I Belong To My Animals As Much As They Belong To Me. I Am No Owner, And They Are No Beasts.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

What a pretty little lie we peddle children as loves are ended by mouth, laws are written on paper, and wars are declared in ink.

Why can’t you let me have anything? Why can’t you let me have anything? I ask the mirror.

The girl in it is too busy weeping to answer.

Facism is a blade we carry, we are born with it in our hands. We are all capable of using it, rallying behind it, bleeding our brothers and sisters with its tip. It is up to us to drop it, to refuse violence against our fellow man, and to instead offer an open palm. An opportunity for peace, and prosperity without the boot of a dictator on the neck of a people.

I miss him. I see him out of the corner of my eye, walking into the living room like he’s done a hundred times before with his stark blue eyes and crisp white coat, a proud look on his face like he has the body of a panther and not a simple house cat. But he isn’t there. Only shadows cast by the wooden side tables he used to stretch himself on. A trick of the light, played on me by my aching heart. For the ornery flame tail Siamese to prance into view, and reject any and all affections, sitting elegantly with his tail tucked around his legs like a statue. Fine art, looked at, not touched. What I wouldn’t give to adore him from a distance again. Though even I was lucky enough at times to win his favor, and have the statue descend from his pedestal to rest at my feet, with his head on my ankle and the occasion lick of my fingers as I let him sniff me. His fur was soft as a rabbit’s, a forbidden fruit tempting me every time he strode through the kitchen to watch me cook. I respected his space, and in return he sat on the counter where he knew he wasn’t allowed, and perused the grocery bags curiously, often times sitting in the empty ones. I didn’t mind it, I cherished spending time with him, even if it meant washing the counters of paw prints. I miss him dearly. And I wish the tricks of the light would last just a little bit longer, so that maybe as I look at him, eager to absorb every detail of his little perfect face, he can look at me one last time and see me too.

Depression is driving a car dry, no oil, no gas, just habit. Nothing slows, people die, jobs disappear, experiences pass. Everything is a miraculous colorful blur that illicits no feeling in you. You remember that it used to and this pricks your fingers with drops of sadness. It grinds you down, your body grows weary. What doesn’t kill you right away doesn’t make you stronger, it just takes it’s time. And that’s all you have, sitting in your hands like a steering wheel stuck straight, propelling you ever forward. Never caring to ask if you’re ready, if it hurts. Depression is driving a car dry because that’s all you know how to do. To keep going even though you’ve nothing left.

Sweet thing didn’t bite me nearly hard enough to hurt me, though not for lack of trying. She thought I was dead, but she’d just woken me with her nibbling. My eyes dragged down to the source, a head full of spiked black hair, with droopey triangles flat on her forehead form being above water. Her eyes were black as well, I was transfixed by them, how her pupils devoured her face. The sharp point of her nose dug into my knuckle as her mouth inched it’s way up my finger. Our eyes met. She inhaled sharply and pushed herself away from me, her eyes warbled with shock, and then settled down to worry. I wasnt worried though. Not for a moment.

-Diary of a Siren

If nothing else, I will always have my misery. Like a child that does not grow old but cries and cries in her cradle, only silencing in my arms. She is mine, and I am hers.

I am glad for my misspent youth, my contradictions, my stupid ideas and my fear of stepping out of line. I am glad something wild lived in me once and I did not hide it. I feel no shame, no regret. Only peace that all of me got to exist in this one short life.

Shadows cast under noses, in sullen cheeks and eye sockets galore.

Highlights on the rims of sharp roses, with thorns that grow ceiling to floor.

Nothing quite so soft and unforgiving, as the woman that waits at your door.

Indecision, my worst enemy, my bedfellow, my self. I look in the mirror and am met with a series of incomplete paths, loose ends, commitments unfinished. I am torn each way and no way, my spirit has been drawn and quartered. I watch my friends walk the straight and narrow line. I envy their distance, as I sit in the stagnant waters that grow higher and higher. Instead of standing up and walking away from it all, I tread water. You can always stay in the same place, contemplate the same questions, mull over the same potential paths, but the comfort the old routine brings you will fade away. That is one certainty I hold in my bundle of uncertainties. This life I live will get worse.