Pretty.

You will be "pretty" intelligent! You will be "pretty" creative! You will be "pretty" AMAZING! But you will NEVER be merely "pretty."

Wicked Games we play

Wicked games we play with each other's hearts. Isn't it funny? Isn't it rich? You tell me you love me, but you never really meant it. We never meant the things we said, but those are the wicked games we play. Like hearts aren't fragile, like falling in love is easy and falling out of love even easier. I didn't want to fall in love with you. I didn't want to turn my heart inside out and show all of its contents to you.

I am ablaze and you are the only saviour from this devastatingly beautiful madness. Its a wicked game, sweetheart, the lies we tell. What an evil thing to do, letting me believe you could ever love me the way I love you. What tangled webs we weaved playing these games of heart and heart-break. I'm losing, but I feel like I've won the whole world in a paper cup.

The moon is on fire, a jewel on the neck of the sky, surrounded by diamonds. You are my moon, my sun, my beginning and my end. The wicked games we played, no longer pretend. Save me, save me from you. Save me from this breathtaking insanity. I don't want to be in love with you. I don't want to bathe in your scent, like it is frankincense or myrrh. I don't want to drink you down as though I was lost in the desert with no water. Yet, you are the sweetest thing I've ever tasted and yours is the only perfume I want.

I don't want to fall in love with you and the wicked games we played, knowing they could never be true.

Pork Chops

This is triumph. The audacity of living in a world that continues to berate you and tell you that you aren't good enough. This is the strength of hope, a shining light in the darkness that feeds on our fears and our sadness. This is beauty. And it lives in all of us.

A Whole New World

For those of you who read this blog for my random bits of poetry and my story updates you can now go to the following link to read everything I've ever written poetry and story wise. Well, pretty much. In the meantime you can continue to stalk me here for other random updates.

www.septembertarantella.blogspot.com

Bone

He brushes calloused fingers over her ribs, a quiet, and strange, arousal quickening within him. He is imagining peeling away layer after layer of muscle and fat, skin and tendons. He pushes aside the offal, finding his prize, ivory buried in warm, crimson, silk. He imagines cracking her sternum and gently pulling apart her ribs so that they flex open like a hinged box. That is his prize, her ribs fluttering open like a butterfly's wings in the sun.

Her screams, as he pulls her apart, will be as beautiful as any symphonic glory dreamed by Mozart or Beethoven. He feels his arousal reaching a peak, feels it building beneath the wicked desires. He slows to a teasing thrust reveling in her moans as he denies her again and again. Soon he will make her slick with blood, prying apart the flesh and pushing into the cavity he will open.

Her hazel eyes remain closed, savoring the heft and feel of him sliding in and out of her. She arches her back, thrusting her chest up to meet his fingers as they brush little circles around her breasts. She does not feel him changing. She does not see the shift from lover to murderer. Nor does she see him take up a wicked little blade. She is lost in the moment, her hips thrusting up to meet his, taking him as far within herself as she can.

She gasps, her eyes fluttering open as she feels the knife find purchase. A rigid jolt of agony shocks her system as it tears through her outer layer. She looks up at him, his black eyes glittering like stars in the evening light. His eyes widen, like a shark's, at the smell of blood. It takes a moment for her to find her voice, a scream ripping out of her as he causes another tear in her fabric.

He revels in the music he makes. An orchestra conductor, he instructs his flutes and violins. He encourages the high notes to crashing crescendos, building them higher and higher. And, deep underneath all the soprano notes, builds his own bass. It takes a moment to realize he is screaming with her. Though his screams reverberate with joy and pleasure.

Again he slows, drawing out the sweetness of the moment. He gazes, lovingly, at what he is creating. Like a curious, and none-too-gentle, child he begins to explore his masterpiece. He pushes her apart as he continues to slide in and out of her, blood pooling just beneath her buttocks. The blood serves to lubricate each stroke as he draws closer orgasm. He invades her, looking for what he wants, not caring if she is still screaming.

