her Captain surrenders
the
unpredictability grows
like a vine,
allusive, small, chemical,
toxic, fast.
He prays
it will pass. But when he gets what he wants, it just comes back.
The shrieking
noise that suffocates and tricks
is inescapable. It's all he knows to feel the panic of the unknown.
To know is to suffer
from an undesired fate.
He waits. He paints his face red and hot. He has them laughing
on the spot.
The lights fade and what remains is
jumbled, groggy, unsafe.
He must create a messier space. Blue elbows and bow ties and wrought iron. He peeks through, but has forgotten why.
He cries. Loved there but not inside.
There one minute, falling
off a cliff the next. His heart breaks.
She cannot share.
The captain is no longer strong. He will die. She fears it. He is starting to fear it too. His head's on the block, ready to be chopped. He fights, but
his hands are tied.
The only thing left to
do
is give in to
the pulsating chaos that exists
on the underbelly of distress, hitching a ride to a paradise of stones. Hard and jagged, he's too tired to roam.
So he moans in agony, spikes cutting through his skin. He's bleeding, but scared to let them in.
He begins
to lose
control. He knows. It's happened before behind the smoke stacks of his youth, empty cupboards, broken pottery, and no where to turn.
I'm
addicted to you, fear. He yells.
I
go to you in the morning
though you are bad for my head.
I
fight you off the rest of the day
and then it breaks
and
I
can't escape
to any place but inside
the bottom of your cellar door.
Your rustic, rotten cellar door --
that frightens and comforts me
(Momentarily. My head isn't straight)
yet
I
cannot recreate. It's a smell
I
don't dare try to explain.
I
did that once and won't ever again.
Like dust.
I'll
fight you.
Until
I
can no longer muster the strength.
My heart's abandoned now and can't be replaced. That's the last part of me.
I
was hoping it wouldn't go.
August snow. She watches as
her Captain
surrenders.
