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The look on their faces as you walk through the crowd – it’s appealing. They hadn’t realized how freaking amazing you are. How brilliant, until just now. They always saw you as some backwoods trash. Some little boy. And now? Now you’re parading and they’re expected to bow to you. Their faces are twisted in shock. Most of them are horrified at what they do before you. And you’re laughing to yourself, because no matter how wonderful, how distinguished, how exalted you appear on the outside, inside you’re still the rule-breaking child-hearted you’ve always been.

Posted By Thirteen On 09.10.2011 @ 6:34 pm

My life story has been told in bars. First it started in a bar with my mom and a stranger. Then it came to bars where I ended up tending. Next it came to bars when I got caught underage drinking. After that, back to bars where I can get your callings. Bars…my life story has been told in bars.

Posted By Thirteen On 09.09.2011 @ 5:47 am

These are what have been keeping me in, holding me back. Face pressed against the cool metal, trying to grip the air beyond, to pull myself through. I’ve been trying to reach you now, for what feels like forever, but you keep escaping just beyond my grasp. I’m restricted. I need to be free in order to tell you what I have to tell you. But even when I call your name you run the other way. Just thank god that your cage keeps you near me, even as mine keeps me away from you.

Posted By Thirteen On 09.08.2011 @ 11:16 am

I’m here, as you can see. Or maybe you can’t. Can you tell I’m here? Can you hear the sound of my voice, the sound of my very being, echoing off these walls for your ears, your eyes alone. Can you tell me when you feel me when you hear the whisper of breath across your neck when you see the ghost of chance that might be us in the future. I’m here, as you can see. Or maybe, you can’t. Maybe you’re blinded still, by fear and… Fear. Just open up a little wider: there are possibilities still here.

Posted By Thirteen On 09.07.2011 @ 6:24 pm

I don’t like insects. They’re bugs. Beetles. Mosquitoes. Yellow jackets. Biting, humming, blood-sucking things. I don’t like insects. I do like pretty decorations, though. Butterflies. Ladybirds. Something beautiful, without purpose, less alien. More…acceptable. The same way humans seem to like others, more like themselves.

Posted By Thirteen On 09.06.2011 @ 4:54 pm

The young ant’s feelers moved, testing the air, looking for the chemical compositions that would tell her where food was. And when she caught the telltale taste, she set off, her feet moving rapidly, single minded determination to carry her where there was a feast. She left behind her own marker, bumping her rump against the ground as she went, signaling.

“Ma, why are all these ants here?” “They just seem to know where the food is,” the irritated mother replied, over the picnic.

Posted By Thirteen On 09.05.2011 @ 5:14 pm

Across the great divide, where birds sing and music falls by the wayside. I don’t have the words for this. I’m cut into pieces, torn up, wondering where my next meal is going to come from, and so mad at the world I could love her to pieces. It’s breaking my heart, but I’m not even sure what “it” is, or if the change is permanent. I want to run away, but I don’t have anywhere to go. I’m divided, in my own mind.

Posted By Thirteen On 09.04.2011 @ 4:42 pm

I’d like to see the face you made if I were to serve up steak. Peppered steak. Fillet of small child, maybe, and faces, filed off filled with little black specks like inverted pimples. Maybe I’d play a game, and see how long it took you. Hey, do you like the braised peasant? See if you think I’m saying pheasant. Would you like a second helping?

Posted By Thirteen On 09.03.2011 @ 12:10 pm

Have you been down fifth avenue recently? It’s not like it used to be. There’s no trees anymore. No light posts and fog. There’s nothing to remind me about how we used to cuddle in the corners, kissing but not quite. There’s no buildings there anymore, even. They tore them all down, a while back. I can’t recall quite when. But I walked by the other day, just hoping for some memories; I think we need to go back, rebuild a few to go with the new view – ruptured cement over concrete.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.31.2011 @ 5:17 pm

