Upon Looking into the Iris

Unexpected memories surrounded by a gate of thorns in the crumbling forest of my crowded mind, resurfacing abrasions, find chasms in the night, sacred places where they live as rain, and come to the light when my eyes are closed and I plummet into a horde of echoes. I try to understand them, ever inquisitive. From all facets I have been living like this, an acquaintance of time, trying to forget the mind I've hidden, uselessly falling in and out of sleep. Waking from dreams and telling myself to take a good look, to take a good look, to take a good look. You kissed me once and it hurt, and I tried to change the meaning. The embers fell from the faint glow in your eyes, as if you had seen a thousand cities burning from the edge of sanity and found a way into my brain, before you took the fruit from my lips and crushed the petals of my heart.

On the journey south, to the tip of success, we were dressed in our finest clothes, ready for the memorial, the long funeral procession. Barely uttering a word, godly in church before wedding vows, before the scars of a survivor. Flashing red with an itch I can't scratch at the inception. An insatiable craving for life settles where my emotions pour. A belated feeling of relief blooms, drained with eyes downcast. He looks at me, but not quite the same as he did, and for a moment I froze at the consensus, tearing myself apart from the inside. The wind blows the door shut, not to be opened by wet hands. Touched by the breath of Sweet William, as mad as my thoughts. Living in a diary that never ends, in a dysfunctional mess. I let that emotion bloom and it found a platform, sucked on the fingertips. In a black room with no windows. I fend off the blows. My heads collide. I choke on the nestling smoke, birds in the air, all the things that accumulate in the atmosphere and rain back down to become a river and a song. I knew this would happen all along. I contain the truth in my eye, and sit frustrated by the identity crisis. Wishing I was someone else, wishing I was living a different life. Too many times I have imagined my death, how it will happen, how I will be sculpted.

Diagonal with inconsistencies. I lost my cool but then found it again, and made another impetuous mistake. Cut myself into shreds and put the remains into glass jars effortlessly. I have as many as my problems, and I count them one by one. The confetti falls and lands with the consistency of syrup. Hot water placates my body. When I feel the cold brush I stick to the underside, and think. I know it's not palatable, but the urge won't leave. When will the itch finally stop and let me go? It kills me just to look in the mirror. I have never known what it feels like to walk on stable ground. I have never known what it feels like to be loved. Each morning I wake up and get out of bed and I feel the same, and I look out the window to watch the world in its riveting eminence. I have always been this way. Trapped in a predicament since 1940, in the labyrinth of my memory, laid on a bed praying I convalesce.