There Was A Worse Fate Than Death, I Found, As The God I Once Worshipped Laid His Hands On My Very Soul.

There is something so shameful in trying. In putting forth the effort out in the open where the onlookers look and dig their forks into my darlings. My creation dies in the end, regardless. Whether they relish every morsel or idly masticate while their eyes are drawn to the street walkers, just like all that came before her, my idea is eaten. And I am left alone to wonder if a piece of my soul had any flavor worth talking about.

My skin prickles hot; I asked the old man a question and he answers with a story so far unrelated I had to turn around and see just who in the hell he was talking to, because it certainly wasn’t me! Yes or no will do just fine, I kept hearing myself say in my mind, my voice gentle like a kitten’s fighting tooth and nail to drown out his gravely droning on about airplanes and the war. Outwardly I must’ve been screeching fake niceties and not pulling off my polite half assed head nods because his eyes were wide, and albeit dull as ever but he seemed perturbed. And that’s saying something because men like Robert don’t seem anything, they’re simply half dead elderly men roaming the earth to challenge God. Look how long I’m living! Keep knocking Jesus, I’m not opening the door! I can’t imagine being a gold digger and accidentally marrying a Robert. Undying so much as they are unriveting. Later I looked in a mirror and saw my face, still plastered up fake happy from our little conversation if you could call it that. I understood instantly why he seemed so off-put by me, I looked clinically insane. This fake it til you make it crap has got to work for somebody but it is undoubtedly not me. Unfortunately God put me here to be as authentic as possible—to punish me of course.

What would she know about me? Me and the outsiders never spoken but a few words to each other.

She knows enough to ask for you by name. Your real name.

Who is this girl anyway?

She didn’t say. Just go talk to her and get her out of here. I don’t like her sniffing around the den like this.

If you don’t know her name can you at least tell me what she looks like?

She was a mousy little fuck, insisting I don’t take a message and she talk directly to you. Brown ratty hair, looked sick. Real puffy face.

Oh my god.

What?

It’s the girl from last week. The one I, almost robbed.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I’ll take care of it.

Take care of it.

I just said that I would!

I mean it. I do not want to see her here again.

You won’t!

Fairies are a gentle sort, no bigger than pointer fingers. A little fire sprite burned the tip of mine once. She wasn’t sorry about it neither, she just snickered and gave me a thimble to wear over its ugly little boil. I sort of admired that unapologetic way she had about her. Her nature wasn’t wrong after all, she didn’t burn me out of hatred or malice. She burned because she was fire.

That is the curse of living, that we choose what is familiar and not what is good.

Though yellow grass grows

She wanders barefooted, on dry and cutting blades

Something has died here, in the glades of her old memories

Its terrain water-hungry, fertile with long-lost mistakes

Sweet aroma of morning dew has forsaken this place.

But she returns, like sunken ship to lighthouse unmanned,

though only yellow grass grows in her past.

My innocence was taken by hands no bigger than my own, another child who’s eyes swam blue with cold apathy. She couldn’t have known what she was doing was wrong, for I recognize now, the same things were being done to her. How can I raise my fists to the one who hurt me when she had no innocence to begin with, and I had something to lose. She was damned from the start.

A sudden calm washed over me

I felt no need to rush

To the finish line, to the next milestone, to anything ever again

My heart quieted for the first time in a long time

And beat gently in my chest, the way a child’s hand is held by her mother’s.

There’s so much I don’t say