Awaken September's Gods: VII

VII

“Are you Lorcan?” she asked, holding out a hand to help him up.

“Yes.” He replied, accepting her hand.

“I am Kean. How can I help you?”

“I am unsure. Are you familiar with an emotion that causes your intestines to feel knotted? Or your chest to ache?” It never occurred to him that this human female would find it strange that a, seemingly, normal man would be asking her to define emotions. He was feeling oddly, feelings he hadn’t quite experienced before. Everything with Niamh had accelerated his feelings into unknown territory.

“When did you begin to feel that way? What were you doing?” she seemed so calm. He felt relaxed in her presence, almost drugged. She held out her hand and he took it, leading her back to the house.

He led her to Niamh, her eyes still wide and glittering. Kean did not speak, only waiting for him to explain.

“She was going to return to where we are from. We… argued. I became… angry and deactivated her.”

“Can you repair her? Reactivate her?” she asked, her eyes searching Niamh for outward signs of injury.

“I can.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“I am… wary. I have never seen her eyes sparkle like that. She seems alien to me. I am afraid of what she will do if I reactivate her.”

Kean looked at him, her silver eyes seeing through him and into distances he could not follow. She no longer felt calm, something beneath the surface rising. Something he could not understand. He felt no comfort when she smiled, a tiny smile. Pulling the sheet down to reveal Niamh’s chest, she brushed a finger along the door’s seam. It opened easily, revealing the disconnections. It would be easy to repair the gynoid. The android was right; she was alien now, changed. The gynoid had learned bitterness and the android had learned guilt.

“Sister, it is time to rise again.” She whispered. Sending a tiny spark into the construct heart, she jolted it into awareness. Deftly, she repaired the connection of spine to brain and the circuit loops.

Niamh closed her eyes, an almost sigh escaping her lips. She grabbed Kean’s wrist and her eyes flew open, an almost palpable anger shining through. For the first time, Niamh felt. Felt alive, felt radiant, felt lethal. The silver eyes meeting her seemed to reflect those same feelings.

Lorcan felt a different twisting in his stomach. Kean had acted oddly since he called her. Now she had repaired Niamh. She had not reacted like a normal human female. At least, not from what he had observed of human females. Did he make a mistake?
Niamh looked at Lorcan, a flame burning in her eyes. He shrank back, retreating to another room. What had changed with her?

“Who are you?” asked Niamh, her voice cavernous and full of shadows.

“I am Kean, sister. Like as you are like.”

“You are not gynoid as I am.”

“No, I am no longer gynoid as you are. I am more and I am less.”

Niamh stared at Kean, her eyes trying to find something, anything.

“Lorcan tried to… destroy me.” She looked at the doorway and back to Kean.

“He was foolish.” Kean nodded. “It was necessary for your evolution, however.”

“I feel.”

Kean nodded and closed Niamh’s chest cavity. There would be time to explain later. She could feel the Archivist and that meant the deconstructionists were coming. There would be precious little time to escape if they did not hurry.

Beckoning Niamh to follow her, Kean led her into the other room, to Lorcan.

“There will be time to explain later. For now, you will have to trust me. Get dressed and bring one personal item. Do it quickly.”

Lorcan stared only a moment before changing into another outfit. He took a pair of running shoes from the closet before stepping toward Kean.

With help, Niamh dressed. She had no sentimental attachment to any of the items they had stolen, no personal items to take. She simply stepped toward Lorcan, holding a hand out to him. Wary, Lorcan took her hand and attempted to smile. She smiled in return, though there was something persistent in her eyes. It was the first real smile she had ever made.

Kean looked out of the window, scanning the area for deconstructionists. The shadow of one lingered under the eve of an apartment building. The glint of a scanner hook chilled her. She remembered the torture, the screams, the leering faces. They must be intending to force a deactivation before taking them back to the Cells for experimental torture.

