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This is deja vu, the taste of repetition all that sustains me from falling over the edge. I know I have seen this before, heard these sounds, felt these vibrations. Why is it always when the world is darkest, when I am sitting in the backseat of a car, staring out the windows at the flashing, whirring, streetlamps, that I get the feeling I have been running around this wheel for so long I don’t even know which way is up?

Posted By cmsiena On 09.04.2012 @ 7:03 pm

Is the truth really buried, covered in the lies I’ve told myself and smiled at you? When I came back home, I went digging, fast and hapless, through the heaps of things I had laid down over the years. I made my way through the could haves, the should haves, the why not’s and why did I’s, through the slow metamorphosis of opportunity to regret. At the end, just the carpeted floor in its original shade, hidden from the sun-bleaching by my own device, and the truth nowhere to be found. I don’t even know what it looks like anymore.

Posted By cmsiena On 09.02.2012 @ 7:26 pm

In the event you’ve forgotten, I understand. It’s been a long time since you held my hand back in the darkness of the parking lot. Longer still since you held me close against you under the watchful eyes of sentinel pines. It’s been a lifetime since your eyes sparked and mine glowed. It’s been forever since I tasted happiness.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.19.2012 @ 1:35 pm

She stepped past the porter, wondering if he could hear her heart pounding in her chest. He stood quietly, and she dared not see if his eyes were following her down the hall. The fact that she was here, the fact that she was going to try to find him after all this time, made anxiety twist her innards.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.19.2012 @ 6:09 am

Then when I think things have settled, the dust finally landed on the ground and I can clearly see where I am going, the world shakes with the rumble of the jet engines of fate. Stepping over the line, crossing that zone of nothingness in the air where you feel empty freefall. When I thought I understood you, just when I thought you cared, there is nothing but fire and fumes and flight making me nauseous and lost in the expanse of all that could be that I cannot touch. Tearing my heart out a mach three, where you cannot hear me cry.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.15.2012 @ 7:49 pm

She was a cheap date, just like I wanted. All she cost me was my heart.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.14.2012 @ 6:45 pm

Against the banks of the Mississippi, there’s green and brown and rust. Sunlight daydreams of flickering butterflies and hot, summer air. There’s a burn in the sky, there’s a lazy look about it. And she dreams she can just drift downstream, and be carried out to sea.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.13.2012 @ 7:15 pm

She sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window and rain at the grey mountain vista. She had never entertained the possibility that he was doing this with any goal other than his own – to see his own friends, to give himself the chance to be un-lonely for three days there and three days back. Those were concepts she understood. To concede that perhaps, lost in all this, was the need to do something for her was totally and completely unacceptable.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.12.2012 @ 7:07 pm

I am breathing this jealousy, this wishing and wanting and not having. In ways I do not even understand, with echoes that seem like mirrored laughing faces. They jest, they do not believe in the darkness that I am capable of conjuring and convincing to consume everything that is good about you and me. I know the root of this giant, creeping vine, and I have seen how deep it goes. And I know that all it takes is your approval to cut it to the bone.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.11.2012 @ 12:31 pm

When I wake, the sensation breaks through the darkness, singing behind the alarm. My thoughts are scattered and numb, shadows coagulating from my dreams. The steady beat beat beating of your heart assaults my ears, my skin, my heart. These stolen moments are when I drift on the banks of an emotion beyond compassion, beyond love. All-absorbing, unconditional, devastating.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.07.2012 @ 7:04 pm

The way you said those words punctured my hopes. On their own, they would have seemed so innocent, so averagely normal. But when you hang them up in the air and let them drop to the ground, it sounds like a thousand broken, brittle icicles.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.06.2012 @ 6:36 pm

There’s a secret passageway, back behind the bookshelf, which leads down a street, underground of course or everyone would know about it. Then when you are out of the tunnel, you are at the end of thinning bracken, with nothing but the pull of the blue sky to take you forward. The dirt under your feet will turn to sand, and the sand to puddles of water, until you realize that you are lost and sinking and no one knows where you are so you have to turn back, but my god the sun looks so beautiful as it sets on the other side of infinity.

Posted By cmsiena On 08.03.2012 @ 5:23 pm

Cut your losses, they say. Don’t spend your time thinking about what could have been, go forth and find the next opportunity. There will always be another, there is always tomorrow, always, always, there is, there is. From the mouths of strangers and your mother and the man on the television you can’t stand. They have all been there, they say. But I don’t believe. I have watched the door close, and I cannot bear to find a substitute in a window.

Posted By cmsiena On 07.30.2012 @ 7:01 pm

She rifled through the cabinet, certain that she had placed the plastic orange cylinder all the way in the back. When she had guests over, she always moved it out of the bathroom and stowed it behind the salt with the picture of the girl and an umbrella. She was good at keeping secrets now, to the point she had almost convinced herself there was no truth to share. And each time, she half expected there to be no bottle of pills after all.

Posted By cmsiena On 07.29.2012 @ 6:42 am

He props himself up against the doorframe, in that artfully lazy way. As the summer fades, he has formed a habit of lounging, watching, like a coiled, ambivalent snake, waiting for me to step too close and trigger his snapping, fanged wrath. I stand with my back to him, knowing that is a mistake, but also knowing that to do anything else would be to weigh on the latch that releases a landmine.

Posted By cmsiena On 07.28.2012 @ 7:45 am

My touch is just for show, an auxiliary arm to the fiction in my heart.

