(It’s night)

Through glassy eyes her vision’s eclipsed; she thinks
The stars have refused to glow.
“Where are my wings? Where are my dreams?”
Does she fall in love, or fall
For the way it feels to fall
In love?
She quiets her mind: no brain, no pain. Again
She’ll set her sights too low.

(She knows exactly what she’s doing)

Lured to church by the safety of following the masses,
She does it again, dutifully
Faces a facade.
Evangelist, right-wing prayers,
Sunday words in place of daily truth, pretty church in place of an illustrious God.
“You’ll soar once you worship the martyr hung on the wall!”
She’d prefer servitude with no lower place to fall.
Hypocrisy deserves its place in Hell...or an earthly fire.
She sets the blaze but has locked
Herself inside. After the ash
Mirrors still call her beautiful; she responds:
“Liar.”
Picking the outside won’t be enough to fix her; it’s
Not the will of bathroom fixtures which causes disfigure. Her
Face, her facade.

(And yet her secrets don’t give her away)

She’s doing it again,
Stumbling blindly from crumbled walls, shattered stained glass.
A traveler of roads, she learns fleeting pleasures of encountering
Strangers. The alternative to looking
Up, as her stars refuse to let her give, upwards
They take her, only to drop her again: too hot,
too bright to hold on.
Who’s to make her hate what she’s become?
Believing “to love is to lose is to fail;”
Taking for loneliness doses of a petty sum:
Ephemeral closeness she swallows despite it
Being stale.
She’s done, again.

Criss crossing confused paths,
Cloud cover obscures her only comfort; she is left
In the dark.
Headlights cut the night from her face:
The driver off to nowhere in particular, where
She’d love her mind to go.
Instincts warn her:
He’s too drunk to take her along.
Thoughts compel her:
He’s also not yet drunk
Enough to drive her
Home.

(She’s too tired to try and fail anymore)

She should lie on the side of the road,
Lie on stones, antills, weeds, a rose. Lying,
She will let will win, will
Herself to laugh, laugh until it doesn’t
Hurt, laugh until she
Sleeps, dream
Until

“Where are my wings?”
(Sacrificed for a numb existence, her sanity)
“Where are my stars?”
(Closer than she’ll ever know)
“All stars will eventually die.”
(Funny how their light shines on)

Alone is never all we are.

The Book of Answers written in her dreams, shelved
Away from waking memory.
She awakes to bruises, antbites, thorns, light
From her brightest star.
She begins, again.

(It’s day)