Arabela

I used to rip my mother’s flowers apart. She’d place them in large vases around the house, as if they could create a false sense of peace. I would shred the flowers and leaves, breaking off the thorns surrounding them. Then Arabela would break the vase and grind the pieces into the dirt with rocks, decimating them and destroying all evidence so it could never be used as a weapon against us.
Do you believe in heaven? They say it’s breathtaking, blooming with flowers stretching out across the hills. I can imagine their scent, so intoxicatingly strong like poison on my lips. It’s too much of a good thing, in my opinion.
I used to know a place that looked like heaven, with flowers and everything. During summer, the scent of them would wrap around your senses at night and choke you with a passion. Petals would wither and die, turning into a dirty mulch on the ground.
If heaven is a garden, then I wonder what hell is? What type of hidden fires burn there, determined to destroy my feelings and watch them burn to ash, while twisted smoke rises?
That house was paradise on the outside, but you could hear the wind screaming as you stood on the hillside and laid flowers upon your lover’s grave. You could walk through the graveyard for miles, and never find an exit. There was no escaping from our little handmade prison, and whenever the wind began to howl, we were happy. Happy because it hid the screaming and the crying.
Arabela was always bleeding. I used to feel pain just by watching, because she took the beatings that were meant for me. I tried to kiss the pain away, but that only smeared the blood across my lips, leaving a more permanent stain within me.
Arabela was the one who read me to sleep, brushed my hair, and held my hand. Arabela was my world growing up, and now she’s gone.
After she left, I went out into the garden and ripped up all the carnations. I chopped the heads off and ate the petals, as if by doing so, I could make her stay with me. I tried to assimilate her into me and make her live again, to rewind time and start over.
I hit rewind.
Again.
And again. Until my mind was going crazy because I knew there was no way to get her back.
Both paradise and hell are empty now. And the flowers are all rotting.

Waking Up Part II

It was dark when I awoke. No light was visible, and all I could hear was the soft sound of your breathing. In and out, in and out… so gently that I knew you were asleep.
I could feel the old, worn sheets beneath me, and the blankets were wrapped around me like a serpent. The serpent was going to kill me. That was certain.
Your arm fit perfectly around my waist. For some reason, women’s bodies seem to fit perfectly with things. Maybe that’s why they keep making musical instruments after our hips. We’re just the right shape.
I fit perfectly with you. I could feel your arm over top of my ribs, and the way our legs were tangled together. I couldn’t see anything, though. That feeling was getting stronger the longer I laid there and listened to your breathing.
It was dark, and then I began to panic.

I couldn’t see. The light was too strong. I’d shut the bathroom door so I wouldn’t wake you up.
I couldn’t wake you up. I couldn’t face you, not after what I’d done.
I threw up into the sink, but I had nothing to give, only bile as I attempted to get rid of the taste in my mouth. I turned on the tap and tried to wash it all down the sink.
When I looked up, I noticed the marks covering my body. Everywhere.
I let out a strangled scream, but caught it as I fell down onto the floor. The tile was cold, and the white reflected back into my eyes was impersonal. I couldn’t feel anything.
In my mind, it was still dark. I couldn’t see the lights as they blazed overhead. I couldn’t feel the tile beneath me, despite the fact that I was naked.
I was naked.
It was still dark and I could hear your voice, but I didn’t want to listen to the words. I didn’t want to remember what you’d told me last night.
I could still feel you, though, as your presence wrapped around me. I heard my heartbeat in my ears as it thudded in dull repetition. Bu-dum, bu-dum… over and over, over and over, as it became interwoven with your voice.
I remembered you saying that you loved me, even though you knew I was using you.
I was using you, and that thought made me try to throw up again.
I was naked, and in the bathroom mirror, I could see all the hickies you’d left on me.
Leftover reminders of last night.

You were still sleeping. I tried to move quietly as I searched around the room for my clothes. My jeans were in tatters from the climb up to your window, and the rest of my clothing was soaked from last night’s rain.
I couldn’t stop staring at you as I struggled into my clothes. You were sprawled across the bed without a care. Your hair was a circular tangle, and along your skin, I could see the marks I’d left.
All along your back and arms were scratches from my nails. On your neck was something that resembled a bite mark.
My breathing was becoming more and more irregular as I fought back the desire to start screaming. I wanted to break something, to rip my heart out and stomp on it. Maybe if I could hurt myself, I could make it up to you, because I knew that I was going to rip your heart out.
You were naked.
And I’d been naked, though I was trying to erase that fact as I dressed, attempting to hide the filth I could see growing along my skin.

I could feel the room around me. The wood floor beneath my feet, the old bookshelf filled with a child’s library, the bed with the covers rolled all into a tangle.
I could see myself in the mirror on the wall, and my reflection looked wrong. I looked like a girl. I looked like a mess. I looked like somebody’s lover who was leaving.
And you were my lover, lying there on the bed, as I got ready to run from you.
I could see Eden.
I could see paradise.
I could hear you say that you loved me. My brain repeated your voice over and over, until my screams poured over it and drowned the earth surrounding me with all its flowers.
You said you loved me.
You said you loved me, and I was waking up.
I woke up from a game you’d been playing with me, because you knew I would never, could never love you back.
And I was running.

