forestmeetwildfire

he liked to spend his evenings in bars and nightclubs, always with a tall, leggy blonde attached to him by the lips. he always said this is living. i'm not going to sit around and wait for something to happen. i'm going to go out and have fun. i'm living. and you're just jealous. how i wished you were right. that you would be the one satisfied down the road with what you did with your life. how you'd sit in that hospital bed with tired eyes and say you know what, julia, i had a damn good time. because we can't just spend our life going to school so that we can learn how to learn. take that discipline and get a job and a family, produce a b

carelessly i tiptoe across balance-beams with skinny legs that quiver as a new-born chick and breath that falters and stammers and lurches to the floor. this is the antithesis of my life, to be so perfectly unbalanced.

Years ago, the contortionist was taught never to play with his words before he spoke. His mother, strict, stiff and chaste, enforced many rules upon her son simply because she could. Rules for speaking, bathing, reading, sitting, walking. She felt, with a great sense of pride, that she was educating her son with proper manners in order for him to one day become a true gentleman. While she instructed her son, her older children ran about the house, tracking in dirt from the compost in the yard, arguing like yipping dogs. Tell a child not to do something and he will practice it for the rest of his life. Every night under the sanctuary of muff

there were many things that he thought he would never miss, one of them being the brooding, thoughtful expression that often flitted across her face when she had an entire poem on the tip of her tongue, pushing on the insides of her lips to tumble out onto paper. it made him think of vomiting and confessions, something that you kept buried inside you until your body couldn't take anymore and spat it out. she would throw things everywhere, searching for that one bit of paper, lips still pursed tight like a balloon about to pop, eyes practically brimming with all the spaces she couldn't fit between the letters. he would certainly never miss the

"the name's adam, by the way," he says. "well, it's been really great meeting you, adam," i reply, smiling coyly at his furrowed expression - the one they all give me. for as long as i can remember, i've refused to give my name to anyone i meet. most would quizzically inquire of my name, and, when i would decline, label me as bizarre, paranoid or disinterested and leave. some would try to persuade me to reveal it, but i'm anything if persistent - no one is allowed to know. adam suddenly smiles and reaches for his drink - vodka and cranberry - and takes a large gulp. this is a surprise. i lift my rum and coke to my lips and take a short sip

the face in the mirror is so terrifying that she can feel her dreams tripping over each other as they scramble away. there are so many roads to choose from, each one sprouting roots and tendrils to drag them to the earth and keep them captive until they disintegrate into lost ideas and terrible thoughts. lust is dead, she muses as he pounds away at her door, please let me in, janie, you know you can't stay holed up in there forever! there is no pleasure in this as he whispers through the keyhole, a penny for your thoughts? (he's penniless) i'm dreaming, she announces to the empty apartment (he left twenty three minutes ago), licking her woun

dear anonymous, i run until my knees shake and sweat drips down the hollow between my breasts. i run until my hair sticks to my face and i'm gasping on all fours, dragging myself one more mile. i'm only trying to escape this shackled existence of playing servant to my desires, locked in cages for weeks on end until my hands take on the permanent shape of curled-around-bars. i can only run so far before claws rip out from the ground and drag me to my knees, suck me into the earth. i am the prisoner of the underworld; i am being burnt alive in this furnace of my hellish dreams. on the other hand, i'm digging myself into a hole and i'm not sur

I. There was a girl who was crooked in all the wrong places. Her knees were knobbly and pale, scabbed and thin in the morning sun; her heart misshapen, her brain foggy. Everything about her was defective, a time bomb. She was rotten on the inside. Erratic breathing would disappear into the thick mist of a hot shower as she tried to wash away her imperfections, and when that didn't work, she tried to snip them away. II. December 15th, 2009 was the first time. She just couldn't help herself and neither could anyone else so she hurt herself instead. Pain was suddenly the most amazing sensation she'd ever experienced, or maybe just the only se

i know she is afraid. every little special moment we have together is always clouded with that frown creasing her forehead, the silent, faraway look of a lost child who can't find her way back to her mother but timidly will not approach anyone for help. i know she loves me with everything she has. and i know she's terrified. she's mad, she's always mad. i want to say it's not her fault but i don't know if i can. maybe her anger is just the leftovers from all those years spent in sadness, or maybe that's just how she is. i want to understand but i don't know how. i want to change it but i don't want to change her. all i can hear is her heartb

i'd like to own a typewriter and hire a mechanic to have him remove all the dots above the i's and j's so that i could type the way i write. then i would sit cross-legged on a sandy beach and write all day while the seagulls sing and the wind tosses my hair until i have to spend hours untangling it. i'd write late into the evening by the light of the moon, and i'd go every day to see its waxing and waning and never-changingness as it peers down at us from the dark heavens, forever in our orbit (just like i will spend the rest of my life orbiting you). and i would savor the simplicity of this moment, of sitting on the beach w