Chapter Nine

A Pair of Ballads
The Pains of the Past
The Follies of Future
And Pretenses
Or
Holy Fuck Why Do I Have To Read All This Shit
And The Memoirs Of How I Lost My Sock

By The Authors Who Brought You:
I Shaved My Legs For This?
And
(Text Purposefully Omitted)

******************************************
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
******************************************

I miss you quite terribly.
[I'm quoting song lyrics again. Apologies.]
I miss everything. So...much.
It never hit this hard before.
And I regret
not giving you
a proper goodbye.
Or at least one that felt close enough.
Oh hell.

I'm sulking. I'm sorry, I really am, and those words don't look meaningful enough when I type them. But anyways, I am sorry. I am sorry a thousand times over. I should listen more. But it...no, it doesn't hurt, it's just hard to.

Side note: the problem with me and writing is that I edit excessively as I go. And I hate how I sound so different in the written than the spoken. A little more sarcastic. A little more sardonic, biting...cold? I'm unsure. I don't know how I sound to other people either way. I'll assume -

I sound silly, don't I?

In the real world I'm not supposed to drink coffee every morning, so I'm not thinking straight right now. Maybe that's a good thing.

I don't know.
I'm scared.

I woke up an hour ago to sunlight and - silence. Absolute fucking silence. Not even a snort **** ***** to console me. So I screamed, *** grabbed ** *******, stuffed ** ** ** *****, even though nobody would yell at me for not doing so. [I sort of don't want to wash them, these jeans. They wouldn't smell the same at all. A little revolting, but...****.]

Walking downstairs was...I couldn't hear my footsteps echo. The carpet sank under my feet. Too soft. Wondered why I was walking barefoot.

Looked outside at the lawn - the grass was too green. Well, no. It was too - perfect. Dull neon, every sharp bit with the contrast upped. There were no brown patches. It wasn't quashed down anywhere. Anywhere! No footprints - horribly green and lush, unruffled, untouched! I was too scared to get too close. Too homey. Too alien.

When I walk, I wonder if we're still in sync. If we're breathing at the same time. If we're both breathing at all.

I like you. I love you. * *** ***. * *** *** to the 1764th power [* ****] and then some. You changed a lot for me.

Thanks.

This isn't the end, right?

I can't handle endings. Not now. Not even - no, especially not the temporary ones. The temporary ones are why I am totally not burying my face ** ** ****** so I don't forget *** *** *****.

I'm trying to talk to people now, smudging eyeliner, drinking ******** in your honor.

::hug::
::kiss::
::wild skipping rampage across *** **** in the dark ***** * ****-****::
And all the rest.

Can I assume you're going to write back?

♥

With hair in my face, a rusty bracelet and some other meaningful-sounding sort of thing,
******.

******************************************
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
******************************************

wow, that was epically long. I'm usually one for short responses, like yeses and nos, but such a long letter deserves a long response, right? of course it does, there's no way to argue with that. well, there's always a way to argue with it, actually, but it just feels right.

I am also going to quote a song, unfortunately, you cant just read the lyrics, you have to go listen, title is Nocturne no.20 in C-sharp minor by Chopin. let me know what you think. in fact, chopin in general is wonderful

meaningful words, or in other words, words that have meaning. god those are hard to come by, to think of. Hell. don’t listen. stop apologizing. stop with me. stand forever by my side and watch the world rot. and laugh with me. be my goddess. all that foolishness. there’s no reason sulk, no reason to be sorry. real, make-believe, what’s the difference? perceive with the mind, but mind, it's only perception.

edit as you go. I don’t know why you think that’s a problem. let your writing be a voice of its own. a little more sarcastic, a little colder, a little meaner, a little full of malice, or a lot. let it be itself. hell, give it a name. *****'* ** ******, **** ** ****, what's yours? give it some time.

don’t worry how you sound to other people; they don’t know how they sound to you. except me, I know how I sound cause I'm special like that.

