Walking Into Black

Cinnamon

There's a table set for six downstairs,
But only five were there;
There's a churchbell on the corner,
And the whinnying of a mare,
She sits on the top of the tower,
Wonders if anyone even cares...
Rings the bell for an hour,
Shouts into the empty air.

"It hurts the most at night," she says,
Though no one around hears.
No one cares to know her plight,
Or her deepest fears...
She doesn't try to tell them,
For she's safe inside her den,
Filling her special room
with the smell of cinnamon.

There's the wafting scent of Carmel
in the warm, inviting house;
And although her mind is screaming
she's as silent as a mouse.
And she's a constant artist,
But there's something most have missed...
Her paintbrush is a razor,
Her canvas is her wrist.

She paints her fingers red:
Red for anger, red for pain.
And everything is silent,
Even the pouring rain;
The mare has stoped its whining
and it's moved on through the night.
It knows it doesn't matter
Until dawn's first early light.

She throws back her head in anguish,
But it's not her skin that hurts...
Her heart is aching harder,
And this pain is much, much worse.
But the blood doesn't seem to kill her--
Although it trickles out like sleet--
She still remains standing,
But she's tired, and wants to sleep.

She pulls out from her pocket
a very special jar,
And years ago she knows
she would have never gone this far...
She pops in a few pills
and feels the black consume her eyes;
For the very thing that kills
can release her to the skies.

The plates are filled with food now:
They don't even know she's gone...
But later they will realize
as Midnight turns to dawn,
But now they fill their bellies
with the welcome fill of life,
Knowing not that she had stopped eating,
and also turned to the knife.

And deep inside her cavern
She hears a tapping noise;
She awakes from her slumber,
Pulls herself from the void,
And she smells the scent of Carmel,
And of cinnamon and salt,
And looks out of the window
To the crumbly black asphalt.

She wants to fall now, more than ever,
but her feet feel much like lead--
The pills still do their favor,
Though not enough to leave her dead--
And she wants to end the pain
in a puddle full of red;
she knows that if she does
none will care to dread.

So she pulls through the heavy drug
and onto the windowsill;
She hears the sound whistling in her ears
before all goes still.
And as the sun wanders up
the five left start to grieve--
Sobbing, shaking beside her body,
Ashamed that she would leave.

They rarely go back there,
Back to her special cave;
It would bring back memories
of the child to whom love they gave;
But when they do go back there,
They will find that the room
still smells faintly
of her cinnamon perfume.