[/all pieces have been stripped of the original names used unless they are of blinding importance.] * These are not the shoes she wanted to wear. Crystalline eyes scrutinize the black Mary-Janes, the rips and wear across their sides. This is not what she wanted to present herself as, but she had been late and God forbid she wear thick boots to such an event. The lights dim, the curtain falls, and the shoes are spared another moment of fatal glaring. There are words she could use to describe the feeling of her chest relaxing, her bones poppling against each other beneath her skin and muscles and rags, but she quiets her mind for the High Mass of the Arts. The dancers twirl their bodies over the stage, twisting and contorting into elegant structures and for just a moment she begins to believe that a little girl’s new dolly boy has been broken and she has shrunk to save him from the evil rat king who threatens the love budding between her blossoming breasts. She can almost believe the twisted tale of the broken jawed soldier doll swording the rat king and tossing out evil. But, alas, such a spiel is naught but fairyist propaganda, spelling out false immortality between the frontal lobes of the audience’s collective mind. She has taught herself against propaganda, has distributed and believed too many times to fall once more to such a level of infidelity to honesty. When The Nutcracker is over she remains in her seat, looking out at the crowd leaving the proud standing theatre and talking with such foolishness about costume and music and do they not see how disturbed she feels when the sinister tones of the mause creeping up her spine like little triplets? Oh, how she loathes the ballet performance, she abhors it so vehemently and yet every time it comes anywhere reasonable she snatches tickets to a balcony in half a heartbeat. This time it was held in New York, and she hopes that the voice behind her is not who she believes is talking to her. These clothes are rags, she is so afraid, and these shoes are not the ones she wanted to wear today. And so she stands with inrecognition of his words and runs from the little toy soldier like she was born to do. She is the ratess, the siastra cara pacuki, the princess who will watch as the King overthrows the tiny toy soldier, broken in ideals, throw him down and beat him brainless before the people he protects. He is calling out to her, following her, grabbing her hand, and it is snowing. “I will watch you fall, scaukunok,” she hisses, the words dripping off her palate virulentuously. They are a warning, though she wishes they were a threat. “You may be a soldier, but you are broken.” She scowls, eyes razor thin and glowing. He does not look broken. He looks determined, strong, handsome, and she thinks, for a moment, if she is the girl and not the ratess. But she cannot play the role of the girl. She is not fit for the part, she cannot dance cannot twirl cannot spin cannot whirl and, “I cannot fix you,” she tells him, her voice as dead as the marshland. “I do not love you.” * There’s no trademark smile on his face as he walks through the fields of wheat and weeds, one hand jammed deep into his pocket. The sky is drab as ever, rain threatening with vivacity to pelt through his clothes and sting his shoulders with a pH of four. He grimaces, fumbling with the coin in his jeans. He’s really let this place go – the once rich meadows and neat rows of wheat stock now in utter disarray, patches of milkweed and dandelion and thorny pest plants jutting out towards the sky as if they have reason to live. How often has he visited his home in the last few decades? There is hardly the time for a luxury like denim overalls and a corduroy button up when you’re busy tearing yourself to pieces. Bullet marks make jagged holes in the earth below his ratty sneakers, and they blow apart the trees that surround the field like guard rails on a pot-holed highway just west of Civilized America. How perfect the setting as he stumbles through the mess of fiber, headed to God-Knows-Where, USA. A flipped car marks the beginning of what once was obviously a shining headpoint. The sea isn’t far from here, but he sits back and leans against the riddled and corroded metal of his forgotten Volkswagen. These days his hunger for Audi has become only more insatiable. With his free hand he digs for his squashed package of Marlboros, and sticks one cigarette between his chapped lips, then reaches into his pocket for a lighter. He uses both hands to light his cancer, one still cradling the quarter dollar piece on the tender stretch from pinkie to ring. As the blue eye contaminates his atmosphere with carcinogenic smoke, he examines the silverish coin not a centimeter from his handcrafted eyeglass lens. The embossed eagle has faded, hardly distinguishable from the matrix, and tarnish and lime have crept into any defined edges. The rustic undertone makes him grin for a moment in spite of the soft ripping he feels at the sight of the eagle so worn and degraded. He remembers how much he misses this simplicity, then quickly pats out a smolder he’s started in the wheat. Once he’s inhaling naught but tuft, he disposes of his burnt out stick in a napkin in the glove compartment of the dying scenery. A glance to the north reveals that rain is coming, sneaking toward him from the east. He gets moving to cover as much ground as possible before he is drenched in slightly acidic precipitation. A hum on the tips of his lips, he pounds the coin back into his pocket and keeps on walking, fondling the metal in his finger pads beneath the indigo denim.
[/ some drabbly stuff from my creative writing class. the prompt was a Shel Silverstein poem broken into pieces. i got, "come sit by the fire." ] xxx And when the dust settled, I found we were lost and in pieces before a teterrimous beast in the journey ahead. Hope was sharp in our hearts. We stepped forth like crawling creepers through wet earth. Puddles were our oceans like twigs our sabers chop-chop-chopping the world into manageable bite sizes we could have dined upon that eve. “Come sit by the fire,†beckoned ogres of the wood. We knew not of dirges to sing on the last nights and so we kindly refused the offers to burn. “How awful, how awful,†beat the moths’ wings! The trees were soundless in their speech, but we screamed our words so we would be known. Those cold nights were so warm and dear as if they were the truth in a bottle of strawberry wine you’d saved for days without sun. Roads met, and seas of ivy crossed our paths while we trudged foodless and dead in most senses of the word. When bread touched our lips, we salvaged the essence of life itself from crumbs and petals used as napkins soft as calf's skin. Silkworms and spiders spun our clothes, and made us armor from teeth and bone. We made friends along the way, in Luna who couldn't cast magic, and in Terra who used it for destruction; in Chi, the warbling bird, and in Quiza, the snake who lent us her venom. But by the end of our quest we stepped from the woods and cried because what we'd come for was no longer left, and the houses had burn by the ogre's fire and the ruins were held by ripping cobweb. --- his hands are bound together ropes thick with saltwater wrists red by minerals she smiles a kiss to his forehead this is not love it is obsession tear drop diamonds drip from ears all i want is more more more more more riches gold goldlust goldheart goldeyed murdering our futures bludgeoning our fate tying the knots of out destiny --- (Espanol [original]) No sé cuando tú me enamoras por el primero vez. No, no exactamente. La primavera pasada, plantamos malezas en el jardÃn y tu mamá estuve infeliz. ¡No nos preocupábamos! Tuvimos el mundo en las manos nuestras. Es difÃcil pensar que feliz estábamos sin una sociedad. (English [approximation]) I'm not sure when I first fell in love with you. No, not really. Last Spring we planted weeds in the garden and your mother was unhappy. We were not bothered! We had the world in our joined hands. It's hard to think how think how happy we were without a society. [ Yo sé que no hablo español fluido... Si puede correctarme, ¡gracias en el futuro! ]