thinking straight? who wants that? I know the answer, I think you do too. (**) it’s adults, and you know what we feel about them. today I was accused of acting like a five-year-old by some old friends. isn’t that great? I cant think of any reason not to do, but there might be. and to be a little (ok, really) technical, thoughts are created by sensory inputs which trigger clusters of neurons, which interact with other clusters, while meanwhile more sensory inputs are starting off new cluster chains, which interact with other chains. all this chaos creates consciousness and curiosity etc. so what’s with this "thinking straight". I see more chaos. which is much more fun. but at the same time, you can simplify outputs to happy, sad, mad, etc. so the chaos can be manipulated. the clusters create thought, but thought can create clusters, so you can consciously manipulate your own mind. don’t think to hard.

scared, maybe you understand this. numb, you’ve felt it too. after numbness, scared can be welcomed, it can be really cool feeling if just let it run through your body like a drug.... best reference I can think of.

ok, first off, I really love your voice in the next part. you made me realize why my writing stopped working, it was because I had stopped complaining about things, I had pushed my darker half away, thank you for reminding me **** **'* *****. ***

why should you be faltered by pristine and untouched beauty? pure snow, lush grass, uncreased sky? the world is a savage garden, vivid colors entrance as the garden devours itself, as surely the world devours itself, not speaking of humans just, but of all beings surviving in the garden. perfection? yes it is, you, perfect, and everything around you perfect, and everything around me perfect, and people try to find perfection, trip and are devoured. just walk through, knowing that your perfect and knowing the perfection of the savage garden. if you look like you know where you’re going, you might as well, no questions shall be asked. don’t forget, you edit your words, don’t stop, edit the world

when you walk, forget about me, and not to mean to leave me, but when to enjoy the perfection around you, in chaos why shant all be equal?

there is something called the quantum superposition. a classic exemplification is Schrödinger's cat. this theory puts a cat in a box with food and closes the box. now the cat can, or cannot eat the food, and therefore the cat can be alive or dead, but since the box is closed, we cant know whether the cat is alive or dead, we just know its one of the two. According to quantum superpositions, we say that because of the unknown condition of the cat, it is both alive and dead. Once, you open the box, you can eliminate one of the choices, but while its closed, it is both. so why cant we be? while apart, we walk in perfect harmony and disharmony at the same time, we breathe and we don’t, we do everything the same, and we do nothing the same at the same time. and all the time we enjoy the savage garden.

there’s no ending, this isn’t a storybook, its a dance. a ballroom dance from 1762, the style. and its now. and we twirl around the floor, spinning many people, and its all ok, because we're on the dance floor, there’s no ending, we'll dance again, just twirl your lovers while you wait for me, ill find you, be there, and when I find you, well let the party revolve around us as we dance together, stare into eyes, laughing at how vain we are, you must be by the time we meet, keep your hair back so you can see your partners, so they see you, find you, wait for me.

don’t drink in my honor, I don’t deserve that, I’m a horrible being, loathe me, detest me, love me and stay with me, ****** and everything we know, ill kiss you every time before you’re stolen away. and ill always know where you are, don’t worry about losing me, until your next to me, touch me gently first, I lose you when you’re next to me, but don’t think I've forgotten you

watch with me as a thousand black flowers explode into butterflies and they're away and kiss me, jekyll and hyde, under *** **** ****, under the stars, under a bridge, in a stairwell, in the savage garden and on the dancefloor. love in what vertigo

♥

******************************************
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
******************************************

What does one say to that? I know I can't counter those words. Not as well as I want to. Not that I want to, either. Not after tearing up. This is no duel.

Maybe it's because of the Yiruma being poured into my ears instead of, say, your voice. But if it was your voice, and if I could feel your body heat right now, if I could hear your heartbeat [if you still have a heart ******* ** ***], it'd be an entirely different story and I wouldn't be typing right now. One wonders. But for now, I'll switch back to Panic, because the words are long and easy to look through. Raindrops and roses. To feel right is...hell, you've done it, and I'll do it right back. The drums make me angry, so I hug myself and say, "Die, bitch!" because you're in my head and off the internets. [Edit: not now.]

