Response of the Unnamed

Did you think your words made you creator-god

of four-line walls with two-line doors

where I could be trapped

by faint praise?

Did you think you would recreate and save me,

absent of lines from time and smiles,

eternized as shadow,

a pillar?

Your metaphors hold and erase me.

Like Lot’s wife into salt, 

voiceless, you leave me

turned to phrase.

Expanse

They huddle,
breath mingling,
gathering by twos to the heat, voices loud
to match the crackling wood. They see
each other and curl cold hands together and
are blind to the stars
and me, and you.

You strike
a match behind your empty hand
and your fingers are a red glow. Shadow
flickers over your face.
You puff smoke and steamed breath, toss
the dark-burned stick, see
my empty hand matching and you want
to fill mine with yours.

I turn away,
listening
to the rustling grass,
and stretch my fingers into the icy air, refusing
to curl or cling to yours.
Already in love
with the sky—not the stars
but the space between.

I am far away inside.
Tucked away far away
down corridors,
with closed and open doors.
Safe.
Home.

And when I am alone,
I can explore,
I can open up the doors,
careful with the things I love
and the things I don't.
I can let things out, or not.
Put everything back in place or
talk about them, messy.
Safe.
Myself.
Normal.

But when I am not alone.
When I am not alone,
I am so alone.
Doors slam,
good and bad.
Corridors stretch and bend.
I am in the middle.
Far from myself.
Alone.
I don't know where or what
or how to move or
talk or
think.
I am lost.

And all I want is to come alive again,
be normal,
at home,
laugh easy,
find words
that will mean something.
But all the doors are locked.

Sometimes,
I stare at the smudge where the sun leaps through blinds and spills a shadow,
across the room,
behind the blank dark empty of the dead television, staring.
I stare and I think and my emotions are gone
and I am gone gone gone gone gone.
I stare until
it is not a shadow,
in my mind,
alive.
But
I know it is a shadow, flat,
and the sun will forget and let the dark swallow us both.
I know, even when I think it is something it is not,
it is not.
I know, if I shift my eyes a subtle glance
the lines will blur and smooth and fall flat again,
a shadow.
I know, I know, I know.
But I am holding something together.
I hope somewhere, sometime, somehow, someone is looking at me, too, maybe,
and
unlike me,
will not look away.

Alone,
I race the storm.
Air thick with promise.
Trembling clouds.
Possibility is brighter than rationality.
The radio sings and the wind
dances through the window
and across the back of my neck.
Every flash shows the ordinary.
I expect anything.
Everything.
Nothing.

Alone,
ideas come,
swept in with the first drops
of cold rain.
Loud company of bright possibility.
A shiver runs down my neck
and I shut the window
before the flash dims.
In the shapes in the dark
I can feel space.
Time.
Everything.

Alone,
but not alone:
An idea slips in
shivering with potential.
Not brilliant but possibly mad.
The floral-sweet scent of tea
curls from my mug
and mingles with my thoughts.
Nothing will come from this.
Or everything.
Anything.

Hope in all its forms is false,

the memory determines, but

the more you think, the less

you really know.

Hope is such a tricky thing

to hope to understand and if

you think you’ve got it right

then you should go.

But the path is always empty

and it leads into the sun.

Hope in all its forms determines

what you will remember and

the more I think about it,

you should know

that it burns you from the inside

out into the loss of air. You know,

nostalgia’s got a

futuristic glow.

But the path is always empty

and it leads into the sun.

Tell me something true about myself. Seek me out where I hide. I have slipped silent, climbing to cornerless rooms, echoes chasing and laughing through the shadow, the only thing to reach me. Reflections of sound and life in a dim glass. There I stay, convinced of contentment by a fear so deep it curls up and rests in my soul. There I stay, blind in my tower of glass, weaving shadows and shades pale and flat. The curl of the strings Those Three hold remind me why I musn't turn my head. And all I have is the steady rhythm, the back and forth, the beating heart. My hands fly and back again, moving on the steady rhythm, and through the day and through the night I know the steady truth. I musn't turn my head. The glass is dim and dimmer still and still I hear the echoes. Seek me out where I hide; Those Three are are scrict yet blind. The mirror dims and echoes fade, my eyes are straining for a glimpse, and I am granted distant sound of sunlight shining as he rides. He will never know me. I have waited so long in this cornerless room to slip silent from the strings of Three and chase echoes through the shadow. I musn't turn my head. But I do. Though you never knew me, tell me something true about myself.