sole.

How does that saying go?

Your eyes are the windows to your soul.

I suppose my eyes are two lumps of coal then. Smoldering.

My soul mirrors these clusters of coal, my body a bowl of trolls dancing in soot. Flurries of smoke choke the lungs of these souls, trolls inside.

The trolls are an army of ugly banded together.

They gather steam, hoist a scream, up and over the cusp of my bottom lip.

One after another they billow out. Screams are disguised as they’re multiplied and denied. The octaves shatter the calm of my cherry lip balm.

A scream is a word, a word that’s unheard. Please rest assured this blurred vision will someday be clear.

But for now the sheer venom of vellum clouds mine eyes.

I am wandering. Ambling aimlessly. With trolls in my tummy and cakes of opaque on these windows, it’s no wonder I’m alone in my room. 

I took a walk around the block today, only to find the unwind of my yoyo string was like a box of stale knock knock jokes. Cracker jacks of wiggity whack prizes, faithless compromises, spilling endlessly off my not so funny bones.

Bones, bones, brittle little bones. It’s not the milk you seek, it’s the sun you need. With all the milk I spilled, three nuns could fill a quintillion of mean mugged jugs poured down the ailing throats of thugs, these thugs that bunk with the bowls of trolls in my belly.

Oh wandering soul, wherefore art thou trippity traipsing wandering soul. Crispity crackly great balls of fire, snapping at the heels of insatiable desire, engulfing the throat, and building a moat. The dragons are knocking again.

Wearing holes in the soles of my shoes, I wander to the end of time. Clink clink raise a glass, for the brink has been passed. Forward march into oblivion.

The flags have been raised to the ancient of days, Willie Mays broke a bat down my throat. Say hey kid. Say hey.

Where’s my voice now as I lay with the cows, sows with raised brows who pity me too. The trolls are still twiddling, thumbs pressing buttons, gluttons who greedily seek response. Textual harassment. The eighth deadliest sin. Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Writing is my alibi. My helpless cry. A splash of lye on this humble pie will cleanse my wicked insides.

I used to be a dreamer, a believer, pockets full of fairy dust and palms full of whimsy. The joy trickled out through these fingertips into those buttons of technology. Typing and texting, emailing and failing, fondling with digitals probing their occipitals.

Words are my candy just dandy until the sugar coaxed me into the corner. Convinced me and rinsed me of my purity, surety, sincerity divine.

The words are still sweet to my budding tastes as I grow and flower beyond the dour consequence of decisions been made, in the shade, of the person who plucked me.

The dew of the mourning collects on mine eyes, cleansing the opacity with veracity, for the morning brings with it so tender and new, a devotion to the notion that breaking breeds breadth, for without a break there is nothing at stake, and His death would be all for naught.

I was caught in a web with eight legs wrapped around me, four men in my bed in a matter of months. Lessons learning, churning the depths of my heart. The dads in my life, with their strife and resentment, didn’t do a good job, for like corn on the cob, their kernels of discontentment are stuck in my teeth. The pain and disdain are wedged down so deep that I fear even sleep can’t provide an escape.

And so I pray with my hands clasped so tightly, that God would reign down on this heap on the floor, what more could I ask than to be whole once more, for I denied it before, but I’m here at the door, with my basket full of knock knock jokes, ever so meekly laughing.

The smile never left but the mask behind it molded. The authenticity crumbled as I fumbled with my façade of fickle happy. The genuine friends fled the scene as the ferry of merry make believers arrived on deck. The splinters seared the skin of my calloused flighty feet as I ran away from fake in search of something real.

And now here I am, alone once again, as I twirl in circles searching for the woman I want to be. I truly thought I found her under the water as I quivered in that river. I must have been mistaken, but although I have been shaken, here I am still standing.

He harmed me and disarmed me, and He charmed me with His army, and I stand before you right now, because the Lord came upon me.

Round and round I go with a concept that’s so simple. And yet I fall away, every single day, for this debt to self is all I seek to pay. Me, me, me, and my oh my, stack stones to the sky and fling them all at I. The capital I without the Am is just a lamb. Sweet sacrifice.

Keep the anxiety at bay for a future without faith only serves to feed the fray. I tangoed with the devil in his lair of bleak despair but I’ve since fled the scene of the crime as I mimed my way back home.

Home is where I am, so to be homeless is to be less than me and that’s just not ok. So I tighten up my laces and set pace with the gait of the Lord.

There is no start nor finish, or anyone keeping score.

It’s an obstacle course, of course of course, but the enemy’s lies are hurdled with steps intended.

For although I feel alone at times I know I am defended.

My soul is afloat on two buoys of hope.

Pennies.

Do you believe in life after love? 

What started as a metallic purple lyric from that one song by that one chick, has now become the question of the hour.

Cher’ing is caring.

Do you believe in life after love?

