Weapons Drawn

Your side, my side:
definitive lines in the ground
Fingers crooked in eternal condemnation
every weapon drawn
What should be safe haven
is our own personal war zone
Who threw the first stone?

Dream Catcher

The downward spiral is an easy one to march.
Recently I've been plummeting down as though propelled by wings,
darkly feathered ones that span greater than my desire for survival.
I've been lulling myself into this false sense of complacency.
I'll tell myself it doesn't matter how far I go,
as long as I can still function day to day,
still put out an outward appearance of being "there," of being "present."
They say that I'm destroying myself,
like I've just now passed the marker that separates
simple negligence from active obliteration
of self.
I don't want to tell them that I purposefully chose this path.
That the reason the downward spiral is so fast and so easy
is because every step is greased with the fat
of a thousand good, solid arguments.
At least, they sound good for a little while.
I'll admit that I have my days where I look back,
and remember where I've come from.
Days where I want to shed my guilt like a second skin,
and believe in the gift of dream-catchers,
that can pluck the nightmares from your mind.

Her Dream

Later you told me that you had seen me
through the treeline
Pale, like the moon in the sky
my limbs moving swiftly
You said you called out, caught my gaze
fleeting and furtive
Face quickly turning towards something
you could not see
Who were you then, you asked
that you would run from me?

Doors

It is in so many ways like a flower that is afraid of the sun. What do the innards look like? Are the colors ugly? The risk is too great! I must hide myself, lest the world see the garish truth and the clashing petals. It is in this way that I become a frigid thing, locked away inside many rooms. I pace the floors and I know these tiles so well that my mind begins to believe that I have imagined the ones before them. I can still recall the scent of her perfume. I close that door.
Running, I find that I am lost among many memories, and that another has been stripped from me; no matter how many frames I beat upon, it is gone, gone, gone.

Tree

A single tree's pale fingers
stretch towards the light
I am with them
Leaves pierce and flourish
I grow for a time
But when buds begin to pinprick
my arms turn inward
The flowers spring forth and bear fruit
I shrivel and my eyes flash
My mouth begins to speak
and blackness pours out
My inner tree lies dormant
until the cycle begins again

Blood

Tonight I will trace the lines upon the ceiling. Perhaps they will lead me somewhere.
Answers could be hidden anywhere. Absolution is another thing entirely. It is a completely different animal, one that I don't want to dwell on for too long, for fear that my own sobs and sighs will
awaken things that are best left forgotten. Instead I consider adding another line to those I already possess: ones that remind me, day after day, that there is nothing in life that comes without a price. I wonder how hefty a bounty this mistake of mine will fetch. In my mind's eye, I can see bruises blooming, and my tongue remembers the taste of blood.
It does not seem like enough.