Poem: Broken Crayons

What’s the point?

There is no point

We’re all broken crayons

Living in the box

Destroying each other’s colors

By dulling our own. 

Prompt: Land of Bones

 Entering the Land of Bones

The shutter of the camera broke the silence of the land of the bones lovingly deemed a cemetery.  No one was dying to get in because the inhabitants stopped filtering some time ago. But that’s the thing about cemeteries. Eventually, there will be no more room for casual passers on to the afterlife. The entrance will one day grow over with bramble vines and kudzu, crosshatching natures “do not enter”. The grounds' foot-worn paths will grow over with grass, and a fine layer of dust will start layering on each headstone as memories begin to fade. 

But I’m here.

I hopped the fence so as not to disturb the vines, barring my way past its ornate wrought iron gates. The overgrown brush, bushes, and willow trees weep and spill back into the ground below, creating a shield from nosey, prying eyes. The ponds laid still as mirrors, the headstones poking out like rounded, and sometimes jagged, monster teeth from the land of death below.

Nighttime in the cemetery was my favorite because the sounds of cars were few and far between, and the glow of the moon illuminated the natural canopy of oaks, willows, and other stately trees left undisturbed by its peaceful and quiet inhabitants. The fauna grew to feel like it was taking back what was once theirs, and the tombstones became laced with floral-baring vines, a testament to life after death. 

My ex used to cringe when I told him about my monthly forays past the gates and into the peaceful landscape; he once told me that he wouldn’t be caught dead here.

The joke was on him, though, because we would all end up here.

My footsteps crunched through the dead leaves, signaling a Florida Autumn as I traipsed to the back of the sprawling property. The cemetery was historic, slapped in between two plantation-style mansions with equally sprawling landscapes and beachfront access. 

Which was why I was here.

Not the mansions, of course; don’t be silly. I was a strange girl more interested in capturing the moonlight’s glow off of one hundred-plus-year-old tombstone than capturing the architectural genius of a plantation house built on the bay of one of the hardest-hit hurricane zones known to man. 

I lived simply.

So I shot simply.

When I get to the back chain link, I push a few vines aside on the adjoining cinder block half wall before going up and scrambling up the few makeshift steps to the top.

One day, I won’t be as agile, but I will remember through photos.

I crouched down carefully, letting my gaze rotate from the sparkling lights across the bay to the silence of the cemetery down below me butted up against bay cliffs. 

Call me crow as I sit down on my perch. The protector of the dead, the defender of silence, as I adjust my camera in my lap and take in the scene before me under the full moon's light. 

I loved it here, but I couldn’t imagine laying to rest in a single area. I wished to be cremated, scattered all over, a wandering soul, even in the afterlife, with my headstone claiming my steak on land that was never mine.

In death, I hoped not to take up space, just as I tried not to do while living. It’s so selfish to think we should own a piece of land stolen from others. In death, why should it be any different?

But they didn’t know any better. 

I lift my camera and adjust the lens, just in time to see the past coming back to life. 

Prompt: Weaver

She weaved scraps of human interaction into friendships, hoped they would hold, and cried when those fickle threads broke. At the end of the day, she was the last one on the list and never thought about twice as she watched everyone live on without a whisper from her. So she unwove pieces of her from the scraps of others to maybe untether herself from all the bothers she thought she became. The quiet of strangers was more sought out than the gaze of faraway friends and fake, temporary lovers. In place of conversation, she lost herself in fictional worlds with characters who felt more like home than any house she had ever lived in. She stopped reaching out, inquiring, and refused to beg to be seen because at what point was there tugging on invisible strings? 

No one would call or wonder why she was quiet, and no thought would be given to her avoidance of people she admired or her choice to step away from trying to be heard. They ripped her to shreds and then expected the world from her when she calmly exhaled her silent frustration over never fitting inside the box others made her. She saw more hope in the quiet of her four walls, where she scribbled her hopes and dreams between wallpaper lines and hidden in monstera vines. No one inside those four walls condemned her as strange because characters from books don’t know you exist.

Prompt: Walking in the Woods with a Ghost

     Crunching leaves disturbed the serene surroundings of nightfall, save for the exasperated sigh coming from behind my crunching footfalls and the sound of crickets making music.

    “Am I bothering you? While I walk in the woods all by myself,” I turn to look at absolutely nothing behind me, but I hear a snort. “The least you could do was stop being a chicken and show yourself.”
    It's quiet as I walk a bit more, but a while later, I hear a grunt and grin. 

    “I don’t know about you, but I’m transparent.” A male voice grumbles.

    “Bull, I see right through you.” Another snort is when I start to see the outlines of the voice coming into slow, foggy focus. 
    The hazy body of a sarcastic ghost appears, hands in pockets. He stooped slightly forward, looking down at the moss before looking back up at me. He used to be a handsome living man, but one day, he just didn’t wake up, even though he says he woke up dead.

    Well, he woke up dead and attached to me. 

    “Your ghost puns are shit.” He deadpans.
    “Dying in your sleep is shit.” I flip him off as he breezes right through me, causing chill bumps to spread up my legs, arms, and even up the back of my neck. “Ugh! Why do you always do that to me?”
    “It gets a rise out of you.”

    “Until death, do your puns never part,” I trail behind his foggy form as he leads us further into the wilds of Ungoverned Wildwood, Georgia, “What are you out and about for tonight?”