Wishes like candy grow up tall in the lawn next door. Enticing. I pluck and purse my lips. As the breath bloats my cheeks, the wishes bounce off the walls of my cranium and cavity. Like a bubble gum ball, the breath pops out, and with it a wish, scattering the dandies of this lion about the globe.

Which wish did I wish, you’ll never know.

Are wishes just hopes and are hopes just wishes? Fin swishing fishes in this river of reminiscence. I can wish I may and I can wish I might, but what is wishing but a hopeless flight. A flight to never Neverland with a pocket full of thimbles.  A mouthful of kisses just waiting to be used, but instead just abused as they spill and diffuse.

Bait the line. It’s time. Time to catch these wishes like the slimy little fishes they are. For wishes are silly like sloppy wet kisses, slapping the deck as they breathe their last breath. The death of the breath proves wishing is what?

Wishes break and wishes extinguish. Think about the bones and the candles. The empty stems and fallen stars.

There is no hope in wishing.

And so I sit fishing.

A little girl stands at the end of the pier. She is wearing a white dress with a red satin bow. Her long blonde hair splashes over her shoulders. The waves crash against the wooden pillars with the barnacles. She peers into the water. She is looking for something. She stands there all day. At the end of the pier. Looking for something.

She returns day after day. Weeks. Months. Years go by.

A young woman now stands at the end of the pier. She is wearing a dress of deep scarlet. Her long blonde hair drips down her back. The soggy mascara carves wakes down her cheeks. Clutched in her fist is an empty pile of wet sand.

For years she had cast lines with her eyes. For years she caught nothing.

Then one day amidst the many, she cast off.

Her lithe body became the baited lure. Her cupped hand the hook. Fishing for wishes of things unseen. Her breath can’t save her now, for wishing is missing the point. Sifting through the sand on the ocean floor, her hook catches nothing but empty promises. Grains of weathered matter that were once a part of something bigger.

The crown of her head breaks the water as she gasps for breath. She’d been toiling down there for too long. With the breath that breaks the water, all wishes are gone.

There is no time for wishing or dreaming or even daring to dwell in the land of future.

She stands on the pier still. Puddles forming around her soggy pale feet. As the water drips off her fingertips, her eyes catch a glimpse of perfection. No longer casting lines with eyes into the water, wishing for moments of yore to return unblemished. But instead eyes sit on the horizon, a perfect line where earth and sky meet magically. Where all that is, holds hands with all that is to come.

Here and now, on this weathered wood, stands a princess. Her locks of love drip into the splinters. Seeping through and settling. She has finally learned that wishing on stars and cakes, throwing pennies in tiny lakes called fountains, wishing is like moving mountains. Wishing. Take all your wishbones and dandelions. Take every minute of 11:11 for the rest of this world’s existence. Take all your self-proclaimed genies and their wretched little lamps.

For wishing is like fishing with your bare hands. Only sand remains when all is said and done. None won.

It’s just for fun.

A young boy gets a trumpet for his birthday.

Every day for years he is forced to toot his own horn. With each song, a tune, and with each tune a loon collects in his bin of decay. Until one day, he is crazy, a loony tune to the darkest degree.

Neuroses abound, trickling down. Addiction wreaks havoc in our wishing wells of desire. We are groveling at the bottom. Fishing for wishes come true. Sand collects under our fingernails as we scratch our way out of these wishes found false.

Melodies of maladies riddle our breathless carcasses. We’ve succumbed to expiration as we wish ourselves to death. Blowing out all the breath with every broken wish.

Purse your lips and bat your eyes, no matter how hard you blow, your wish will never become surprise, because wishes are lies metastasized.

And so I ask, do you believe in life after love?

For to wish for true love is a beacon of demise. So if love is true and arrives without wishing, when it swims away, do you continue fishing?

Love has come and gone. And yes it existed. And so I stand on this pier, tight-fisted tat wristed. Without hesitation, I scream with delight, for although wishing is flight without hope, hope is flight in itself, and so I cling tight to this string. A string is a thing, a tangible thing. I take flight with this kite that flies me to the moon. The cat’s playing the fiddle and yeah, the dish ran away with the spoon. It’s only noon. I no longer croon to the loony tunes of the man whose love expired.

I float through the sky like a butterfly, but I sting like a bee now so beware. For love when lost leaves branches bare and brazen. A broken heart breeds consequence. Lessons learned are pieces pasted back together.

The answer is yes. I do believe in life after love. For to continue wishing for what’s been lost, is to Cher in haggard harmony.

Furr.

The balls of sweat roll off my chin after snailing down these cheeks that bounce with each jounce. I have been running for what seems like a decade. A decade to me is ten minutes to the world. Time slows down for me.

I have a watch on my left wrist. It ticks seconds to you but minutes to me. Time is my own. As in, I own it. There is a ship carving wakes in an ocean of hours and days. I am the captain of that ship.