It sounds - deliberate, gentle, a little sad. I'll have to listen again. I'm sure I missed something. Quietly dramatic. Sharp trills. Imperfect circles. Bittersweet? Rolling up and down. Slow waterfalls.

I keep forgetting. The real world takes its toll, so I look outside for "Keep Off the Grass" signs to pull up and stab into dead patches. I lie down and look for arches and blacktop and trees taller than they could ever be here, and right-side-up mazes with chalk scraped on. I can only find these when I close my eyes. When I hear notes from them. When I hear the voices that made the world-not-real-world a little, a lot more insane than I'd expected in my metal box. And here I am. Steel and sound and skin, or something poetic like that. No. No! More.

I am no goddess, just a human with bad perspective and cute little noises. But I will laugh. We all are fools, and it's great. Everything is made of everything it's not! I refuse to make sense, because I mimic the world, or parts of it. A puzzle piece with disconnected thoughts and broken-off angles. One of the corners.

It has bounds. Tie myself up again with the backspace button, because I know I can't say anything right. Take a trip inside my head, I don't know how. Tell me what it looks like. Actually, no, you'll find out even states away. Eventually. Probably. My words suck.

Take in rather than analyze?

Love is better, but fear's mixed in that too. Fear is a dictatorship. Something. Something.

I like to complain about things, and thank you, and you're welcome. My sentences grow ever choppier. Bullets. Hard-hitting, and there's no flow, fragments, put me back together. Reanimation. Dead tissue.

Beauty is in imperfection, too. Like *** **** - halfway-dead grass soaks in words and touch _because_ it is halfway-dead, it waits to be full, and it clings to hair and clothes because it wants to be complete. Perfect grass makes it feel too saturated, associating it with good things. What am I saying? Am I saying that too much good is bad? I don't know, because I can hear words, and they crawl down my fingertips and press on a dirty keyboard.

I thank you, but I am not perfect. I can't decide on whether you are perfect yourself, though. Not yet. However long it takes. But I will live. Vanity, I live on. Vanity, I am.

I'll try. To fall in step, though...I wonder why I've been seeing only sidewalk for the past ten minutes and nothing's happened yet, why my hands are so cold. I'm not trying to, but it just floats in there, and the pavement gets a little darker with dirt at the edges instead of tires. And you are you.

That...means something. I will keep it.

You amaze me. And I'll keep my hair back, dancing with those strangers to pass the time, sneak sideways glances at you on the other side of the room. Miles, feet away. Mouthing words, reading lips, but still dancing, trying not to smash toes with knee-high boots, swift, six inches apart. Threads. Threads across borders, metal threads, conducting all currents, at least the ones in words.

You also just contradicted yourself, but that's probably all the different parts of you speaking. Do I drink in your anti-honor, then? Or simply to the memories, a little less **** ***** *****, days of scenes and improvisation? I can. I can do that.

Goodbye kisses, but there is no goodbye. Screw endings - this is a circle. Ghost arms, snatches of smiles, poetry hidden in boxes of tea - all I have ** *** ****, and yet not. There is more. Maybe when you find met again, I'll tell you stories; tell them until we're breathing words, carbon dioxide, secrets in sync. Under that lamp-post, under brick walls, in the cello-string grass, the laughter-light sky, below a dripping moon, against a balcony's edge, on the fringes of society, between real and make-believe, maybe I'll kiss you first.

"I'm not going anywhere."

******************************************
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
******************************************

Think you can't counter, this isn't a duel, maybe you’re right, but we are ************** *** ******** ******* ** ******, or at least we were, and will again.

