[x]

mad houseyou are a moan that
crawls like a tarantula
down the hall to my room.

papier-mâché girls dance
in the garden, wild women, burning
with their dreams of becoming
skeletons, and through their
parchment skin i can see their
wasted hearts struggling to beat.

a dead boy visits me at night.
i lie rigid in my bed, paralysed
while he stands by my window, white
as the underbelly of a fish,
still dripping with water
from the ocean that stole his life.

and i can still feel their hands
on me,
as cold and rotten as the hands
of a corpse,
the prick in my backside while
they fill me with their venom.
they rape me of my life
a

reverse god complexi wait sometimes for
god to present himself
in the way
i would prefer him

but who am i to
call out god
when he has
masquerades
to attend

--

alas, i am no god

Drinking in The AfterlifeFor someone who had killed herself, she was awfully cheerful. She was sitting at a small, one-person table in the corner of the pub, twiddling her hair and giggling. There was a bottle of beer on the tabletop. If I hadn't known that it was untouched, I would have thought she was drunk.

"Something amusing?" I asked, having walked up to her.

She jumped and looked towards me, her eyes finding mine. She smiled somewhat sheepishly. She was such a pretty girl. Why she'd killed herself, I couldn't imagine.

"I just can't believe this," she said. "Who'd have thought there'd be pubs in the afterlife?"

I nodded in understanding. "Indeed."

She tucke

he stole all my thyme awayNEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

1. new year, new you.
a. be unrecognisable. when if he passes you in the street, he shouldn't know who you are.
b. learn to recognize your new self in the mirror.

2. be optimistic.
a. he might join the army.
b. he might get cancer.
c. he might be hit by a tru

3. stop wishing bad things on good people.

4. start wishing good things on bad people.
a. maybe he'll get a promotion and move far away.
b. maybe he'll get married and move far away.
c. maybe he'll

4. stop saying he's a bad person.

5. be good to yourself.
a. there are better men. find them.
b. there are better

I Could...I could break the silence with promises and blind devotion,
And erase the smiles from our mouths and put locks in their place.
Only you could have the key.
I could cut my heart from my chest and give it to you in a cardboard box...
But maybe I could just tell you my love instead.
I could spend hours listening and counting your heartbeats
And play connect the dots with the pink scars on your cheeks from teenage skin;
Such constellations I could find in you...
I could catch your breath in the palm of my hand,
Or pluck each word from your throat like a string of pearls.
I could kiss you until our lips turned blue and still not be ready

the strawberry tartOne afternoon I bought a tart for thirty dollars.

Didn't seem like much at the time, just a couple of bills out of my back pocket, for a tart about three-quarters the size of my fist, laden with whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

I popped a strawberry in my mouth and I liked it, so I took another bite. Didn't like the whipped cream so much. Ate the strawberries, the edges of the chocolate pastry, and threw the rest of the tart away.

When I turned around and strolled back home, I felt the sunshine on my face and I thought that this world could do with a little more happiness, this bliss of a bright afternoon, more often.

Then I rounded

just a girlimagine hearing the yowl
of a door hinge in the gloom of
the night.

you break free
from the sugary brain syrup
of your dream to see
him standing there, haloed by
the moon like a hideous angel,
wheezing and smoking a cigarette.

he blows a smoke ring and
displays his crumbling teeth
in a beastly parody of a grin.
alcohol hovers in a cloud around
his head. you feel an electric
spider of fear dance up your spine.

like a lion, he moves in
for the kill.
he is already hard.
he yanks back the covers,
a moth-eaten blanket that smells
of semen and mould,
parts your legs with ease and
invades your warmth like a
battering ram.

always half finished
i can tell you how much i loathe anyone or anything that lingers, even when they're beautiful. My anxiety disorder can't handle any of that. Yet it's been 1 year and 1 month and i'm still stuck in reverse.

nauseated is the prettiest emotion i've felt so far cause for once, i can see an actual physical rejection, rather than these invisible strings snapping on the inside, but never showing even a blemish on the outside.