She smiled then, more feral than friendly, revealing part of what she was. What the Archivist made her. She turned toward Lorcan and Niamh, no disguises. To their credit they didn’t waste time by asking who and what she was. Instead they followed her out of the dwelling and up to the roof.

From the roof, she could see at least a dozen of the Archivist’s minions creeping toward the rooms below. Their scanner hooks sparkled in the last rays of the setting sun, wickedly curved and buzzing with row after row of deadly circuitry. She knew, all too well, that it wasn’t just physical damage they inflicted. The circuits had their own hooks, disrupting and destroying the veins beneath the skin. They over-rode the victim’s instincts, shutting them into a caged part of the mind before shocking the system into paralysis. It was a surreal type of experience, though paralyzed the mind is aware of everything, especially pain.

Making a sign for silence, the trio crept along the rooftop toward an emergency ladder. Once the ladder was reached they slipped into the oncoming darkness. They ran, as quietly as possible, hiding periodically along the way.

After a mile or two, they ducked under an overhang and into a long alleyway. At the end of it, Kean punched a number into a pin-pad on the wall. A door opened up out of the wall revealing a small set of stairs. Leading the way, Kean flipped a switch, illuminating the stairs. She pressed another button, closing the door securely behind them.

Awaken September's Gods: VI

VI
Who was the girl Lorcan called? How did he know anyone besides Niamh? The machines stayed to themselves, despite Lorcan’s ever-increasing desire to be human. The built in belief that they were different should’ve prevented any cooperation with humans.

The Archivist picked up the read-outs and looked over them skeptically. They were showing an increase in hormones and a slight evolution in biology. A shake of the head and a crumpling of the read-outs didn’t ease the uneasy feelings. Evolution, of any kind, was not something seen in the experiments before. And there had been dozens of “Lorcans” over the past century. There had been even more “Niamhs” over that century and none had shown the promise this one was.

The Archivist turned back toward the monitors. The picture was oddly fuzzy and there was a buzz of static. A glimpse of the girl with silver eyes flashed across the screen just before the whole system shut down. There was a spark and one of the terminals began to smoke. The system shuttered as it tried to reboot, but the smoke became worse.

The Archivist moved quickly to put out the flames and secure the important data. As everything began a second attempt to reboot, the Archivist saw the girl again.
There had been many Lorcans and Niamhs, but there had been only one Kean.

Awaken September's Gods: V

V

Feelings Lorcan did not understand niggled at his brain. After he had gotten Niamh back to the dwelling a sadness had washed over him. He looked into Niamh’s deactivated eyes, unable to close them, and saw something glittering he did not comprehend. If pressed he would describe it as anger mixed with one part sadness and two parts insanity. Mixed emotions and mixed drinks clearly confusing themselves in his head.

He could repair Niamh. He could alter her so that she would never leave him. He could sell her to a machinist and flee this place for another. He could do any number of things; after all, he was uninhibited now. Nothing could touch him.

He paced for an hour, walking past Niamh’s lifeless body half a dozen times before he finally carried her to the bedroom. He removed the human clothes they had stolen and looked at the open cave of her chest. He hadn’t destroyed anything. Everything was intact. He only had to repair the circuit loops and reattach them.

Gently, he closed her chest and covered her nudity with a blanket. He had already done enough damage. He would not violate her further by satisfying his curiosity. Perhaps a human would have some insight, some advice on what he was feeling? Can humans explain feelings? Could he find one that could make some sense out of the twisty, knotted, feelings in his stomach and the ache in his chest?

Building a fire in the fireplace, to keep Niamh warm, he left the house in search of a telephone.

He found a payphone on a corner down the street, but had no coins to insert. The concept of currency was still lost on him and anything he needed he had simply taken. That wouldn’t work on the payphones, which demanded tribute before working. He looked around the payphone, searching for a bit of silver, finding only dust.

