wheels turn

the times like deja vu when the rough strikes, & i remember: i survived.

the moments when i hear the glowings of my strength & courage: i prevailed.

the days that i thought would be the end of all be: i survived.

never before have i buried myself in a self-love cloak, where i can look back at my blood-worn soul & smile at her reds & raws & be proud of her.

but these days on the roadways, i find her catch in my lungs & i see her for what she is: a survivor.

i survived, & i over turned tables & i broke old shadows & my arms are thicker for it.
i prevailed, & i made my words heard & i made his lies blind & my legs run longer for it.
i survived, & i have never felt so loved & blessed for the battle.

had my soul quiz not been so taxing, had i been given a chance for a guide, i would have missed the truth. i am woman & i am love & i am a survivor.

"scars speak more loudly than the sword that caused them."

the wheels turn & my days get brighter & the uphill journey's no longer ragged.

summer's bringing her shiny joy & we've begun to remember the other.

death & its blooming.

you know when fire souls collide? how they smolder & their burn makes you believe fairytales really are forever? how their smoke is more pure than any of smoke stack & you loved to breath it?

when their smolders turn embers & embers turn ash & there's no phoenix left to rise, where does that love go? i think it's dead in the charcoal dust, even though it's the antonym to any bedtime story. i think it festers in the souls & is etched like a nightmare they can't forget; how did something so velvet become so brash?

he said that souls forget that clock stops for no one & each tick strikes both soul & within minutes they won't recognize the other. that's why when the fire souls try to make man fire by match, it sputters & chokes. their burn will never be the same, & they suffer for it.

but it doesn't have to be that way. they can remember the old fire burn & the beauty reds & orange & whiteish-blues.

the trick, 

      there's a trick. 

letting the memory of the fire be just that; a remembrance of what was, rather than dreaming it to higher heights. when beauty becomes virtued, here's where the ugly spiral turns...where the soul(s) dig to earth center in search of past flame, failing to see the truth.

        the flame's dead.

that doesn't make it less real; it still kept the souls warm for a spell & their licks were theirs & no one was brave enough to touch them. but the soul can't be time-capsuled & neither can clocks & a moment lived is stuck behind glass. the souls see the imprints & wish it had stayed, but birth of once bright always seems to be daughter of ash.

thinking of those flames & the papered lesson they learned, it reminds me of the year i thought was stolen. with the turned backs & the dark night & the uniforms that made him disappear behind bar. i built my life in those mountains on a tower & hoped i'd someday return to the regal life once lived.

but the earth kept spinning & the backs stayed turned & no parades presented themselves to welcome me back home. i kept waiting for all the dark to ash, for the phoenix to rise; i kept hoping for my return to my towers, liberated & loved. 

then the wind spoke up & i knew; the parade was never to be & my castle to be abandoned & my heart shattered in time. his words & his wrath ruined the foundation of my pretty days i'd lived in that deserted forest. i withered with the unjust turned backs & the dreams of hours & bliss passed. i became one of those fires souls beating my hands against the glass; i hadn't learned that a splintered clock still can't turn back.

and somehow, the truth sank. the backs would stay turned & those bright desert days were long buried, but my heart hasn't lost beat. i still carry those days & the bloom those mountains wrought. i'm better for losing the faces attached to the turned backs & there are other mountains that shine. the truth sank.

i thought they broke me, but she's alive & well.

she may have shifted & her soul more lined, but she hasn't gone. 

& suddenly i returned to the castle to destroy its false promise.

brick

by

brick.

freedom is sweet, & my soul's grinning for it.

the after.

i still wake up and those numbered days of his with the key on my chain are on my brain.

i stop when i'm in the morning coffee pour & wonder if anyone can smell them; the prison letters that tell me where he sleeps.

when i'm driving my car and he looks at me, the one on the corner; does he see that i said the word that changed lettered name to numbers?

when she says the innocent word & it hits my ear & starts the steep slide, does she hear the anxiety that rings when she pulled the unknown trigger?

maybe when i go for my city park run after work, they can see the victim he saw in me & they'll start their plot too.

i think those might all just be whispers of the scars he left those ten months past. i hope they'll soon rest.

some say i'm writing a success story. the ones that see my feet, the ones that are still moving. the ones that leave the house that used to be glued to bed because the loss & the hate & the disbelief was too great. the feet that didn't get me away from him in time, those feet eventually learned to stand again, and they say it's something to be proud of.

odd to have normal normal job & normal apartment & normal routine to be a call for pride; someday i'll just be me & he won't be following me in my dreams & stalking me in my days & i'll blend in. i won't worry that his evil is staining my present & those i cross will notice my old wounds.

i'm more me but still he stays. i can't wait to finally shake him.

chains & maps & the empty

that rattling's still shaking through my brain.

eight months & seven days later, & they announced his three year future. eight months & seven days of ache & death & birth & break, but relief is yet to set. eight months & seven days later & his days numbered haven't changed my life, or the pieces of it that remain. they didn't magic themselves into a newness or freeness, they're still jagged & fragmented & not what i ever wanted.

i think the worst part is that he's carved out his own safe in my memory hell & i think he's there to stay. worse, thinking that those three-hundred & sixty-five times three of his are terminal, & mine will continue to fall day out & in til my chest pumps its last. he's tattooed himself on my shoulder to stay, but i'll be wiped from the beginnings of a thought the day his jumpsuit & shackles are no longer his.

his chains don't mean what i thought they might; my world remains his rubble. i thought i'd be light but now i'm a shell of his destruction & the war's over & i'm still empty. it's like all those other things; when the ball drops & touring world-acclaimed ruins & all the supposed monuments that leave everything in its place when you'd hope for ground shatter & sky split.

the climax came & went, and here i stand...lost as ever. i thought my life was on hold til that day fell. i thought that i'd spring back into me when his future was set so that mine could regrow & bloom. but it's all the same & my voice is no longer needed & i don't know what that means.

how did i get here?

silence, please.

they keep saying this is mine to make or break. they keep saying i have reign & i choose what it all means, in the end at least.

today that sounds like empty sound to slow me from drowning.
today it feels like the bullshit hurricane that's been tearing me for months.
today...
i don't want to hear it.

after all those attempts to abandon, after all those shamble episodes, i finally claimed my fate and was waiting my soul trial along with his.

i was ready for the question snare & the ugliness & the crush. i was ready to burn along with all my sisters before me so someday we wouldn't be destroyed by body to maintain our soul cage. i was ready make those eyes face what they'd done & to bury them to rot for it.

but then his brother took stage to cram my words back to dark. he says he wants to save me from them being twisted and shot through me, but he's just too weak to stand the fight.

i'm sick to my bones of being destroyed & swallowed & ignored.

i'm gathering the wind & the fire & this truth is going to burn.