my screams have begun to ferment as they remain bottled up in what i imagine to be gruesome-colored vials within the shelves of my intestines. each vial must be carrying individual, heart-straining yelps, yelling and sobs f

i'll huff and i'll puffyou are made entirely of harsh lines
elbows like knives and a jaw like a promise
that there's always worse to come

i pressed up against you
as your fingers tugged on my hair
and your voice shivered down my spine

and i'm sorry, so sorry
that i had to leave like that, but
you were making me want things
i shouldn't have

these broken pieces fit togetherwe have no family photo albums
no collectively treasured memories
only a road map and
several crumpled gas station receipts

i can point to any state of this map
and say 'this is where i grew up'
my childhood home is four wheels
a back seat and the dials on the radio

to take a walk down memory lane
we simply need to pick a direction and drive

look, there's the motel i first tried to pray in
i can still remember choking on the god
i couldn't bring myself to believe in
there's the diner where every single meal
they serve tastes just like ash

there's the roundabout you almost bled out on
this is that town the police ch

when somebody says your name for the last timeone

one of the first things she learns is that ghosts cannot cry.

this does not stop her from trying.

there's a house.

not a home. barely a building. just beyond the part of town parents don't let their kids near after dark.

it's empty. it's been empty for as long as anyone can remember.

in the upstairs bedroom, there's a queen-sized bed and a chest of drawers and a chandelier. they are covered in dust and cobwebs. they are rotting. they are bug-infested and falling to pieces.

in the upstairs bedroom, there's a girl.

she wears a long, white dress, and a shroud of grief, and a bullet wound in her chest.

she is rotting. she is sorrow-i

that boy is poisoni remember a hot
balmy summer which we spent
topless in my shed, lips against lips,
sweat-drenched skin against
sweat-drenched skin. i loved you
for the little things,
like the hair below your belly button,
the small scar above your eyebrow.

we used an old bin bag as a
curtain, and now the smell of
festering garbage reminds me of you.

the rubbish dump is my
favourite place to go.

mum said, that boy is poison.
i replied, i'm a junkie and he's my heroin.
and i can't quit him.
i can't.

you and i are just walking disastersif your skeleton is home
if your ribcage is the fireplace in the living room
of a house weathering out a storm
then you are haunted
your bones are haunted

there are ghosts howling down your chimney throat
there are ghosts rattling chains in the hall of your spine
the electricity running through your veins is flickering

if your skeleton is home
then you are a haunted house
you are dark and uninviting
even in broad daylight

the doors of your kneecaps slam shut
without the help of wind
your organ furniture goes flying
the ghost in the fireplace of your ribcage
howls into the chimney of your throat
and you are haunte

love is given, going, gonehan gets shot on a tuesday.

she's twenty nine, erin is twenty seven, and they've known each other for just over ten years. obviously, their time has run out.

it happens on no man's land, of all places, and sparks off a full scale war, the likes of which hasn't been seen in almost forty years. it happens three streets away from kasey's, the bar that's the second closest thing to home that erin has, and it happens late at night, when it's dark and confusing and there's a gunshot and erin can't tell where it came from and she can't really see through her rage anyway, all she knows is that she's trying to reach for her wire and someone's holdin

BurialThe mud caked my fingernails.
My hair slipped from inside my hood,
blowing across my face.
The wind shifted the leaves on the ground—
a collage of yellow, red, and brown—
and the earth crawled around me.
The rain fell hard
and the wet grass grabbed at my ankles.

The hole I dug with my own two hands
was between two trees where you and I
used to sit and talk about superheroes,
videogames and high school bullies.
I thought the location fit.

I pulled from my coat pocket
the heart necklace you gave me
the year before you said goodbye
and drove off, leaving skid marks
on the vacant street.
I dropped my heart into

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rings of blasphemyfrozen in starlight,
an ice sculpture–
solar wind respiration
against the heaving
belly of the night sky.
shining beads of sweat
like stars
dappled his bare chest.
his nipples made me shudder,
like the sound of a chair
dragging itself across the
floor, a steel skeleton,
like a dying thing on a highway.

his hair made up the clouds.
the rocks in his eyes could
impale tender breasts and
formless thighs,
could mangle celestial bodies
like a mouth of granite.
the moon turned in its sleep,
just in time for me to see
the blood on his hands,
his broad back, spread endlessly
like wings plucked of their feathers.
the wo

welcome to wednesdaythe milkman left a
smouldering cigarette
on my doorstep.
i pounced in my barefeet
and barelegs, all one word
like that because it's more
abstract that way. it fucks
with your head like a
centipede wearing shoes.
baggy t-shirt, dad's.
stone roses.

i smoked my first cigarette,
triumphant while my brain
sloshed, washing machine skull.
the milkman's spit
tasted of soggy cornflakes
gone sour.
i wondered: if i was to gnaw
on his stubble, would it taste
of powdered milk?
so beautifully bland.
i would blow it from my lips
in mystical rings, tell myself i was
a fairy.
i puked sugar puffs two minutes later.
i was eight.