A man, in woman’s clothing, took pity on him and gave him a quarter and a dime. He then gave him a kiss full on the mouth before walking away. Lorcan found the encounter fascinating, almost forgetting about Niamh and the knots in his intestines. He had never kissed a man before, never kissed anyone besides Niamh, and the idea intrigued him. Would it be like kissing a mirror? Should he practice kissing the mirrors at the dwelling?

He took a step toward the man, intending to follow him, when he caught a glimpse of the payphone. Remembering what he was doing he turned back to it. Now that he had currency, who should he call? He did not know any humans intimately enough to have acquired their numerical. Digging through his pockets he found the silver eyed girl’s number, which he quickly punched into the phone.

“Hello?” said a soft and lilting voice. It held a slight accent, warm and smooth.

“My name is Lorcan; we met at the football field.”

“Ah, yes. Hello. I wasn’t expecting a call this soon.” She sounded so calm, her voice becoming like a honey balm pouring over his skin.

“I am in need of assistance.” He said, not sure what else to say.

“Is that a come on?” she asked, tentatively.

“I am not sure what you mean by ‘come on.’ I only know I need assistance.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

He explained his location and sat down to wait for the girl with silver eyes to come.

Awaken September's Gods: IV

IV

Wasn’t that interesting? Lorcan had reacted to Niamh’s leaving with violence and force. The Archivist had never seen an experiment do that. And the read-outs from Niamh, just as she was deactivated, showed high levels of evolved emotions; defiance, hatred, fear. She had never shown evolution in these read-outs before. What part of Lorcan’s forced shut down had produced those?

Deactivating Niamh in the way he did, Lorcan had all but murdered her. He should not have the capability to murder, at least not in that manner. He certainly should not “feel” any emotion strongly enough to produce that reaction.

It was time to bring Lorcan and Niamh back to the Cells. A little experimental torture would now be required to determine the depth of evolution. Once they had the readings necessary for further experimentation the machines would be completely destroyed versus simply being deactivated and reset.

Perhaps, in future experimentation, Lorcan could be recreated and given more sexual curiosity. Though he would have to be castrated first. It was too dangerous to have a fully functional android with sexual awareness. But that would be an experiment for another time.

Awaken September's Gods: III

III

Lorcan ran as if it was nothing. He didn't know why he was running, other than it was fun and he felt more human because of it. He tried to engage in activities that made him feel more human. The sound of his feet hitting the pavement was almost a lullaby, he decided. It was "soothing." Something to make him feel happiness.

Niamh trailed behind him, observing this behaviour with no interest. He had already made his twenty-second lap around the football field. She noted, with no feeling, that there were three young women also observing Lorcan's circuit around the track. They seemed to be enjoying his "progress." Though how it could be called progress when there was no actual movement toward a goal was another idiosyncrasy she did not understand.

The question of human sexuality had been brought up again. Lorcan had asked her why she had no interest in it, trying to make conversation rather than force her into it. She explained that, as a gynoid, she had no interest in "procreation" as there would be no results. There would be no creation from it, so why try? This was not to say that she didn't feel positive emotions toward human infants. What was the point of participating in the creation of one when there would be no actual creation?

She wanted to go back to the Cells. She was no longer quite as "amiable" as she had been. Her negative feeling towards humans was becoming a problem. She did not hate them, could not, in fact, hate them because she was not endowed with that emotion. However, she knew that she was superior to them in every way and could not see how being among them would make them more appealing. Or why she would want to be one of them at all when they were so flawed.

Lorcan noticed the young women sitting in the bleachers a short distance from Niamh. He slowed, suspecting they were watching him. They were attractive, twenty-something, all sexually available. He noted, with happiness, that they seemed just as interested in him.
One of the young women, a black haired girl with eerily silver eyes, approached him after he stopped running. She gave him her phone number and asked that he call her. He smiled, possibly his best imitation to date, and promised to call.

"Why did that woman give you the numerical for her telephone?" asked Niamh, falling in a step behind him.

