Volume 45: Bittersweet Dreams

"The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes..." - Holland, 1945

... I watched her fall asleep each night
All dressed in satin cloth of white
And close her lovely light brown eyes...

And I gave her to her dreams
With a soft kiss on her cheek
Watched her smile finally
One last time

I closed her eyes, oh, just in time
She did not see dark clouds arrive
She slept at ease through that dark night
And in that night...

All she wanted was to dream
To send a bottle out to sea
And then come running back to me
With starry eyes

Those starry eyes, so full of life
Those light brown eyes, I'm hypnotized
They light up all my darkest nights
But in that night...

The nightmares came to sleep
To suck the life out of our dreams
And choirs of our screams
Filled up the night...

That dreadful night, [I] was terrified
They lit up fires in our skies
Sickening sounds of flashing knives
Tore through my dreams

But she never ceased to dream
About the bottle out at sea
Crystal clear, but out of reach
Like starry eyes

Those starry eyes, so ever bright
Just like a fire burning high
To warm my thoughts on coldest nights
And every night

I always want to dream
Of finding bottles from the sea
With the love she sends to me
But every night

Oh, every night, those darkest nights
I wake up screaming, ghostly white
Eternal battles, endless fights
Invade my dreams

How I wish to share her dreams
Just to join her in her sleep
All these secrets that I keep
Flow from my eyes

My lonely eyes, each time I cry
I miss her more, my darling bride
I'll see her in my dreams tonight
Like every night

Her beauty haunts my dreams
Though the gunshots have all ceased
The only thing I seek
Are those starry eyes

Her starry eyes, I don't know why
I sealed them shut that dreadful night
And the regret clenches my mind
Apologies

So many words I have to keep
When I miss her next to me
The only thing I see
Are lonely eyes

Desolate eyes, the light brown eyes
That look like hers but half as bright
Wish they were hers but they are...
Mine

Volume 19: Wings

She was a girl
Of years ten and eight,
Stuck in a fight that was not hers.
Her years ten and eight
Were enough to thrust responsibility in her hands:
Power and freedom
That she had no idea how to use.
To her, these were just words,
Lying words that sounded full
Of hope and promises
But she knew that in the dusk of reality
These words were nothing but shadows,
Hollow and slowly fading into the darkness.
Each night she prayed for wings
Wings to lift her up and out of this place.
But each night the shadows grew
Darker and longer,
Stretching over everything she had ever known
Plentiful were those ominous shadows,
Clouding her mind,
Clouding her vision,
Clouding her reality.
Until one day they led her to the old tress bridge
That rested halfheartedly over the river.
That day,
As she saw eighteen years' worth
Of snapshot memories
In a kaleidoscope slideshow,
As the icy water rushed up to meet her,
She smiled.
For that was the day
She finally grew wings
Grew wings to fly,
To lift her up out of the shadows
And into a place of true promise.

Volume 10: I Punch In The All-Too-Familliar Numbers

Eagerly waiting

Dial tone breaks the silence

Answering machine

Volume 1: Frosted Glass

A floating figure cloaked in translucent brilliance

Glides over the land, crowned in glimmering silver.

She dances a graceful duet with her own shadow,

Then descends over the land in practiced silence,

Her every step quieter than the whisper

Of a pin as it hits a floor made of glass.

She reaches out her fingers to a stained glass

Window, admiring its polished brilliance.

To the glass she offers the slightest whisper,

Which clouds it, transforming it to icy silver.

She stares at the mirror in awe, barely noticing that silence

Had fallen with the night, leaving her in cold shadows.

Realizing the truth, she touches her crown, then turns to the shadows.

“Is this what I am crowned for?” She asks the looking glass.

But only her reflection in the ice stares back, silently.

Suddenly, her mind, once free and filled with brilliant

Thoughts, feels trapped underneath her wreath of silver,

And she is overcome by the sudden urge to chase the wind’s whisper.

She flees her thoughts, flying past branches whispering

Desperate warnings as she plunges into the shadowy

Night. She doesn’t know she leaves behind a silver

Streak of frost and coats bare branches with glass.

She doesn’t know, until she turns around to a brilliant

Snow globe scene, her doing, standing in frozen silence.

It dawns on her that her coronation is not a gift, but a silent

Curse, to steal the breath of even the most cautious whisperer

And from everything else around her, to turn nature into a brilliant

Picture, but only coloured in with white and shadows.

Beautiful as it is, it may as well be carved of glass,

Captured and drained of life, with only a dusting of silver.

As her cursed fingertips turn the entire world silver,

She can find no words to fill the silence

Left by everything around her. The rose-coloured glasses

She once wore have disappeared without a whisper,

Leaving her alone in a land darkened by her own shadows.

To think she could have been something brilliant.

With a sigh, her glassy eyes turn towards the land of silver;

Sparkling, brilliant, crystalline, icy, cold, motionless, silent.

“Winter has come”, she whispers, then vanishes into the shadows.

Volume 11: The Photograph

That photograph looks better

Lying on the floor,

Dangerously close to the fireplace,

Trapped inside its chipped wooden frame,

Topped with a sprinkling of glass.

There, it is a better representation of

Who we are.

Everything about that photograph is wrong.

Who are those smiling people?

They are certainly not like that now.

They are strangers to me,

And strangers to each other.

And that unblemished white background?

It shouldn't be white at all.

It should be stained with midnight tears,

Cut up with sharp words,

And clouded by the silence that hangs in the air,

The aftermath of a huge mistake.

I would much rather have taken a pair of scissors,

And cut those people apart from each other,

And scattered them in the blizzard

That whips hungrily outside my window as I speak.

I would rather sacrifice the photographic shreds

To the claws of that ravenous beast

So that it may snatch them up

And take them far away from this place.

But I can't.

So I just let the frame fall from my hands

Onto the fake laminate

And hope that, by shattering the glass,

I can give those people a chance

To breathe

Instead of suffocating beneath

Their smiling masks.