell knock on my door. my neck hangs heavy in the aftermath of what you’ve done.
I feel the weight of your rope noosed around my throat, sucking my spirit right through its dirty, evil tongue. tears pale my face as the silent wailing leaves me breathless. It feels somedays like I have no place to turn. you have left me alone in a world whose face is dark.you have said goodbye without speaking words. you have taken yourself, willingly, into a world who was not ready to have your grace and you did so without ever consulting a soul. I am not ready to let you go. my heart still bleeds in tidal waves. my voice still shaky in the realization of your resolution. I sing lullabies to myself that remind me of your love, like a child still in search of security. I am robbed now of everything I took for granted and I cannot stand to breathe this air knowing that the demons that seized you also speak to me in the language that we spoke together quietly in our shadows, softly in my wake.

furtive

there is sleep still resting in my bones, and the morning gruff wakens me with her timely beeps. the monolithic dreams that are remembered no more, lay dormant at my bedside manor, content on lying still. they are furtive, afraid of consciousness and turn sideways in the light so I am unable to see their face.
the darkness here is thick and heavy. it is pungent and all around. it pants in my face as it breathes down my throat and the ignorance of bliss eats holes in my skin. this city, now a prisoner of my shadows, pretends to love with the shading sun. her lies are effusive, masking my reality, beading illusion to illusion as my heart breaks open one last time.

photo: tara baden