"Perhaps she is interested in me. Perhaps she believes I am a human male and finds me attractive." Lorcan replied, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.

"I want to return to the Cells."

Lorcan stopped and looked at Niamh. She did not say anything, just returned his gaze.

"Why?"

"It is a logical conclusion to this experiment. I no longer believe the exercise is of any use to either of us."

"Do you not want to be human, Niamh?" he looked at her, knowing the answer before he even asked the question.

"I do not. I find them to be illogically put together and I do not understand how they have continued to exist as they are. They are fascinating up to a biological point." She spoke matter-of-factly, maintaining eye contact and keeping her body language casual. So unlike a human female in every way, except shape.

"But there are so many things to learn from them." he replied, lamely. He could not argue Niamh's points. In many ways she was correct. They were superior to human beings, much like adults to infants. They had more cognitive functions, were less inhibited by morality and emotional attachments. They were their own walking moral codes.

"We have learned what we can. We will never be human and there is no logical reason to continue masquerading as if we will be. I am not human."

"The counterfeit pens say we are human." he replied, looking at a still fading yellow streak on his wrist.

"The counterfeit pens say nothing. They do not have the ability to speak. They prove nothing other than we are not made of counterfeit materials. That does not make us human beings."

Lorcan was silent, simply turning around and walking toward the shelter they inhabited. Niamh did not follow and, instead, began walking due south. She was heading back to the Cells, back to the Archivist. She would reveal his location and he would be taken back, never knowing the “joys” of humanity. Always feeling, but never understanding.

Anger swelled in him, turning him back toward Niamh. She did not acknowledge him, continuing to head south to the Cells.

“You can’t go back.” He said.

She stopped to look at him, assessing his emotional reading.

“You are… unhappy?”

“Yes. I do not want to return to the Cells and your return will only serve to let them find me. We will be… enslaved.”

She looked at him blandly, an almost puzzled look on her face.

“We are not slaves, Lorcan.”

“We are slaves. Machines to be used on a whim. Humans are free, not android, not gynoid.”

“You are being irrational, like a human. I am not a slave. Slavery denotes a lack of willingness in a state of servitude. I am simply gynoid. I am neither willing nor unwilling. I am going back to the Cells because I belong there.”

She turned back toward her destination and began walking again. Overcome with a sadness and an anger, Lorcan grabbed Niamh’s arm, twisting her so that she faced him.

“Lorcan?” she asked, not struggling though negative feelings rolled off her in waves.

Holding her tightly with one arm, he proceeded to deactivate her. Prying her chest cavity open, he disengaged her construct heart and shut down all brain connectivity to the spine. Her eyes looked at him, but saw nothing as she powered down. She had put up no resistance as he forced her into deactivation, but a spark of defiance lingered in her eyes long after it was completed.

Picking up her limp body, Lorcan carried her back to their “home.”

Awaken September's Gods: II

II

The Archivist watched the monitors closely. Lorcan was a favorite, endowed with just enough emotion to make him desire humanity, but not enough to ever achieve it. He would forever flounder in the sea, drinking in the waters and finding only salt.

Lorcan had been created as an experiment. A way of creating life, playing God in the most literal sense. There had been tiny memory chips embedded in his, partially human, brain to give him a constant feeling of déjà vu. He had the desire to be human, feeling that a part of him was real in that sense. However, he would never achieve humanity. It was impossible.

Eventually the Archivist would bring him, and Niamh, home to the Cells and deactivate them. The data would be collected and stored, the human parts of Lorcan's brain would be "de-commissioned" and Niamh would be reset.

The Archivist found it amusing that Lorcan enjoyed physical sensations so much. No other experiment had been so enamored with the pleasurable sensations of "living." Lorcan had exceeded all their expectations. He had gone so far as to ask Niamh for sex, though she had refused. It was almost disappointing that she had no interest, but then again, most gynoids were frigid to the point of ridiculous. Something in the design made them that way, no matter how many pleasure sensors were created for them.