If I came up to you with a place to stay and a blanket, a little bit of time and an ear, would you come with me? If I came up to you and offered to let you stay in my bed instead of on the floor, would you take me up on it, the way you have for the past seven nights, or would you laugh and tell me you’re pretending to be over me, again? It’s the same, and different every single time. I’m giving you a bunch of choices – I just don’t think I like the way your mind is moving.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.30.2011 @ 11:19 am

Sometimes our senses are confused. Shrouded, as it were, like the fairytales, in mists that we can’t see through. A fog that we can’t get beyond. We’re just….locked in, and seeing the same old things over and over, reflected back at ourselves – echoing voices – the same way the mists echo light, bouncing amongst the clear water particles, turning a deep night into hazy midday.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.29.2011 @ 2:53 pm

It’s all a game of chance, of chances. Games of chances, played right and left until you can’t remember which way is right and if you’ve left enough change on the counter for the next round to be dealt. It’s up to fate, now, next, then, whenever she’s better off without you pulling on her hair. Game of chance, darling. Games of chances.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.28.2011 @ 4:24 pm

She smiles from behind the desk as you go by, the same way she always has, except that this time it’s one of those “I know what’s been going on behind closed doors” types of smiles. Because that’s the one person you have to trust with all your dirty laundry, all your secrets, and who waters the plants in the hallway. Without a good secretary, you’re toast. And those poor plants will never make it past rehab.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.27.2011 @ 11:08 pm

You know you’re headed down the path to destruction – self destruction – when you stop along the way, and look at the others’ lives who are passing you by, and they seem to be going against the grain. All of them. And their houses are coming down in parts, not all at once, like they’re deconstructing, and you notice that your house has just had it’s entire front burned off. Not just taken down – yeah, that’s when you know you’re en route to self destruction.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.27.2011 @ 4:57 am

You are a force of nature, a force to be reckoned with. You’re like gravity – always getting me down, but you’re also like centrifugal force – that imaginary pushing feeling, like someone’s trying to get you away the same time they’re actually pulling you closer. You’re a normal force and you hold me up, support me, like my failings could hurt you. You’re a force to be reckoned with, a force of nature, and somehow, you still defy all the laws of physics.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.25.2011 @ 5:08 pm

You ever get this sinking feeling in your gut, like your world is just beginning to come apart; that little tingling sensation in the bottom of your toes, like you’re walking on ice, and haven’t quite noticed yet; that nerve-wracking mind-wrenching experience, like riding a rollercoaster that’s broken on the highest loop, and you’ve forgotten your seatbelt, but just before the fall?

Yeah…me neither.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.22.2011 @ 12:57 pm

Your words are poison. Corrpution. Insanity. Anger. Oh, darling… You’re killing me, and changing me and making me something entirely new. Something…brilliant and screwed up all at once. Something made of songs and failure and someone else, breaking down into something, someone… Dear god, dear goddess. I’m dying and it’s like going insane all at once. It’s like breaking down and falling apart, and dear lord…

Posted By Thirteen On 08.21.2011 @ 6:18 pm

Take me to where you are. I want to be beside you, watching you sleep. To run my fingers through you hair, across your skin. To look down on you, from a vantage point just a little above your bed. Maybe to be able to put my arms around you again, the way we did when we climbed to the top of the world together. Before conspirators and get-down-ists came after us, trying to destroy the mood. But still! Something worth recalling. I want to be where you are, and I wish…wish that I were.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.21.2011 @ 12:36 am

It’s been a while, maybe too long. And I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that. I don’t think you get what’s new here, what’s been going on, what all these new bruises mean. It’s a freedom, I don’t think you get. And I can’t explain it better than that. But for all the newness in my life, I look at the past sometimes and wonder what went wrong, and what I could have done to make it better. And you have to know, that you’ll always be the one I missed, though I’m not sure how I can change that…since you seem so intent on having me gone from your life.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.19.2011 @ 3:51 pm

The way her lips pulled apart, spreading wide…smiling. They moved as though they could keep pulling apart, as though there was no end to the stretch of that wide smile, bringing new meaning to the saying “ear to ear.” She grinned, wide and wider, until her grin met at the back of her head and the top of her head rolled off, bouncing on the ground, and a smaller hemisphere protruded from her jaw, and it too was grinning, nightmarishly.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.11.2011 @ 12:39 am

