iobieofshianna

With red thread looped around their throats, five little birds lined up in a row and sang the same tune made of lovely cliches that I somehow taught them to sing. Then, with a brush of my mouth or the flash of a ring, I rewarded them (if the notes sounded true), and spilled sparkling chords from behind my teeth, creating a strange sort of harmony. It dazzled them and it blinded me and set us both reeling. In the fractured daze, I clipped their wings and taught them to perch on my littlest finger. I let them sink their talons in my flesh, and bury their beaks in my ears, and lay their eggs in a nest of my hair. I clutched the

I'll paint you red if you paint me white. We're spiraling (I will keep my sight). Oh, shower me with your shimmering lace. I would bare myself (were it not disgrace). These honeyed kisses turn me gold. Though the things I have seen have made me old, I still reach to grasp that dangling straw, knowing that I sway above the gaping maw that would swallow me whole with a single wet gasp. I would save you from that blessed-hot clasp. Turn away from the dripping heart; its promise is hollow, and will rend you apart.

My mother's hair is perfectly coiffed as she steps out of the car and looks at our house. Her nails are long, French-tipped and pink, and she looks so elegant as she removes her sunglasses and shakes her hair out of her face. "This is it?" she says distastefully. I can't see what she means. The house is beautiful; Queen-Anne styled, with huge cypress trees in the front and a deep forest behind. The windows are darkened, true, and the roof sags a bit to the right, but the grass is long and deep, and the wind sounds like sigh as it blows through the branches. "Yes, dear," my father says, lifting out one of our suitcases. "This is it." "I

This night is artificial. A navy coverlet pulled over our heads provides us with a sky, a lamp with a moon and stars, lighting our world from the outside. Yet in this false darkness, I feel safer than ever I was when the numbers clicked desolately towards midnight. At three in the afternoon, I feel more content to sleep with you than to lie alone in a green room at ten in the evening. With your scent on my skin, I close my eyes, and the after-image of your smile blooms behind my lids like fireworks or sweet autumn roses. In my ears is the sound of your heartbeat's tide. Dreaming comes so easily, even while my mind

As I was walking through the woods I saw, floating in the water of a creek a glass orb filled with rosy smoke. I approached it then, and felt its warmth even as I bent to grasp it. I picked it up, and it smelled sweet; quiet spring with a hint of summer. But as I touched it, spider web cracks skittered across its perfect surface, so I held it more gently to my breast and savored the sweet moment. Silently the smoke seeped out and swirled in circles 'round my head. Intoxicated, I closed my eyes, and I'm told when they found me I was half-dead, my heart having burst from my skin. But still I kept that glass orb with i

It is the sweetest moth with frayed wings. It dwells in the back of his eyes, kept there by the ghosts of a life denied. Draw it out and catch it with a net made of quips. Set the trap with the melody of a song he once knew. Season it with Cajun spice, and O! It appears with a breath of a laugh, and takes off crookedly towards the skies and it flits, and it flaps, and it flies.

My home is infested with mold. White and fuzzy and odorless, it creeps and carpets everything. It stalks the floors and devours the couch. Furry tendrils cover the window glass, swallow the pillows, engulf the stairs. I try to hide. I stay in my bed and I burrow under the blankets and pray that they protect me. I shut my door and I close my eyes and oh, I pray for silence. But I can hear it moving. The mold is always awake and alive. It reads the paper and eats the food and makes the house creak. Its spores dance in my mother's breath. It festers in the sorrow under my father's face. It grows as my brother speaks. As my

oh oh Won't you kiss these jagged lips? O honeyed tongue, sustain me. oh oh Can you hear my wounded breath? Use your hands and use your mouth and stop the holes through which I drain. oh Oh Can you taste the liquid heat that runs through me and morphs hastily to sorrow? Oh oh Pass through me like a shaft of light o'er shadowed vale and tormented peaks. OH OH Beauteous thing, stop the leaks with you. Exult in me. I open freely. Oh Oh Can you not see the painted lust inside my face? That you have pierced this barricade is all that I ever dreamed. oh oh And now will you watch the rise and fall and curve of me? A

Dirty water and the sun, begotten; now it has begun. Rotting stench of bracken and brine with distant shores, now intertwined. Apple cores upon the beach, what is the sermon you would have preached? I love you scratched upon the sand. From the rock, the naked lovers stand. Forget thine further inquiries: now all must hush, for the Master speaks. A proclamation. The lovers gasp. Hand in hand, the fingers clasp. Salty wind upon ruddied cheek, our man curses--our woman weeps. The way of thorns now the path they seek. O furrowed plain, that which we reap is not of that which we have sown, yet trembling now the seeds have grown.

Lights up A small, square, gray room. Its furniture is Spartan; a bed on the far wall, a urinal on the wall adjacent to the bed, and a door parallel to the bed. The room has no windows, no chairs, and stark florescent lighting. (Marcus kneels near a wall on the floor with his back facing the door. He looks at his wrist as if checking a watch and looks at the door before removing from inside of his clothing a handful of pink candies. He pops one into his mouth and closes his eyes, leaning his head back. (The door opens and Hannah enters, carrying a box.) Marcus: (turns around, eyes slightly unfocused and grinning) Time for our daily visit