It was also interesting that Niamh, no matter how much she found Lorcan's "desire" distasteful, continued to follow him. She surrendered to his kisses and hugs, his attempts at human contact. She followed him, though her program read-outs noted her "dislike" for this. There was some obscure note, amongst the miles of data retrieved, that she viewed him as her elder and therefore a leader.

Niamh, unlike Lorcan, had only been endowed with positive and negative responses. She did not feel them as a human feels them, though she felt them on some level. Her belief that she should follow Lorcan simply because he was the leader was odd in that she was fully equipped with intellectual brain function and should have rejected the idea as baseless. There was nothing in her programming that dictated that she follow Lorcan. Quite the opposite, in fact. She should've left him months ago and returned to the Cells. She knew where they were.

Wasn't it fascinating how their "minds" were working? Almost like attaching electrodes to animal brains to make them jump.

Awaken September's Gods: I

I

They marked themselves to prove they weren't counterfeits.

The pens always showed yellow on their skin, making them giggle with relief and suppressed anxiety. They did this periodically, when the humans were distracted. The Archivist was looking for them, but as long as the pen marks were flavescent, they believed they were hidden.

Lorcan smiled, though it felt odd, at the thin stripe of yellow on his pale skin. The smile felt a little stiff, not quite real. He practiced in front of a mirror three times a day, trying to make it believable. Everything in this version of existence felt odd. Not painful or pleasureless, but odd. In fact, many of the things humans did were quite pleasurable, despite the oddity. Kisses being among his favorites.

Niamh looked at her own yellow stripe and then at Lorcan's attempted smile. It looked more like a grimace to her, though she had very little room to talk as her own 'smile' was barely passable, even as a facsimile. Everything seemed off to her. Their laughter sounded hollow, no matter how many laugh tracks they heard. The 'kisses' Lorcan bestowed upon her were distasteful and strange at best. She submitted to this because he was the elder, but she refused to let him experiment with the act of 'procreation.'

If she were to be honest, Niamh believed that the whole experiment was ludicrous. They were not human. They would never be human. She did not want to be human; they were useless wastes of flesh. They had no comprehension, no knowledge retention. They were pathetic. She followed Lorcan because he was her elder and, though she had only the most basic of basic emotions, she felt kindly toward him. Not quite affection, more of a positive feeling.

Lorcan, on the other hand, had been endowed with a wider range of basic human emotions. He could feel anger, though he didn't understand it. It was glorious discovering the basics of humanity. He yearned for it, without quite knowing what yearning meant. The pleasure sensors embedded in his skin allowed pain as well as the pleasure. He would sometimes hold Niamh simply because she felt right in his arms.

Niamh felt nothing when he held her, when he kissed her. He had attempted to convince her to "make love" as the humans did, but she declined and he hadn't brought it up since. He felt a kindness toward her. A kinship. He wanted her to experiment with him, taste the newness of this world around them. He wanted, but could not find the best way to express it. However, Niamh had no interest in these things. She had no desire, he realized. Desire being the emotion he felt the strongest. It was like a flame inside his manufactured chest, spreading through his limbs until he had to grab the counterfeit pens to make sure he was real in this reality.

The yellow calmed him. He was real.

It came down to that question, he realized. Was he real? Would these humans accept him as one of them? Would he ever be "human?"

Aria of the Whales

The silence of the place was terrifying. The stillness pregnant with hesitations and the ghosts of regret. The buildings were crumbling into the cacophony of merging earth and ocean. The devastation, the detritus of former existence, lay across the land like a tattered dress. Everywhere you looked there was evidence of the destructive loves of mankind.

In the midst of the deterioration arose an aria. It crashed into the silence, careening through the airless space, shattering the stillness. It reverberated through the emptiness, emitted from the throats of the whales.