He separates her breasts, causing rifts and valleys to grow ever wider between the two. He kisses her bloody sternum, shining brightly in the light of a naked bulb. He kisses her bloody bones as he bursts into her, shaking with the intensity of his little death.

Spent, he pulls away, pearlescent beads of crimson staining his lips. He looks deep into her eyes, now glazed and dull. She is still breathing, he can see her lungs moving. He smiles and kisses her mouth, staining her paling skin. She does not respond, a bubble of gleaming spittle beginning at the corner of her reddened lips.

Now begins his vivisection, the dissection of his new favorite doll, though no plaything lasts forever. He doesn't bother to tie her down, she couldn't escape now, even if he let her go. With legs still shaking, he retrieves his bolt cutters, eager to begin.

He snips a ligament, a tether line for rib to sternum, a muffled scream gurgling up from her exposed viscera. He smiles and turns her head so that the vomit leaks out, he doesn't want her to die yet. Though she will die before he is finished.

Another ligament is cut, another pitiful scream. Another and another, until he has only one left. With a jubilant cry, he frees the sternum and removes it. He lays it aside and begins the task of removing her organs.

Lovingly, he cradles each one before placing it in a sealed container. Later he will throw them against his canvases so that they splatter. He will name each piece after its respective organ, sign his name in blood and call it 'avant garde.' He will place these works of 'art' behind glass so that the smell of rot and decay is hidden.

Once all the organs have been removed he begins detaching the ribs from the backbone. As each one is removed, he places it in a bowl of cool water to remove the marrow. Later he will lightly cook the marrow until it is succulently tender and pair it with a delicate rose wine. With the marrow removed he drills randomly placed holes and fills the bone with a thick red paint. It oozes, like blood, and he hangs it above a blank canvas to drip.

Finally he begins the task of removing her other bones. He removes the marrow from each before he cleans them. He washes each one in a bleach solution until they glimmer. Smiling, he holds each one up to the light, examining and polishing.

He recreates her skeleton, after the bones are cleaned and drained, but as he sees it. He positions her arms to that her head is cradled in front of her pelvis. He paints her ribs in neon colors fanning them out as a crown for her skull. Using one femur for her backbone, he drapes her vertebrae across her hips.

Taking out his Polaroid camera he photographs his malleable work of art. He christens himself the Picasso of the macabre. He will re-paint the bones, readjust the scene to suit each new muse. He will fall in love with her over and over again, just as he destroys her every time.

Her skeletal remains are a jumble of puzzle pieces waiting to be placed. He will re-create her as he sees her in his fevered imagination. God and Eve playing in the Garden of desire and reincarnation until the end of time. No serpent, no devil, no temptation of evil as he recreates, her piece by piece, in the form of whatever Goddess he chooses. He is the creator, an artist of infinite imagination.

He will cherish her, that is, until the next muse demands his love, demands his worship. Then she will be old bones, forgotten in the abyss of memory.

Kiwi and Apple

I think often of when I was a younger woman, with no name but the ones I chose and no home but the ones I made. And I can't think of these times without thinking of Apple.

Apple was two or three years older than me, though I wouldn't swear to it. We didn't have birthdays during that time. I never knew his real name either. We shared so much, but never our names or our birthdays. And, when he disappeared, he was gone with no trace.

Apple had ruddy red hair and dark brown eyes. He stood about six feet, towering over my five feet and one inch. He had a crooked grin and one pierced ear, his "pirate look" he said. He played the guitar with such a tenderness as to make everyone around him cry.

We met on the eve of September's birth, as he put it. Always the poet, it was his way of saying we met at 11:45pm on August 31st. We met at a party thrown by a mutual friend, under a fake banana plant while a slow Sinatra song played. We met with our hands full of cheap vodka and our hearts full of search lights.

"You have the most beautiful violet eyes I've ever seen." he said, looking down his Roman nose. His eyes sparkled with alcohol and untasted sweets.

I flushed with pleasure and took a bashful sip of my drink.