And you know, your ********* *** a little bit of torture, holding you close, intertwining pinkies, matching or dismatching footsteps, but I scarcely heard your voice, only when alone, under a lamppost, instead, remember the water and the fire, both sinister and uncontrollable, and vain, speaking whatever they want. me? possibly it might be good enough.

what: is this made of, origami and toothpaste, and maybe on tuesdays, vinegar too.

the waterfalls, rewind them as they happen, watch them roll up the trees and into the ground, playing the music of the spheres, I know I mentioned {and there is perfection in every flaw} not by god, goodness, although it sounds like, instead, listen to the voices, in the place of religion, what ultimate fiction is there, and turn to poetry. rejecting religion cant reject reason, rejecting god means you have to find you’re own meaning, write your own code, I’m speaking figuratively of course, like the last time that I committed suicide, social suicide. and if you missed something, what will you do with it? you should know yourself in that< will it follow you, or do you have to pull it along, or does the moment stop so you can stare at it forever and it never gets devoured before you move on and it does>>?

"
I keep forgetting. The real world takes its toll, so I look outside for "Keep Off the Grass" signs to pull up and stab into dead patches. I lie down and look for arches and blacktop and trees taller than they could ever be here, and right-side-up mazes with chalk scraped on. I can only find these when I close my eyes. When I hear notes from them. When I hear the voices that made the world-not-real-world a little, a lot more insane than I'd expected in my metal box. And here I am. Steel and sound and skin, or something poetic like that. No. No! More.
"

***'* ** *** **** **** *****!
and you dear enjoy. weather. I cant get at it here, you have fun with your steel and sound and skin while I deteriorate within these walls, you seem to be getting out, have enough fresh air for me, I rather enjoy it, its funny how the moment I tell how my mind is falling apart into order, my words seem rational. enough! as I spew crimson unicorns for you and rainbows don’t taste the same at night, they really don’t. I wound my grandfather backwards, he ticks down the china plates in the cabinet and they want my bubble wrap too. I’m paining my room over, painting colors, not to be vague, but actual colors, different bases that blend and bend and some that scream at the eyes, soon to be striped and splotched and worn and burned. It’s never finished. I paint what I see, and as I paint, see and more and spinning in, quick, over there, how to paint a panorama with only sound?

not a bird, just me in the window there

and what if I shatter like glass after I come apart at the, seems like I have my picture, its there at least, not here, in the world.

everyone’s a let down, and don’t you deny my queen, not a goddess? neither I a god, just ******* young, but watching from over the rail ** *** ****, you are my goddess, and come, I wish to join the dance, but lets not waste time with the stairs tonight, jump with me, we can see the ground, it cant be far, or do we even move, lets just dance here again, but through thought alone, because we can, we will join the rest, and pardon us if we bump into you, but we just don’t care tonight.

and by the way, wash the corners; we don’t need to see them, the need to blend! to the backwash of corpse

tie me up in the backspace too, but careful, I rewired the keyboard, you cant know where we'll go! don’t say it right, lets speak in tongues, english for me as we kiss. I see color in you words now, much better than the pale uncertainty I felt before, you seem better, cough drops? don’t get addicted. the wrappers will come to haunt you, don’t trust the rats, you cant see them, but they'll steal your gossamer mask.

fear in love? I don’t see that. with each emotion, let it wash over you and fill you and watch your veins glow with the color of the feeling, feel one thing at a time, feel it completely. fear is as beautiful as love, just remember its all chemical reactions, fire the pistol, yellow, but before the bullet leaves the barrel, the oak couldn’t drop its leaves, and they cling off white, rotting brown at the edges, can you see the oak covered in white leaves?

you like to complain about things? shut up. kiss me, now complain about that, or you can kiss me again, whisper fingerprints on my neck, hit me hard with the absolute softest caress, it’ll throw my heart off beat, and I might forget to keep it going, its such a pain to make a heart beat, and needed? pshaw.

isn’t a basket ball sitting on a wood floor under a window with the sun behind it, evening of course, so its pink, just as beautiful as a melting tree with burning fruit on a crumbling mountain, a girl hanged from the branch? and as the words crawl to the ancient pen, let the vines in your wrist rupture your skin and grow, wrapping around your finger tips.

is too much good bad? can good come from evil, the real question is does it even matter? it makes me glad when I see people smile, it makes me glad when I make people smile, so I make people smile, and I’m glad, screw the rest, its beautiful enough, even in its malice, it makes me smile no matter what it is, as long as I’m involved.

