the space above my ears.

Feral Societies

The last day of autumn has come, and nothing has changed.

Nothing has changed because everything has changed and it has not gone back to where it is supposed to be.

Let me put it this way; do you know that feeling you get when someone tells you something just a bit too real and your heart's being slowly strangled by ribbon?

It's like canoeing through a sonnet, but neither of us knows how to operate the oars.

We're wandering these tyrannical territories, not ever knowing exactly if the things we see are from your thoughts or mine.

What you told yourself you'd do, you didn't, so here we are.

In the universe that resides in a felt top hat.

There's a red door on the right and a trapdoor on the left, but it doesn't matter which one you take because the mirrors will keep reflecting one another and you will end up here anyway.

This question mark of a place where the labyrinth is little more than a corn maze.

The pretty girls and boys stumble drunkenly out of the moonlit strip club, tripping over their halos.

Meadows of marshmallow zip past in the window of the butterfly car.

The CEO of the bagel company wakes up at 4 pm and styles his hair using bone marrow.

It sounds funny until you realize that it all comes from somewhere.

Rest in peace to the sharp-jawed stoners and flower children.

The ones who cried glue until their eyes couldn't close and they never slept, not once, until they finally did and could not be woken up again.

Everybody pretends their deaths are mysteries, analyzing the splatter direction of the orange juice stains on the tablecloth.

Books are written in tribute, and we all pretend they are not just chimerical fantasies of historical fiction.

In a way, it's predictable.

The children are taught to cannibalize their heroes,

Slurp up their glory through plastic straws.

This is just the process of digestion.

It's so much like home because it's the same competition to see who can belittle their way to the top.

It's a demand or it's a question, never a summary, but that's not enough.

If you could hammer down the whole story to two words, how would they make you feel?

Bitter, at best?

There's an ancient obligation to cut off inches of hair based on the day of the week, but what's the point?

You're asking me what you did wrong, what heinous thing you said to make me go away, and goddammit, you're not listening because I've told you already it's what you didn't say.

If I have said it once, I have said it 14 and a half times;

We are walking the plank on a ship underwater.

Sharks circle us, but something in their eyes tells me they feel only pity.

We gloss over that part, though, because the sharks cannot write.

Stop.

Please.

Just shut up.

I do fear fear itself and it is the worst feeling because it never ends, it never ends.

Somebody far away is screaming to stop the petty wars.

I try to warn them about the reapers, but we're still drowning.

It does not matter who dies at the end as long as they get first place, free movie ticket and all.

You call me suffocating, I call you breathtaking

Its all in the framing,

Whatever sparkly stickers and glitter glue you put on your words.

I'm on the dock now, and it's cold, and part of me misses the ship and the sharks.

You are inside, already in dry clothes.

You're sitting in the TV room and the ghost of Grandma is there and you can see her but she doesn't know it.

Thirty six minutes and 14 seconds pass; you stand up, looking obliviously oblivious.

It's overdone, though, no one really feels that much.

Especially not you.

You hope she never finds out because you don't know what to say to make up for all the missed lunches.

You leave and we are alone again.

You're crying and I'm holding you and you don't care that I'm sopping wet because I'm here and I love you and we're going to make it out of this.

Across the courtroom in the camouflaged cupboards, I hear something.

A crash like a collapsing Jenga tower.

The ribbon was tied too perfectly so it all fell apart in the end.

Pandora's box has been opened by the dirtiest hands, ones with bits of temporary tattoo stuck under the fingernails.

Gnarled tentacles grip my friends and drag them through the walls, away from us.

It's all over now.

He tells me he doesn't want to watch my faggy indie films.

He tells me he doesn't like my paintings.

He forgets to pick me up from school.

You're there and you watch it all happen until you're the last beam holding up my home.

Time passes.

Days get shorter, then longer again.

I have recovered and you have recovered and we laugh at the plastic bags in the wind because why wouldn't we?

I stand on the podium now, and I'm not afraid of anything.

You are behind me in the judge's seat.

I look down on him when I speak and it feels good.

I can feel you smiling behind me.

I take a breath and I speak my beginning and closing arguments all at once.

"You're running out of victims, darling, what will you do?

I can picture you sewing your own from the dead, concealing the crude stitches under layers of white crayon.

Your hourglass is one with the table.

Your time is up."