you kn

you are a relative concepti wear your jacket, nothing else.
the leather is tired and worn
at the elbows. there is a crumpled
carton of richmonds in the
left pocket. i pull one out
and puff on it, green-faced
and week-kneed and watery-boweled.
you rush through me like a
ghost
and i start to disintegrate
at the joints like a weathered
scarecrow.

seagulls sing a bereft symphony
from above, feathered angels.
god,
it is so beautiful
i could just collapse in on
myself like a neutron star
and cry right here with the dead
starfish, dry as sponges
in the sadistic glare of the sun,
cradled by shells that have proved
unworthy of the ocean's foamy
embrace,

staring at singed ceilingsi lapped cigarette ash
off your protruding
cheek
bone–
the nicotine rush
combined with your
musk
was more mesmerising
than a car crash.

i cut my tongue on your
matted wire wool beard
and i bled whiskey,
got so drunk your bob
marley poster had
approximately
fifteen thousand and six
eyes.
your bedsheets smelled of
me and my fingerpads
played
ring a ring o' roses
around your third nipple.

your refrigerator skin
gave me goosebumps.
you'd been dead
for a while.

inmate 88635the house smelled like chemically
bleached bones and astringent babies'
wails.

on his desk he kept a plant pot
filled with cigarette butts instead
of a paper weight,
blood-spotted pliers instead of a pen.
a tangle of golden hair decorated
the seat of his chair. it still smelled of
johnson and johnson's no more tears shampoo.

a small nipple, soft pink,
a rose petal made of flesh,
lay mundanely on the floor like
a button.
9th floorboard from the left.

a tiny, duck-printed sock hung from a
curtain rail like a cotton party streamer.

inmate 88635 stepped over the stiffened child,
floating white-blonde hair and denim dungare

i'm teething.to the owl in the oak tree outside my bedroom window, who serves as my living cuckoo clock:

the man who just left my bed doesn't like your hooting very much, but try not to take any notice of him. he's considering using you for a set of feathery bagpipes. watch out for him, owl. he trims his nails with a pair of cracked tortoise shell nail clippers that his uncle gave him seven years ago. he has a small scar under his right nipple. the scar looks like a tiny half-moon and matches the shape of my left incisor exactly. he says my thighs taste of banana milkshake and gives me purple-black necklaces that match the shape of his hands exactly. the

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dear death

by ~SameStripes, Dec 27, 2012, 6:08:59 PM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

dear death,

i went to visit my wife today, in the building where i have to breathe through my mouth because it smells like a slaughter house. i don't buy her flowers anymore, because they are almost as dead as she is and giving them to her is like putting flowers on a grave. i don't buy her chocolates, because she'd just vomit them up in a shit-brown wave and she never had much of a sweet tooth anyway. no, i just go by myself and hope that it's enough.

today i realised how much her eyes scare me. they used to be green. mossy green, not emerald green like they say in books, because in real life nothing could possibly be that perfect. but in the sunlight they used to sparkle and that never failed to steal the breath from my body. she always said that her eyes were her best feature. she never could see how beautiful the rest of her was.

her new eyes look like giant cigarette burns. whenever i'm sitting at her bedside in the pink chair with the stuffing leaking out like blobs of decomposing flesh, the chair that makes a noise like a tortured pig when i move, all i can smell is ash. in my mouth the taste of bleach flirts with my tongue the way my wife flirted with me the day we met at the ice rink, too many years ago than i care to remember. i can't even hold her hand anymore, since her fingers turned to splinters weeks ago. one touch and she'd collapse like a tower of matchsticks.

i expect you'll be meeting her soon.

i don't like you very much, death. i hate you more every day.

yours,

the man who loves his wife to the stars and back.

dear deathby ~SameStripes

Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

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featured! <3 [link]

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~smilewithlove Jan 23, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I have featured your wonderful piece of work in my journal, which can be found here [link]

~SameStripes Jan 24, 2013 Student Writer

thank you very much!

~smilewithlove Jan 26, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

you're welcome

=Bark Jan 20, 2013 Writer

Been there. Congrats on the DLD.

~SameStripes Jan 21, 2013 Student Writer

thank you!

=DailyLitDeviations Jan 20, 2013

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here [link]
Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article.

~SameStripes Jan 21, 2013 Student Writer

thanks so much!

~Felicia-Neko Dec 29, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

O my god.... this really brought me to tears

i really don't know what to say...i wish you all the strenght in this world

~SameStripes Dec 31, 2012 Student Writer

thank you

*ticktickboom24 Dec 28, 2012 Student Photographer

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