The World Is Ugly

nevermore

The drugs fogged up my dreams like shower steam on the bathroom mirror, growing more permanent each time I tried to wipe it away. Was this the real life, or just a steamed-up image of what I used to be?

Air pressed in on me, muffling my screams like a thick blanket over the mouth of a helpless infant. But who am I screaming to? In this landscape of blue tablets, there was no help. Only rainfall of crushed valium from vaporized clouds.

Stories, poems, and words swirled around me like blizzard hail, stinging my skin as they landed. I reached out to touch one, to grab it, keep it for myself, but this poem belongs to no man. It slices straight through my hand, a fleet of words following behind it.

The white of this valium poetry blizzard is replaced by flecks of red, forming gory walls around me. My blood spits itself into thick barriers, eliminating all light like pouring black paint on the basement window.

I woke up too soon. My bed is damp, the mattress identical to the dewfall outside. Looking down, I saw that the blood was real, seeping out of my arms and chest like branches of the Nile river, Styx and the Phlegm flowing out of my veins.

The poems weren't real, though. I feel disappointed, like when you find a fifty dollar bill on the street, but realize that it's stuck between the cracks of the sidewalk and you can't take it with you.

But if it was not the poems that pierced my skin, what was it, I wondered. my fingernails, too, were caked with blood the color of strawberry skin. 

I decided to look for the poems. I am the mother bird and they are my lost eggs, snatched from me by phantom eagles, counted for the slaughter. In salvation, they would remain unborn, unaffected by their trauma, ungrateful to their savior. They would continue to hate me, to torment me, to beg me for food and peck me when I do not deliver.

But they were my baby birds, and though I knew all of this, I could not let them be destroyed.

My search led me out of the dark forest of my room, a wood thick with paper and my strawberry blood. I waded through the crinkling leaves of my jungle floor, swatting aside the door that led into the hallway's river.

The river carried me away from home, into unknown civilization. I had no control over the current; the only thing to do was stand and wait, crouching as not to alert the natives of my presence.

When I reached the river bank, I give the desert a long hard look. It is unfortified, but a fortification in itself. The indigenous people, they know I will have to trek across the open, scorching sand to cross their land. They will see me, and I will be in the line of fire.

But, what else could I do but look both ways and hope for the best?

I hear the shots go off -- I heard my name, calls from the natives, confused and -- surprisingly -- delighted by the appearance of a foreigner, an exotic bird from a far off place.

I kept my head down, plowing through. Before I know it, the desert is behind me and I am in a thick grassland, surrounded on all sides by sharp grass blades. They slice at my skin, formidable harbingers of the predator that hides behind them.

I heard the lion roar before I saw it. It shakes the sky, the ground, my very soul. But who would I be to turn back, to show my poor baby birds the back of my dress and close the door behind me? Who would I be to join the natives, to bless them with my country's customs and my colorful fan of feathers? Who would I be to shy away from the lion's roar?

I kept my head down. For who would I be, also, to look the Queen Of Cats in the eye? Who would I be to hold her gaze, to speak to her and pick the bugs from her fur as an equal?

But she wasn't satisfied with my respect. She demands more, demands the strawberry skin that hides behind my human one, the valium stream that spouts from my wrists.

I felt her claws before I saw her. Most beautiful is the Queen Of Cats: skin of silk and eyes of marble, teeth of earthenware and claws of platinum fire. They sunk into my chest, past the soft flesh, right down to the bone. I feel my strawberry skin popping, revealing my hidden hot spring. 

I bleed.