addict

She's that liquid ecstasy that courses through my veins. She's that extra puff of smoke that holds heavy in my lungs. She gives me wings and holds my head as I'm coming down. She makes colors brighter, hours last longer and food taste better. I hold her in my arms and she alters my judgement. But, all in all, she is a bad idea. She makes me think she'll never leave me, but just hours later I'm jonesing for another hit, a stronger high. I can't have her; she isn't mine, but I steal her away and we dance in the colors we create. she leaves me when I need her most, blood and body, and all I can think of is how to get her back. She's a habit I can't kick, but she's controlled me for too long. Her plum stained lips call to me and it takes all I have to turn and say, "not this time" - an answer she doesn't like. She works harder, beckoning me with her slender frame and her crimson red fingernails gliding up my arms. I give in to her calls, take her one last time. I'm not an addict, I can quit her anytime I want. But, I take her to my bed and inject her into my veins. She rushes through me. my breath tightens, my pulse quickens and my skin flushes pink. I fall asleep in her and when I wake she has left me, empty and alone. Again. 

smile

Why can't you hear me? I feel like I'm screaming. My lungs hurt. As if lungs have feelings. Pain sensors. Nerve endings. My eardrums are quivering. Every flutter amplified one million percent. Like when you hold a seashell up to your ear and you can hear the ocean crash from a hundred miles away. Or something like that. Even my pen is craving your attention. My obnoxious, in-your-face, Barbie doll pink pen is screaming "Notice Me!" Could have been purple gel or blue ball point, running out of ink. Not that the choice matters, in print everything is black and white. Every word, carefully chosen with no grey area. Don't attach your agenda or personal interpretation to these words, they don't mean any more than swirling wrist movements or keystrokes. Everything broken down to ones and zeroes. Eventually something as dull and ordinary as black characters painted on white canvas with nothing to say that hasn't been said before will catch someone's wandering eye. But who knows, you may never notice the curve of the letters that form the word "smile". And by the time you do, I may not want you to anymore.

save yourself

Here's the pavement. Cold and colorless. Not inviting, but here he lays. Weight distributed between knees and elbows. His hands with tiny cuts on each of his ten fingers were raised up to his eyes, which watched tiny lines of red snake their way through the creases of his fingerprints. With overturned hands he scrawled his story onto the cool ground. In long crimson strokes, the red tint drained from his lips. His digits dragged on the floor, kicking up dirt that hugged the underside of his nails. He swallowed his tongue because what he bleeds onto the pavement is more important than words that escape his lips. He lay his head onto the chilled ground in the middle of a windy afternoon. He exhaled a stream of blood that formed a letter, that formed a word, that formed a sentence. And, that sentence read "Save Yourself".

Your story

There you are, engulfed in a story you've read before. You know the way it ends, yet you still rush to the finish line taking note of character changes and plot twists. Jump from page to page, your heart races at all the same places, your head whirls when something unexpected expectedy happens. You think that the story will change because you have; you've gotten older, more mature. But the words still form the same sentences they did before, and the ending still disappoints you the way it did the first time. You sit, heart melted to the floor and sweat dripping from your furrowed brow. Close the book for good this time, like you thought you had done before.