Your mind is an open canvas for me to paint on. I’ll probably start with red acrylic – always got yelled at by my art teacher for favoring that when I did butterflies…but it’ll wokr just fine to capture the midnight lines left by daylight on your cheeks. And the anger that burns just underneath your feet. Your mind is an open canvas for me to paint on, and when I’m done, you won’t even recognize yourself anymore.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.07.2011 @ 7:42 pm

Flowers in the gardens growing up from seeds that are ugly. Bulbous, beastly things. But these flowers – so pretty. A veritable ugly duckling to a swan case, wouldn’t you say? I think I would – and coverings, encasings…such things not to judge by, any longer.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.06.2011 @ 6:03 pm

Bondage is a curious thing. Even after the straps and harnesses, the whips and chains, the ball gags and little electrical clips are put away, there’s still the undertones of connection. You’ll never look at a coffee table the same way, for instance. You’re locked into a new mindset – one you can’t ever hope to escape. Frightening, isn’t it?

Posted By Thirteen On 08.05.2011 @ 6:29 pm

The manager stayed late enough to close up, for the second night. But that night she wandered down the aisles, pretending she was shopping, just wandering, with a cart, to be alone, with her thoughts. You never think of how beautiful an empty supermarket can be. How perfect the silence is when all the lights are off. She hadn’t thought of it before, either, but then she tried it, and the solitude called to light everything she couldn’t voice during the day.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.04.2011 @ 1:55 pm

There are different levels of writing, and this is one I can wrap my mind around. I have a longer -much longer- work I’m supposed to be concentrating on, but I’ve been so busy avoiding it, that the level of commitment I’m supposed to have is becoming questionable. I don’t know if I’ll finish. 50 000 words is a lot. And writing for days rather than seconds… So much harder than it looks, I swear. Although, I guess I get a lot written sometimes in these, so maybe…

Posted By Thirteen On 08.03.2011 @ 1:55 pm

Your temper is like water that I’ve boiled for a little too long, to the point where it’s caught on fire and singing. Your face makes my blood sing, sometimes, and it’s the back side wrong shoulder touch to the crescendo of broken notches that never made any sense anyways. But that’s all right, because it’s yours.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.02.2011 @ 2:17 pm

And the root cause of the problem was to be determined at a later date. Which of course meant that the committee never actually reconvenied to decide. So I got off Scott-Free. Which is to say, I left Scott behind to take the blame, in case they ever really did look for who was responsible for setting the tarmac of the Lakeside Parking Lot on fire at three twenty-six in the morning on a Wednesday.

Posted By Thirteen On 08.01.2011 @ 9:29 pm

Your name is a nickname for a name that means “memory” in the old language, where my name means that I’m not supposed to fall over my own feet. Your name is a name that makes me wonder, because there was a time, not so long ago – if a year isn’t long – when someone like you, some memory, like you, was my muse. And there were two of them, then – a dark and a light side to chaos, singing words to me that only I could hear…and they’re silent now, though I wonder if the light sent you to free me from the dark.

Posted By Thirteen On 07.29.2011 @ 1:37 pm

You amuse me. The way you smile, and the stories you tell. You make life interesting. I just wish it would last longer, y’know? I’m leaving on Sunday – and I still haven’t gotten your reaction to that. I wish I had the guts to tell you face to face…. But while I can scale a building, run from the cops, eat spicy food and laugh while doing it… I can’t seem to face not seeing you, again.

Posted By Thirteen On 07.28.2011 @ 5:32 pm

She had a band around her wrist. I saw it, just briefly, just long enough to know that it was her – long enough to see the red fabric, long enough to catch her smile, flittering about on her lips, the way it used to. And then she was gone, eaten whole by the shops, and the people, and the smoke and fog of the city… I wanted to catch her, to rescue her, but sometimes… Sometimes such rescues aren’t warranted.

Posted By Thirteen On 07.27.2011 @ 6:22 pm