Posted By cmsiena On 07.15.2012 @ 6:10 am

She leaned up against the big oak tree by the fence with her hands in the pockets of her overalls. The sun was beating down hard on the corn field, making mirages from which the faraway tractor came in and out of focus. There was nothing to do in all this heat. So she stayed in the shade to wait for cooler days, when she could go running wild up and down the rows with her bare feet.

Posted By cmsiena On 07.08.2012 @ 7:57 am

He sat in the detention cell, drumming his fingers against the floor. Even after two hours, he couldn’t sit still. Pacing had long ago lost its lure, and even though he knew he should be saving his energy, he couldn’t help himself. He had to DO something. Anything. Because on the other side of the wall, they had the rest of his unit, and he knew it was all his fault.

Posted By cmsiena On 07.06.2012 @ 4:43 pm

The science behind the way you think and the way you move is something I have yet to understand. You should be so predictable by now, so very malleable in my hand, but you are not. Instead you flicker between the lines of yesterday and something unfamiliar, something I have never seen before. Maybe that is why I am so attached to the idea of figuring you out. Maybe that’s why I am so possessed by everything you do.

Posted By cmsiena On 07.05.2012 @ 11:15 am

The corner of the house hid the bush from sight, but the continuous peeping and trembling calls announced the presence of the brood. Still, even when she stood right in front of the shrub, no matter how hard she tried she could not catch sight of the nest, or the small grey fluff inside.

Posted By cmsiena On 06.09.2012 @ 10:05 pm

She had the nagging sensation he was studying her from the concrete steps, surrounded by a conversation he didn’t hear. She was across the yard, chatting, ignoring. Trying, anyway. There were too many words she couldn’t bring herself to say in order to change that.

Posted By cmsiena On 06.08.2012 @ 6:27 pm

There’s a place below the bridge with the apple trees on either side, down past the broken stairwell handles and crumbling steps. Where the once picturesque riverwalk turns into a battlefield of broken glass and discarded plastic. Those were the grounds chosen by Ben and Jared to make a truce. We all knew the reason behind the treaty, even if we didn’t want to talk about what happened with Sam.

Posted By cmsiena On 06.05.2012 @ 6:48 pm

This is such a hassle, pretending to be here and listening and caring. We all are wrapped up in our own hates, loves, wants, demands, fears. Am I really listening to you, or is it like you always said, I am just one step too far beyond a great wide abyss? Never present, never fully with you. I was too afraid to say then and I am still afraid even now – I worry there is no bridge. There is no crossing. There is nothing but the cold touch of the wind whipping back my hair and stinging my eyes. I am not crying, no, not over this trench I built.

Posted By cmsiena On 05.31.2012 @ 8:58 pm

She stood at the edge of the roof, her toes curled around the edge. Never so afraid, never so alive. He had said she would be too scared, too fixed in her own fear to do it, but here she was, just the gutter between her and the pavement. Holding her hands out for balance, she breathed deep and shakily. And for a moment, the stunt transformed her into a shimmer in the sunlight, and she felt nothing but the pulse of her life in her stomach. It clung to her ribs, forever changed long after she had climbed back to the peak to lay on the shingles.

Posted By cmsiena On 05.26.2012 @ 12:07 pm

She was leading the way through the brush, her footsteps almost silent. His were faint rustles on the dried leaves and brittle twigs. Every movement she made was deliberate, as if she knew exactly where she was going in this unknown land. Once she held his hand to bring him through the tangled undergrowth, her touch coercing him along. Now he came willingly, but warily. Maybe she was not afraid of this wilderness, but he held tight to his apprehension, rooted in the sensation that he had trod this ground with another lady another time, another disappointment ago. The familiarity of their path rang like a siren in his heart.

Posted By cmsiena On 05.25.2012 @ 2:51 pm

He scanned the horizon, the sun beating down on his shoulders. Perspiration trickled down his temple, knocked aside as he retrieved his sunglasses from the top of his head. The forest below was green, sweltering, humming. If he wanted, he could be lost forever.

Posted By cmsiena On 05.24.2012 @ 5:33 pm

The key was lodged halfway between the edge of the sewer grate and a pile of decaying leaves. She was so furious, the rage barely hidden beneath her pressed lips. Without taking her eyes off me, she sent it into the dark abyss with one deft flick of her foot.

Posted By cmsiena On 05.23.2012 @ 6:55 pm

After all the things I’ve seen, and all the places I’ve been, the games you play are like watching little pixels dance on a monitor. I know this rhythm, and I have heard this conversation before. I just don’t know what might break you, so I tread lightly, so lightly, and I gently press these buttons, wondering if this will maybe be the thing that makes you jump, jump.

Posted By cmsiena On 05.22.2012 @ 8:05 pm

It was a quest for that one word, hidden in all these pages. He was sure it was there, beneath the fragment of an image, the prose, the dialogue. Behind one of those rocks and under those brambly trees in the world she had imagined, he lived and breathed. He knew it. But what he didn’t know was if there in her mind, he loved her. Or whether she said “yes”.

Posted By cmsiena On 05.21.2012 @ 6:28 pm

The silence was overwhelming in the middle of the pine forest. Her breath pale and frosty before her, wordlessly calling out her location. She could not hope to hide her tracks in the snow; there was just enough crust to crackle under each footstep. Cold and tired and still walking. Always walking. Always moving to stay a step ahead of The Chasers.

Posted By cmsiena On 05.20.2012 @ 6:49 pm