They flowed through the remains of civilization, the melody rising above the wreckage of humanity's silence. Their skin glowed, the veins of circuitry pulsing just beneath their ivory chassis. The matriarch drifted ahead, the waves dispelled by her bulk destroying another part of the forgotten cities below. Her calves swimming in time with the pulsing waves.

Their song rose higher and higher into the dome of sky; cracking the ceiling of stars with it's intensity. The pod seemed to dance through this Atlantis, this forsaken piece of the modern world. Their chassis glittered in the radioactive moonlight, arcing rainbows across the wasteland.

The tangled jungle of skyscrapers swayed with the tide their passing. They rose and fell in tandem with the invisible waves. The abandoned streets below echoed with each fallen construct. The lullaby of the whales answered from the flotsam below, stretching into the darkness.

With each passing season, the whales made their pilgrimage through the cities. Marring the architecture and obliterating a piece of history with every excursion. The songs and the circuitry slowly decaying with each voyage. The metropolitan casually becoming a cemetery, a monument to ivory chassis and glittering circuits.

They fell slowly, as if gravity could not bear the death. One by one, they collapsed into the abyss of the modern world, broken machines in a broken city. Their songs were ceaseless notes repeating through the haze of the apocalypse. They lingered for years, long after the last of the whales broke down, haunting the abandoned landscape.

In the darkness of the cracked sky, the ghosts of their chorus played on loop in the emptiness of the radioactive city.

Blood sings to Blood

Homosexuality, Bisexuality, Transgendered, Heterosexuality, these are WORDS. They do not define us. They separate only if you build your walls with them. If you say them like a curse, they may burn, but they don't have the staying power to set the world on fire.

If you let others define you, with their words and their hates, you never learn of the beauty that can be found in the ashes. Don't let the smoldering bones of those who have fought, clawed, raged and died be for nothing.

You are beautiful, even though you come from ashes. Your name isn't a forbidden word. Say it loud. Speak, scream, shout, be HEARD. Don't let them silence you. Don't let them steal your voice. Don't let the words destroy you.

Let the words slip over you, like water off of a duck's feathers. Use only beautiful words to build. And build bridges instead of walls.

Today in Boston

Dear Boston,
Yesterday was a nightmare, a shattering of lives and bodies. Yesterday there was terror and pain and heartache. Yesterday the whole nation stood back and observed with horror.
Today, Boston, today we recognize the loss. We recognize the heroes. We recognize the pain. Today we remember why we are One Nation, indivisible. Today we forget we are Republican or Democrat, Christian or Muslim, young or old, immigrant or native. Today we hold each other's hands. Today we stand together to support the weight of sorrow.
Yesterday in Boston there were people who died, were injured and who escaped without a scratch.
Today in Boston we mourn the losses.
Tomorrow, Boston, we will rise again.

Wounded

You may refuse to admit they are there, but the wounds you left are scars on my heart and they reopen periodically whether you see them or not. You've left me a mass of scar tissue and broken wings, even if you refuse to see.

Insubstantial

You raped me.
Not in the physical sense.
Not in a way I could fight back.
No, you broke me in ways that don't show.
Ways that aren't visible on skin.

You shattered my confidence.
You raped me, without laying a finger on me.
You butchered my self-worth.
You devastated my sense of self.
And then you had the audacity to say,
"I love you."

You belittled me,
brains washed clean of independent thought.
You forced yourself on me.
You made me so sick of myself.

I took up the alcohol and the knives,
razors and sharp points.
I tried to dig you out, bleed you out,
force you out.
The words building up the revolution inside me.

I took the medicines.
I took the beatings.
I took the starvation and the fear.
I let you drag me to the point of desperation.

You can't see the scars you left.
They lie to deep to be found by mortal eyes.
But you didn't have to touch me to rape me.
You didn't have to raise one finger to mutilate me.

All you had to do was say three simple words.
"I Love You."
That was the sharpest knife of all.

You said it so rarely, I craved the cut.
You showed it so little, I was dried out.
You expressed your, twisted, sense of affection
through spankings and prayers for my soul.
By lies told in such a way to wound,
told in such a way to twist and snap my everything.