me, perfect? hahaha, I’m just like you, so lets get fucked up and die, and everything that follows.

and doesn’t it feel odd to get in a car, after walking everywhere *** *****, now you know what, I was right and so **** *** ************, * ****?

and don’t sneak sideways glances at me, you have to love yourself more than you love me, or something like that? meh. don’t wait for me, for cereal, dance your heart around without me, just remember me, because I’ll be back, don’t forget me is all I ask, but I don’t want you waiting just for me, because you might as well be sitting on the sidelines. and what’s with those six inches? pull your partners close; unless they smell bad, then you can push them over with a grin.

don’t drink to me, drink to yourself, your going to get high off it, right? there’s no one better to drink to than yourself, and don’t make me a cause, don’t live off my rules, don’t listen to me, I’m only here to share what I’ve thought, and to love you because I want to and cant help it, listen to yourself, figure out what you are, what you want, the savage garden and ballroom are mine, keep them if you want, but shred them to pieces and tell me what's yours!

of course there’s a goodbye kiss, and then a goodbye, and then ill leave, and then ill miss you and come running back for another. *** and you can do the same, and between us we'll never have to actually go anywhere. and I’m waiting for your stories, and I’m waiting to see what you will do in public, peter pan, you can be more obnoxious that you are now, and ask me about obnoxious if you don’t understand. its good, I love you in vertigo, write back, love

******************************************
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
******************************************

[THIS IS PART ONE.]

[This side note is the only edit I have made in this response. I haven't read over it once. If I contradict myself, have underdeveloped thoughts, or hurt you, please bear with me.]

Freeze! And some other figure comes in, steals one away, so I beat them up *** ***** **** ***** ** **** * ***** ************. No. I refuse, because I don't know how many people are in the circle, or if we're in a circle at all, can you make one with two convoluted twisted straight lines? All I know is that there is ** **** ** that circle, outside of it ** *** **************, we drink ** *****, and when we jump back in *** *** ******* jump out and drink *** damn ****! Who are we, anyway? No, no, don't answer, you don't need to speak, our voices might be ugly when they sing but the words are always good.

And I figure, yes, you might as well be an angel sent down to save me. I laughed at that that night, and I still smile at it now, but differently. Can't believe I'm believing in silly comments, but here I am! Save me from myself, so as all fanfiction summaries say, and the hero falls in love with the victim, but the story's all wrong! - so we rip off the masks, the costumes, the delicate faces and spiderwebbed mazes, and run through the castle walls until they melt back **** *** **** and ****** ****** and speakers breaking, metronome migraines, and a sky dark as tuxedo jackets slick with hair gel, screaming. Running and screaming. Didn't I say they were the worst combination? That then someone could find you? I don't know about that now. There was screaming in my silence, you could say. You know how I ran. I'm a hypocrite, because maybe I wanted to be found all along [and that sounded incredibly bad shooting out of these hands.]

And yet, if I was mute, I would still be unhappy. I speak, I speak, even if only to you, but that might as well be good enough. But not really. Well, anyway - it's nothing so simple, nothing so silly, nothing so mundane. Go east ** ******* *******, turn left ** ******'* ******, turn right at the first stoplight - but no, no, no, I don't want that. I can't wait. I'll runskipdance instead, hair whipping, stabbing me in the eyes, and I'll laugh. Laugh until the cops come in and drag me to a life sentence - my crime is silence, an uproar of laughter, a load of secrets I'd never tell, just say everything else and I'd be fine. I'll take the bricks from my cell and carve sculptures from the bars, the guards will be baffled and amused, I sell my works on eBay and burn all the money. Run to Alaska with ten pounds of rice - but that would be too lonely. I'd rather eat a teabag.

You'd think my silence meant I understand silence itself. But I don't. I can only see the obvious, maybe a change in atmosphere, but I can't process the other languages, or maybe I can. I'm a liar - hell yes I can. I just have to stop thinking about it so hard. Difficult. Possible. I wrap my mind around words because they are concrete, and I don't know the abstract, but I'll flail at it anyways.