    “I thought you had better plans than I did. I’d date, but everyone refuses to see me.” He slows, and I come to stride across the dark trail barely visible from the overhang above. “So, what are we doing?”

    “I think I found a cult.” I grin at him, lifting my camera and wiggling it.

    “You found a cult,” he nods slowly, “and you're photographing them?”
    “Nah, I’m photographing the abandoned recreation building they left behind because it’s creepy, and I’m pretty sure something fishy went down there. I feel it in my bones.”
    “That’s probably arthritis since you’re still alive, and you might want to get that checked out.”     t’s my turn to snort as I push some brush away before we come to stand on the side skirts of an open area where a very dark and ominous building is laid out.
    “And you couldn’t do this during the daytime because?”

    “Getting arrested isn’t part of my vacation plan, what? Are you scared?”

    “Of what? I am literally so dead. Nothing matters except for how dead I am.” He brushes off imaginary lint from his shirt as I unscrew my lens cap and slide it into my back pocket.
    “Well, do you want to see if the ghost hunters are full of it by trying to capture you on film?”

    “And put people out of their spiritual misery? Absolutely.”

Prompt: A Movement Of The Eyes

 There were only a few souls whose eyes could catch mine, along with my breath, and keep me in a suspended state of animation. Inanimation? Stunned stupidity? 

Whatever it was, his whiskey depths were like fly paper sticking me to the floor, keeping me glued to this very stupid spot. His eyes pinned me to a mental board for observation since the movement of his eyes caught me like the willing prey I was. 

It was just a Tuesday, and this feeling struck like lightning. I was brought up short, dead, and dumb when my friend walked straight into me and threw us both off-axis. 

“Girl, why?” Sasha snapped as I righted myself and my backpack, which I had thrown across one shoulder like a badass. 

“Uh,” I reply dumbly, I’ve got nothing. I’m more dumbass than badass right now. Her eyes retrace my gaze to the boy still in my line of sight.

“He’s your type?” She sounded surprised, but her look dripped sarcasm from every pore on her beautifully sculpted face. 

“What?”

“You heard exactly what I said.” She pushed me forward, but I couldn’t quite move yet, so I turned sideways and gave her a pleading look.

“He looked like he was going to talk to me.”

“He’s a million miles away, and there was no way he was going to talk to you.” She waves her hands in an effort to get me moving, but I bite my lip and whisper. 

“Not yet.”

“He’s not that special.” 

“Not to you, maybe, but his amber eyes call to my dark, wounded soul.” I sigh wistfully as Sasha makes a strangled sound in her throat.

“They’re brown.” She resorts back to snapping at me, “I bet he’s a big nerd that doesn’t even know your name, and you're mooning over him.”

“They’re not just brown; they’re warm, nice, and even soul-searchingly comforting .”

“And brown. No one likes brown anything.”

“That’s a lie. Brownies are brown. Chocolate and coffee, too.” I murmur. 

“The men who work at UPS are dressed in brown, and I ogle them from afar, but it doesn’t stop me from living my most authentic life.” She waves her hands again in exasperation. 

“See.” I lift a hand as I glance back to where the boy had been. He was no longer there, taking up beautiful space no more, was he.

“Damn.” I sigh, hand dropping. Hopeless.

“No fool would fall for a pair of pretty eyes. No matter the color.” She scoffed.

I only glanced her way for a moment before I felt my limbs weigh on me heavily. 

“You haven’t been struck by lightning then, is the simple explanation.” I back up, watching her before I spin and start walking. I hear her shoes tap on the ground as she rushes to catch up.

“I have to. But it’s never the eyes; it’s a bodily attraction.” She balls up her hands into fists and lifts them.

“It’s all in the eyes, this soul-deep connection when your eyes meet his, and they melt and meld like they were meant to be captivated for all of eternity.”

“So mine's sexual, and you’re soul-boning clueless men that have zero clue about you liking them.”

“Eh, basically.” I sigh.

Poem: You will soon be cured

 You will soon be cured

Cured of what?

Slowly going insane?

Of playing this game

Of going along with

Every song that has your name?

You’ve weaponized me

Terrorized my brain

You took a saw to my neck

Tried to severe the vein

You turned biblical

Like Abel and Cain

Poem: No Where is Safe

My body is a home

for ideas not shared

by more genteel folk

not maimed by hate

or coiled in fear

of imaginary creatures

scaring the walls of my mind

with bloody talons

Poem: The Crushing Weight of Silence

Wishing you luck

In love and life

Sets my soul to crumble

Under the weight of what I’ve left unsaid

I wished you had stayed

Held me close

Instead of away

I wished you had listened

To my pleas

Instead of assigning blame

I wished you knew

Just how much I wanted you

Flaws and all

I wished you knew my reasoning

Behind choosing to step away

Because then you’d truly know

The depth of my feelings for you

I wished I could give you what you wanted

But in good conscious

I can’t

I wished I could be a good mother

But I know I would not

When you already shame me

For the darkness, I have inside

It wouldn’t be fair to you

Or for whoever I create

To bear the burdens of a mother

Too damaged by others 

To simply celebrate 

I wished I could be me

The me who I want to be

But the veil can’t be lifted for too long

Before I retreat underneath 

In sweet relief

When there’s been too much light 

Poem: Patchwork Heart

Sometimes existence is hard

As I thread the needle

To sew the pieces back together

Their jagged lines unkempt

And the tears pucker and stretch

Scars of what once had been

And what no longer is