01.
TIGHTROPE TIPTOE
Leap from the pages of last night’s splintered fairytale
and pick up today’s clock shards,
stomped to pieces by the troll of your fears;
you’re hangover still—drunk by a bucketful of wishes
and a fistful of lofty ideals
but you tread on the borderline of dreamscapes anyway
and attempt to hold the pain in its place, to stay,
like a coffee stain that won’t go away.
The highwire act of your life is up;
love polygons bounced as you toe across
the nylon string, one that is as fragile as your optimism.
The circus lights blink at you
like mechanical stars, and their brightness seem to mock
the gaping hellhole in your heart.
Flashes of images when you fell:
you hugging a pillow that is not him,
the nighttime silence lulling you to slumber,
and dollops of sunshine trickling down the side of a teacup
from yesterday’s breakfast.
You fell hard,
but it didn’t hurt.
The candy wrapper I picked up that afternoon was a mosaic of shoeprints. It made me wonder about the lives of people who stepped on it—they’re all going different paths, they have different destinations, and they wove different plans in their heads about their hundred-hundred tomorrows. At some point in their journey, their souls converge or slide upon each other without knowing it. This wrapper is a witness. If our souls ever bump into each other, will we be aware of it? Will you let the chance pass? Will another wrapper be recording our asymptotic history in its thin surface?
THERE’S A MAYHEM IN MY SYSTEM, right inside my rib cage; everything is a mess. Not that You’re my personal cleanup man, but You came anyway, kneading sponges of love on the scratches of my heart, mopping up spilt milk and fragments of broken hopes around the corners. “You’ll get it done, trust me,” You said with a light tap on my shoulder. And I do–trust You, that is–because that’s what I always do: trust God.
-my oneword.com entry for the prompt “sponge” (feat. my heart lol)
Our world only minds
the way we live our lives;
we see it fast
from that second look.
Class Dismissed
A sighed farewell subdued the rainbow into a smear of sepia;
I watched, enfeebled, as you walk betwixt wakefulness and sleep.
No single footfall resembled the squeaks of your shoe on hopscotch lines;
No single word reminiscent of your off-key nursery rhymes.
Stick figures on the margin
penciled by your daydreaming fingers
now towered over our heads,
as concrete and real as your lies.
No longer do I cry over broken crayons or wounded knees;
nor do I sing along with your lullabies
that kept me awake the whole night.
Your demon kept on returning
in the classroom where I learned to breathe;
I stepped out to leave your shadow
and learned my real ABC’s
Staccato
All he has to do is stare
and stare he did.
She became a mermaid of the clouds, swimming between the zodiac motifs,
carefully writhing to avoid the afterglow of his stellar glint.
But stare he did
and she fell to the ground, the tongues of his heat licking at the frost fences
she erected against his attack.
Fleeting smiles, blinking fires—devouring her shell, engulfing rationality.
And stare he did,
for again she was naked, her senses haywire.
Fly. Look down. Fall.
An endless waltz it was, swaying to the do-re-mi of their hearts.
Oh, stare he did,
and she stared back—
self-flagellating souls, she discovered they were,
the only humans in a dance hall of paperboard couples.
-Airiz Casta