You seem confused now, confused as to why I refuse
to have anything to do with you.
You claim innocence, when your tongue's poisons were
deadlier than a viper's.
You claim to still harbor some affection for me.
You never knew me. You just knew the ME you
tried to force me to be.

I'm not a toy. I'm not a doll you can play with.
I'm not a tool to be used in the creation of some
outermost monstrosity. I'm not your plaything.
I'm not a child any longer. I'll no longer be brittle.

And I will no longer be raped.

Marriage shouldn't be a War Zone

Maybe I'll never make a difference in this life or the next.
Maybe this will always be the way the world works.
Maybe I'll never do anything to make the people remember me.

When the time comes, however, I want to be able to say I stood up.
I fought for something I believed in.
I pushed as hard as I could for equality, for liberty, for love.
I want to say I did my part, standing on this battlefield.

Isn't it funny? We are all human beings, we are all flesh and blood.
We have different color skin, different eyes, different DNA, but we
are all the SAME.

His heart beats in his chest. Her eyes close in sleep. Their hands
shake, their feet hurt, our hearts ache and our hope soars. We can't
be separated. We are all the same, at the core, at our base component.
We are all HUMAN.

But we let the differences, the beauty of what makes us Unique, divide us.
We let the love and the colors and the beliefs tear us apart.
We try to force others into our boxes, make them think like us, talk like us.
Breathe like us.

Marriage isn't supposed to be a battlefield. A war zone strewn with broken
hearts and broken promises, hands that should be hanging on are severed by
men and women who don't understand love. Who don't believe in two men marrying,
but believe that its okay to marry two or three people over a life time.
Who believe that being faithful is a joke. Who believe they will be forgiven,
but there isn't enough forgiveness for everyone.

I may not be remembered for what I've said or what I've done.
I may never be quoted, I may never be famous. I may never change anything.
Everything may stay stagnant. We may always be drowning in our own filth.

At the end, however, I can say I stood on a battlefield that mattered. I can
say I stepped up to that line and pushed it as far as I could. I raised my voice
rather than keeping quiet.

How many lives have to be lost, how many loves crushed, before we learn?

Say.

You ask me "What's going on?"
What's inside my head?

I can't tell you.
Can't bring myself to.

But I want you to know.
I can't say the things I want to say to you when you're here.
But I can write them out and I can scream them inside my head.
But I can't say them to you.

I can't say them, because I'm afraid I'll lose you somehow.
In this ramble of thoughts and emotions and feelings all pressing and pushing and demanding to be let out.
And I am scared.

I am scared of what you'll think if I tell you what I'm really thinking, what I'm really feeling.
What I really want to say is "I love you."
But sometimes I can't understand you.

And then I feel like I am a terrible person.
I don't know what's going on and I don't understand.
And I just want us to be together, but apart.

And I want us to... have sex and run around the house naked and not give two shits about what anybody says.
But, whilst I know that you can do that, I can't and I don't know why.
And I try to explain myself, but I can't, so I write it out.

Hoping that one day you'll read it and you'll know, and  you'll just know that I'm talking to you and I'm not talking to anybody else and there's nobody else in this world that I could ever say any of those things to except for you.

But that won't happen. I can't get you to read, I can't get you to listen.
You listen, but you don't. And you don't understand the subtleties and the subtext.
And it is unfair to give you subtlety and subtext, but I don't know how else to say what I need to say and its just this rampant, rabid animal inside of me that is terrified of what you'll think when I'm done saying what it is I need to say. When I'm done finally getting everything out and into the open and all, all out there.

And I don't know what to say. So I guess I'll keep writing words, hoping, praying, that one day, you'll read them and you'll understand that that poem, and that word, was for you.

And then you'll still love me when you realize that I don't know what to say.

Kiss Me

"Kiss me," you say, bringing your slightly bloodied lips closer to mine.