On Tuesdays, there are more flies than yesterday. Honey in tea, honey in coffee - revolting, so the flies go to bitterness. They go to reality. Is that why some kid at a day camp long ago caught one, pinned it to the table, and took out its eyes? So it wouldn't see anything, wouldn't see color, wouldn't mistake vinegar for water but use everything else, words, words, I spit them out like toothpicks. And they don't need instructions on the damn box.

And the music of the spheres, and we are falling backwards into the future, trudging into the past like the valiant greedy noble bastards we all are, or how we describe ourselves. When the waterrises seep in, do they touch the center of the earth? When do they dissolve into archaebacteria, into beginnings, into circle upon circles - if at all?

I wail. The back of my throat is sticky with water, communal wafers, with powdered words, church wine. I cough and they do not budge. Hiccup, and I fall to my knees, heaving over the sink, my head hurts so bad, elbows bent at acute angles to hold my hair back myself, and I ask the white porcelain bowl for time. It crawls out of my mouth and I pass out. I wake up. It was all a dream, or at least this paragraph-stanza-killer was.

Don't worry, because the human brain retains everything, we just can't access it all. When we find out how to put our thoughts in machines and in everyone else's head, it will be the end of the world, because then we'll all know things and misunderstand but we would _not_ misunderstand because we know everything now, and we can't lie anymore, there is only reality and that would suck ass.

[THIS IS PART TWO.]

***** ***! ***** ***! ***** ***! ***** ***! *** ****** *** *****!

Cut your way out with laser eyes, with society, with humanity, watch artificiality mix with nature, watch everything be ruined forever. So don't, don't, don't go that fast, look out the window, sneak past ** with a neon lavender glass ** **** in your hand, walk up to the doors at 5:45, hold them open for me too, I'll thank you, AND THEN WE RUN OUTSIDE careful not to spill caffeine precious caffeine hell yes HOLDING HANDS LIKE THE LUNATICS WE ARE, WE ARE, WERE MEANT TO BE, OR AT LEAST WANT TO BE! Because **'* ***, your never never land, the real world's taboo and sanity is unheard of.

Crimson unicorns - shun! Shun the nonbeliever, only not really, let's jump all over poor Charlie's china-muscle body until he wakes up, and the sequencing's all wrong, and the kidney is taken out of the wrong side! It wasn't my fault, I'm not buzzed from anesthetic, nor from a thousand, two thousand milligrams ** ******* with vitamins **** ****** ****, we'll worship * *** ******* and compare the price of gas to cigarettes, put an earbud in both our heads, just realized how close I might have been to saying "bullet" instead. I have a sick sense of humor, so I'll sneak into the computer lab and buy my life off iTunes, and all the songs are beautiful and horrendous, the harmonies clash, and it's the best kind of avant-garde I've heard in quite a while. No, it's not. I only go for the live performances. They go on forever, because I'm not dead yet. I'm so vain I need a nine-player punk cabaret punk rock orchestra to back me up. I don’t' know how to feel - and here's your conscience just in case you don't have one: Rod Serling said, he said: "This neighborhood's gone to the dogs." Let's stop and wave! Every time the cops drive by, we smile and smile and smile and smile. Broke as I'll be on Monday, at the village Halloween parade, me and the mad Monkettes, we CARRY THE DAY! This is only when nobody's looking, and on the inside I'm terribly lonely so I isolate it all in an old iPod mini, first generation, and I won't let you listen until I see you again. or maybe I will. And spit thunderstorms into the sky, they're beautiful like you. My teeth are made of lightning and my lips are bloody held-back words, my tongue is just sounds, it's not real, it's only in your head unless we're in the same seat, under a tree, a lamp-post, I don't know anything anymore. Chain links on the floor, and I'll pick them up, they turn into paper clips so I can hold all the pages together, so I fling them all into the fire and go back to the dance.

Painting? Lick the walls. Does your spit have color? Maybe it'll smell bad after a few days, but soak it all in Febreze, chemically refreshing, wheeze on the fumes and run out, jump on the bed and break the skylight, break the sky, but we're going somewhere! We don't know where!