Later that same night, around 3am, we stumbled into a deserted park and we played on the swing set. Under the monkey bars, with a million dying stars watching, he kissed me.

We never agreed to stay together, but we lived and loved for three or so years. On that night, we agreed to keep our names and our birthdays secret. We agreed to keep our histories and our futures a delicious treasure buried well. Sometimes the things we tried to hide bubbled up through the pain we often shared.

While we traveled, I found out that Apple's youngest sister was killed in a car accident. He found out that my mother's husband had raped me several times before I finally escaped. He knew my real name began with a Q, but we joked that it was 'quince,' like the fruit. I discovered his middle name was Adam and that he hated it.

"It breaks the flow of my name as a whole." he would say, laughing.

We decided to call each other by our favorite fruits, thus I was dubbed 'kiwi' and he was 'apple.' It helped that he had the coloring of an apple, ripe and fresh as the morning. We were unable to afford kiwis and apples most of the time, but we dreamed of them often.

We rode around the country in a turtle top van, a camping van. Nomads of the Western world. We put up a sheet behind the front seats to afford us some privacy when we slept. He pulled out the chairs and the table in the back so that there was room for us to lie on the floor.

The 'ceiling' we decorated with broken mirrors and fake stars. During the long winter nights we would snuggle up in the dark and use a flashlight, pretending we were beneath the starry sky. We were eternally chasing those stars. They defined us.

Throughout those homeless times we worked odd jobs and ate lots of peanut butter sandwiches. I worked as a waitress for three different restaurants while Apple played his guitar on the streets. At my worst, when I felt like giving up, Apple persevered. He was more reliable than the mailman. Through the rain and the snow and the blistering heat he was on a street corner, playing until his fingers bled.

His guitar was weathered, but the music it produced was uninhibited by its age and deterioration.

We discovered, amid our too brief time, that summer was when he earned the most. The pennies and the dollar bills would coat the bottom of his beat up guitar case. Sometimes someone would put a ten or a twenty in the case and we would celebrate with fruit or potato chips. One time he bought me a single, long stemmed, pink rose. I put it in a small tin box to dry. Mostly, however, we would stock up on gasoline, peanut butter and bread.

We had a fridge in the van, a tiny thing that barely held a gallon of milk. In the summer, though, it wouldn't work. It was as if the weather had to be cold before the machine itself would be cold enough to preserve food. It didn't matter, we rarely had the money for luxury items such as gallons of milk or ice cream.

The extra pennies we would put in a cracked Mason jar, copper dreams for a better future. Apple talked of leaving the country, buying a house boat and living in the middle of the ocean. I talked of fancy clothes and mouth-watering foods. We talked of so many dreams for futures we never planned on living together.

"Kiwi," he would say, rolling over to look at me. "do you want to get married someday? Have babies? What do you dream about?"

I would smile and kiss his nose, but I always stayed quiet. He knew the answers. He knew my desires better than any psychic. He could see my dreams of babies in beautiful houses with a husband and money. I dreamed of sleeping under a real roof, in a real bed. I dreamed of being in love with him, even though it would never be.

The day we parted I gave him everything I had. I gave him my soul in a tin box, smelling of dried roses and starlit kisses. I gave him my body, we sat holding each other tight, trying not to let go even as the spaces between our fingers grew longer. I gave him all the love I had to offer.

He drove off and into the sunset, heading west to some brightly painted city. There were no tears, no real goodbyes. I had already packed my few belongings. I had already kissed the dried rose petals and looked up into our homemade starry sky.

I didn't even wave goodbye as he drove off. I watched him, as though he was a brightly lit torch drifting over the horizon, and I wished him luck.

I married a man of means and we had three beautiful children. My husband found it odd when I gave our oldest son the middle name Adam and our youngest the name Quince. Our only daughter I nicknamed 'kiwi' for her bright green eyes.

I didn't see Apple, in person, again. Though my dreams brought his face to me every night. I still love him.

Under a sea of stars, stretched out on a blanket, Apple pulled me closer and we lay in silence. It was a moment that defined us.