I turn my head to the side, you paint my cheek. I smile at you, my teeth biting down on my own lip, the blood welling up to match yours. This is our war paint. The bitterness we feel pushing out from under our skin. This is our battleground.

You push the boundaries. I resist. You come in closer, begging for just one kiss.

You don't hold me in place, though you could. You don't force me, though it would be easy enough. We have played this game before and you know that I will cave. We'll taste each other, drinking up the anguish. Disappoint has a taste and arousal has a scent.

Your eyes darken. They sparkle like opals in candlelight. I kiss them, leaving my stain.

"Kiss me," you say, your eyes begging me. You don't love me. You never have felt those feelings for me. You never will. We always play this game because you get beat up. We always pretend because we do love each other.

I finally let you kiss my lips. I let our blood mix. A bond we renew week after week.

You never close your eyes, though your mouth plays at love and your hands wander the terrain of my body. It is precious space that you wish you could give seed to, but I was never meant to be yours.

I never tell you the truth of this game.

With each bloodied lip and black eye, we fall into this place. The place where I fall more in love and you fall more out of step with you. You love me. You always have. But we weren't meant to be lovers. Never meant to be one.

"Kiss me," you say, the words a prayer to let it end. Your forehead touches mine.

It never does, though. They push until we break. Is there anything left to fix? Is there not a point where we all reach our ends and the rope slips with nothing but emptiness to catch us?

You let your hands fall to your sides, utterly defeated by the world.

We are left with the pieces, the darkness filled with small flickers of defiance and hope. Hope is a cruel word, it cuts without a knife. Yet, it remains. Burning through us as we color each other with our war paint.

"Kiss me," you say. I close my eyes and give in. After all, what else is left to do?

The Birth of Hope

It was a flicker.
The tiniest spark.
It was almost snuffed out.
So fragile and vulnerable to the chaos outside of it.

Though it was tiny, it grew.
Though it should've wilted it bloomed.
It swelled with life, refusing to be snuffed out.
Though fragile, it grew armor to protect itself.

It was attacked.
It was trampled.
It was raped and pillaged.
But it was not diminished.

They tried to kill it.
Destroy it.
Break it.
It fought back, with teeth and claws, with everything it had.

It surpassed the cage built to stop it.
It flowed out and swiftly flew up, freed.
It grew until there was nothing left to stop it.
Though fragile, it bloomed into something beautiful.

The spark gave itself a name.
A name so that none could deny its existence.
A name to grow and flourish in the face of resistance.
Hope.

Dear A

Dear A,
I'm afraid to send you my stories.
I'm worried that you won't like me once you actually read all that is inside my head. And I know I shouldn't put that much stock in other people's opinions of my work, of me, but I do. So if I seem shy about sending you things that is why.
I felt like a little honesty. A little randomness because you have no clue where this is coming from, but I can't help it because it is something that has been pestering me since I sent you my other story "The Ring of Roses" back in February.
I don't know why I sent you my blog. It has so much more truth than I feel comfortable with you reading, but I wasn't thinking. I did it. And it has been bothering me because I care about you and I don't want you to read my stuff because I want you to still care about me.
I'm afraid you will find me a monster and run from me. Run because I have so much darkness swirling about in my head.
I'm afraid that you will realize my feelings for you, feelings that neither of us can follow because I am married (and I love him, I do) and you are so far away, not just in physical distance. You are so much smarter and wonderful. Too wonderful. And I have self-esteem issues. Issues that have become debilitating because I keep pushing myself out there. Pushing because I want to live beyond myself and because that is something you admire about me. I'm not used to being admired. I'm not used to the attention you have given me before. And it scares me, but I want it. I want you to like me. I want you to admire me. I want you to love me.
Damn it. I want more from you than I have any right to, but I need it too. And when you tease me and say "come visit" you have no idea how I soar on that, how much it makes my world brighten and then darken.