It was dark, and the room was empty now as I shut the door behind me. Karissa was in the hall, and if she was shocked, she didn’t say anything. She pulled me away from you and got rid of me in the politest fashion possible.
It was dark, and all I could hear was my breathing.
It was dark, and I let the panic take over me because now I couldn’t wake you. My delayed reaction had started, and I couldn’t stop it.
I’d finally woken up and walked into a nightmare.

Carry Your Wings

I carry your wings with me. Not with joy and happiness, to be given freely. I carry them broken, for I ripped them off your back.
If I cannot carry your heart with me, let me carry your hate. For if you curse and scream at me, I’ll at least know that you feel something for me. If I cannot make you mine, let me make you no one’s. Let me place you in a glass jar and hear you pound against it.
I carry your ashes with me. Your earthly remains after you have grown still. They grow heavy in their jar, growing bigger, almost forcing me to drop it.
But most of all, I carry your screaming laughter with me, a constant reminder of what you wouldn’t give me.
I watched from the inside while you danced upon the grass, running up the hill to sit with the dead among their gravestones. You ripped a butterfly’s wings apart and let the wind carry them into my face, letting them dance before my eyes.
I carry your tears with me, willingly, because you cried so hard for what I had become.
I carry nothing with me, for you are already gone.

Combust Part III: Sanctuary

I burn, I blaze wildly out of control. And I’d hoped, I’d hoped that the fire was your way of directing anger, hatred against me. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I’m still on fire, though, and in need of sanctuary.
I need, I need help, freedom in the water as the sea surges against my body, steam rising into the black air that cuts against me, kissing my lips as the wind tears by.
I need to extinguish the flames, soak my feelings dry until I can combust no more.
But still, I can’t make it, I can’t make it. It’s too hot, burning in the blaze, red ice as it all crawls up my arms, into my pores and enters the bloodstream.
Sit. Sit down before you collapse, before you disintegrate. I want the ocean, and it’s within sight, over the railing, past your barriers of fire. And I need it. I need it now. Yet I can’t move.
The bench is wooden, flammable and soft to the touch as the fire slowly spreads from my body, clothes, and mind.
I’m almost there, though. Just over the railing, one jump, one hoist over this barrier that’s keeping me from the sea.
I’m on fire as I fall.

Combust Part II: Ring of Fire

I jumped the ring of fire on Tuesday. It was a Tuesday because we had ham sandwiches for lunch, like we always do on Tuesday. The whipped and trod-upon lettuce mournfully added between the meat and the bread, no dressing, in an attempt to cheer the meal up. It never quite works, though.
But still, I know I’m not lying, not crazy, not mad even though none of you have ever listened to me. Not even during the dead of the black night, when the flames curl round my heart and squeeze, the room ablaze in red, orange, yellow, and gold as the fire is fanned and fed by the fuel of nightmares. I die and I scream of a death by fire, over and over, and yet you cannot hear. You’re deaf, you’re deaf. You’re always deaf to my screams.
So I jumped, scrambled, scaled the scalding chains that you’d attached to me while I wasn’t looking, blinded by the fire in the corner of my eyes. I now no longer wear the gasoline that coated each inch of my skin.
Because the flames were coming, coming strong, without warning, without cause, as they creep, crawl, singe my body to black ashes. I’m turning into black ashes, gray sand, white smoke and charred bones. 
I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, and you don’t listen, don’t listen to my pleas for help.
So I jumped and somehow managed to make it out of the blaze.

Combust Part I: Flammable Trigger

I’m still in heat, caught in fire as the flames dance, dance upon the edge of the skin, tracing my name as one of the mad, over and over until it leaves scars dug deep into the flesh.
You can’t read it, though. You can’t read those words in fire, smell the smoke rising from the sunken craters my body is becoming, taste the fire that haunts me through the night.
I can read between the lines, almost dancing around the sparks and ashes that flare up from the ground. You think I’m lying, you think I’m crazy, while I know that you’re the one who’s gone over. You wander the house after the lights are turned down. All residents are locked in their rooms to verify our safety at night. I can hear you, though, as you clink, clank, clunk around the kitchen, muttering as you go about damned children, stuck-up brats, and all the liars you have to deal with in order to make a living.
I’m not a liar, though. I’m not a liar and I can see the flames, taste the fire as it grows and grows and grows, crawling along the surface and the edges of my room, my body, my mind as it tries to kill me with one giant spectacle of combustion.

Rise

I am free of you
as my flesh folds and knits
together over my bones,
red blood pounding,
a soft, shaky laugh escaping
as I slowly unfurl myself
and rise.

I am finally finished.