Bluebirds on the roof, the shingles, ride them, I'll be in the trees fighting off squirrels with bottles of ginger ale, with plastic bags and oranges. Go on, you know you're crazy, we should all act on that. Life makes more sense if it makes no sense, and I hate that statement! So much!

La la la la la la la. Sonnets, I cannot write. Bad poetry, maybe, if I crumple it up, keep it in my pocket and have to run to keep it from - hell. Burn, burn! I walk with my hair in my face, Lady Lazarus, Plath references strewn about, worms like sticky pearls and I wonder where my soul went when it's all perception. Peel off the napkin - O my lover. Do I terrify? Lover, not enemy, because doctors save people but I know they're scared, they're numbed, but can't you feel the pins and needles anyway?

You're in the window, I don't know what side, you're south, I'm north, cold and bitter and *'* * *** ****** FEAR'S MY LIFE, I don't know **** *********'* ****, only my six-year-old self knows, and I can't recall, recall, recall. There are no voicemails from the past that I can get to now. A few more years. Ew.

And if you shatter like glass, I****, ***** **** ** divided by zero, but not really, I don' know what would happen. Kiss your lips and I taste my own blood, bubbling up. Can shards speak? If you painted yourself, could the world in the paper stacks beside you creep in and let you go? Horcruxes, but don't split your soul, I can feel it in the walls that you've never seen before. Glass lips. Glass! Too smooth, cold, glacial, dawn would break it open instead of the reverse. So you are made of atoms and atoms and love and hate and all the rest, that's why you're here, why I'm the same and different, and why I'm trying to make it rain cookies.

Yours, but not a! You are a vampire, a face that needs eyeliner that last night, a voice that sings dying, whispering, quoting, gasping philosophies and anti-theories, views on life into the piped-icing-cloud sky, fans look down and make your hair levitate, when the light hits you right you look evil like I do when the sun sets me on fire, 42:42:42, * ****, on the millisecond. Beautiful, but you're not a god, not even a king, just an angel with human tendencies. Scratch that. Maybe - just look at the shadows on the wall. Two meld into one, the truth and the lies, the truth is a lie, the lies are only truth, and the cake - don't even get me started! You can see my lipstick from the other side of the gym, I see you and pretend not to, but I'm still taken by surprise. It is hot in the room, I'm cold, cold, heat passes through me, I'm the worst kind of sieve. And yet you are warm. I wondered why you'd want to grasp soft marble, melting rancid ice cream, rubber tires, wedding rings in my nose. Symbols on my eye I forgot the meaning of, wrote on my hands and you'd read the actual words, answer the questions, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Sure, I'll jump. The floor is latex tiles, but the bodies are dough in fancier clothing. No, I won't depend on them, but I'll just have to grip your hand until both our palms are sweaty, and we're falling, falling up until we bang our heads on the ceiling floor, the solo comes on, we fit right in.

Wash the corners with blood, it'd be so much more patriotic.

[THIS IS PART THREE.]

So are we tied together? Self-censorship was here, but still I say we are, I'll assume fearlessly, because I don't know fear, I do know fear, but not tonight; raptors are in my blood. I have the coffee-stained teeth to prove it - or _had_, rather, the dentist didn't want people to know...

A keyboard is a minefield, but what does it explode into?

Speaking in tongues - your puns amuse me, so I'll close my eyes and breathe non-words into your head, draw patterns into your back with shaking fingertips, earthquakes, earthquakes on every surface. You're more alive than I'll ever be, at least in that long-ago state of mind, and I'll leave that, soaked in hyphens, in the curtains. I'm not in stage crew anymore, but I used to be, so they won't mind.

My mask, sure, but I can still hide: hair, hands, sleeves. Layer upon layer of plastic, I am a monster, I won't bleed if you puncture my skin, I'll simply turn back into pixels and you'll level up. No. I am real, very real, at least to myself - that was redundant, and I'm not editing anything. This fastwrite takes hours.

