All Grown Up

I'm still scared of the dark.

I shiver every time the sun goes down. I howl when the stars stop directing. When she turns out the lights I whisper my regrets.

Hold my hand in the twilight.

Dos and Don'ts

Am I a volatile soul?

I feel the discomfort hanging on my heart strings. I'm antsy without anticipation.

But my distaste, it manifests in confusing complacency. Clenching a heavy malnourished heart I'll ask, "do I yell now?"

I am the most conservative dare-devil you've ever met. In a punch of original sin I take lethargy to dizzying depths. The tiny thread that tapes me together ties me down, too weak to break the knot.

A thread, Daniel? Just a thread? No, not weak. Too tentative. Too scared that if you flex you'll fall apart.

SO!? So what! You're a marble monument of a nobody. Fall apart.

If not:
What do you really want out of life, then?





...Do you want anything out of life?

Saturday Night

My fists clenched on Sunday morning and they have not let up. I wouldn't mind so much, but clenching fists can be draining.

I told him I was 21 but he looked at me in hateful sympathy, "yeah right, get outta my sight." I was smooth like a bullet with all the edges trimmed down. Maybe he could smell my guileless guilt, or maybe it was the word "bong" spelled backwards for a mirror's lens on my right cheek in 4 different colors. Either way I had only moments to prepare as a stomach with 80 ounces seeped me into callousness. There was no way I could have known they would bring the dogs in. Not at that blurry moment.

I walked my bike down the road without thoughts to collect. Shoeless and abstract, I began to wonder where I could go. The town was on fire but the thought of friends in handcuffs repeated

(to be continued)