The oak leaves weren't that way at first, you know. There was this poor farmer in Mississippi there, and he whitewashed all the green away, because his world had to be black and white in more than just his head. The grass is dribbled with metallic snow, and he's outlined all the edges with his black brush pens stolen from the artist next door. I tried to stop him, really I did! I had the pistol, and he ran after me with his bucket of pearls, and I was afraid. Afraid of the monochrome, so I fired the gun, the pail, the splatters were flung into the air, and he died, fingerprints in white, white dripping from his mouth, but he was bleeding red. Red, and it seeped into the white, he stained it pink and raw. Then it traveled even deeper, and the oak, seeing color, shouted, threw its arms up in joy. The blood squinched its way up, up the trunk, through the branches, finally stopping at the fringes of the leaves, drying brown, rotting brown, and here we are. I looked at the artist's corpse and threw up out of pity, and my bile mixed with the pink grass, so it died, light brown, dried up. Then it started to rain, new grass sprouted up - no, they had all turned to flowers, delicate death-flowers, and the water collected into the centers of the leaves, the leaves got soaked red, red, scarlet, and the trunk stayed its old bark-trunk-sour brown, so covered with red. And so the oak turned to a Japanese maple. A lamp-post grew up through the farmer's body, normal trees sprouted up, they poured blacktop in swirls, in rectangles, brought out all the chalk they could. The maple is gone now, because they made it a "keep off the grass" sign, and when they stuck it in the ground, all the flowers fled for anti-society.

I have to admit, I like that story I painted with pressure and my eyes rolled into my brain. I'm a mess, I'm a wreck. I thank you for being a part of my forget-me-nots and marigolds.

You speak in lyrics to songs I'll never hear outside of my ears, poetry that means something, that I understand but I can never write or sing myself. I've always had an awful voice, but you can't hear me now, can you? Can you...?

I'd choose the latter, the latter, the latter, because sometimes the words never always fit to say...and I'll trail off all my sentences, sever the last words, because last means an end, and I refuse to believe in endings for now.

Perhaps that's what you taught me to do. And it's more likely I'd break their faces and manhoods with stilettos with actual stiletto blades for heels, I'm fun and a bitchface like that. If they're a jerk, I'll spike the punch, lead them upstairs, and set them on fire, gauzy curtains and all. But I won't, really. It's more likely I'll run away, lose a knife-shoe, speed up the plush staircase and fight off sanity with my traveling dagger, knowing I've already won. Would that speed the time? Jump off the balcony with me, let's do a stage dive, crowdsurf, headbang and cry out of exhilaration, cry our eyeliner off in perfect streams and clouds. Kiss my cheek, you'll taste salt; kiss my mouth, you'll taste...hell, I don't know.

Your ego amazes me. Oh, love.

The veins, the vines are red again, crimson, burgundy, cheap red wine. I become them, and they move the tissues, the pen, and write words I know but not the meanings. Trees grow out of my wrists, and ever since I gave you my heart and chain, they lovelily turn me ever darker, darker, darker...take my chain-link fences, take my past and make it something entirely new. The hills are on fire, so KISS ME BEFORE THE TREES THE VEINS MY BLOOD BURN DOWN TO WATER LIKE A SONG A SONG FROM YOUR HEART TO YOUR BRAIN LET US DANCE LIKE ORGANIC ANTI-BALLERINAS OUR MOVEMENTS JERKING AND COARSE TO YOUR ROCK AND ROLL. Lift up your hands. Lift up your hands. Lift up your HANDS!

I'll do that, indeed.

No, don't you dare wait for me. Live. Live. Live it the FUCK up, because I'd hate to live with someone like me, because you are you, because I love you, because there should be a thesaurus for just that phrase, because reasons are grown-up things and we both have a Peter Pan complex.

Write back, write back, because I can see you in all your words, lying in green and brown, talking to me and the lamp-post, talking to me and the darkest light blue sky. And again: watashi wa ai suru, te amo, miluji te, mahal kita, you're a fucking looney, I love you.