You think time is fleeting. As in, you will never have enough of it. I think time is a ferocious beast that I have conquered. I stand atop its crumpled brow with my sword wielded for I have defeated this wicked constant.

Time will no longer boss me around. I am a hopeless ninny twittering in the corner, twiddling my thumbs, wasting my minutes, MY minutes, for they are mine.

I may choose to expend my minutes upon you. I may not. That is my choice.

The watch ticks.

My feet pound the ground with a rhythm. The dust fluffs up to settle down somewhere new. This ship of mine carves time and space. My body cuts through currents, tunnels of wind and water.

I inhabit this corner for now, but for how long, is to be determined. For I am mine own. My thumbs get dizzy and I fall on the floor in a tizzy. Crazy hysterics tickle me into a giddy rage.

I am a crazed fool.

I have lost the taste for judging right from wrong.

My flesh has turned to fur and my thoughts they surely were, turned to instinct and obedience to God.

My lungs expand and contract with the pact I made, to just keep breathing. An endless maze of vessels pump cells to each, his own finish line.

For this body elapses with time. A blink. A breath. A wink. A tear.

I have been to the brink, scaled cliffs in my affections. A wolf to the pack, I have etched a fine crack in society’s finest china.

I no longer care what they think, for time is of the essence and I no longer lay my luminescence upon such petty parties. No room for cracked china in this cabinet of mine.

This quilt of lessons is expanding with each tick, a stitch. The details are in the fabric. My thoughts are made of static cling. Zing.

I could say that life is like a marathon. But I’ve run my share of marathons. I’ve not run my share of lives. Knives carve ticks into this stump of mine. Tally marks on tree trunks. Round and round we go. Rings are years gone by. Unbreakable chains of captivity. For time is but a bondage that I have broken free of. Shackles lie wrested on the ground. Cold toes on the cold floor.

Running is a mind game. A twittering ninny reeling inside a mind controlling. This foot, then that. Tit for tat. Repetitive motions bring comfort with depletion. The game becomes a war, I de-clare war. Cards flipping over to reveal the deal. You can’t read my poker face in this race of pain and devastation.

Emotions sink deep into a catacomb alone. Hooked on catatonics were the phonics they fostered through my childhood. Solitary confinement with batches of books as my consignment. I run away everyday, from the woman I’d become.

My furry skin the color of a pearl, seeks company in a forest of imagination. Svelte pelts of love and lust adorn this frame of mine. A picture of catastrophe, a beautiful disaster.

In five years time, I might not know you, and in five years time, we might not speak. It has been two weeks and still the sun shines, however meekly. The light dances upon my skin, and when the sun runs, so the rain remains, dancing all the same.

Running, running as fast as we can, they can’t catch us for we are now gingerbread men. Sweet and evasive. Abrasive with our neglect.

As you choose where the ticks on your clock fall, so I choose mine. Your ticks talk me into corners. My ticks are embedded in your skin, and so your skin turns to fur and all your thoughts, they surely were, turned to instinct and obedience to God.

And now we both are aligned, designed to walk and run.

People try to equate. And deduce. Reducing my existence to the size of a pin, stuck into a cushion that is a world evolving and revolving around a sun that emits a light I cannot fathom, a light that I can only hope to channel, remotely into the darkest of nooks. Invading. Pervading your every cell. Prison bars lie bent and broken beneath this brilliantly resilient light.

About face. Have a taste of humble pie. I’ve eaten most but left some bits for your bubbly mouth, for we all could use a bite of this pie I’ve talked about.

Ticks keep tocking, flocking to some Neverland where they will never be known again. Feet beating. Hearts jump starting, igniting with the power of the sun.

Life is but a race, keep pace. Draft off those in front. And laugh at those behind. You are where you are supposed to be, freely floating in this chasm of design.

Contemplate. Meditate. Create.

Three acts of God glistening. For this world is not ours. Nor are we our own. We belong to something bigger. I still use a jigger to sling drinks as I measure the liquor that makes me sicker with each sale made in the shade of a night club pounding. I’ll drink this glass of lemonade in the shade of this tree that is bigger than me.

For we all are running aimless-ly until we discover our purpose in Christ.

You run your race and I’ll run mine, for I know not space and time.

I only pretend.

Junk.

Trash. Such bad connotations. When really, trash is the epitome of beauty. Something, some item, used for its purpose, used up, used until it is no longer useful, and then discarded.

Isn’t this the story of life?

The meaning of life?

We use and are used.

Pawns in this game. Our interactions with the world around us have the ability to crumple us up and toss us in the gutter.

And what better place to lie? At peace and content, knowing that we have served our purpose, that our usefulness has fully coincided and collided with and to the measure of the Master plan.

Garbage. Anything but garbitrary. Garbage doesn’t happen on a whim. You think before throwing. There is choice involved. And though you chose to throw, it was caught by the hands of this land where it will be valued beyond your capability, mulched into the earth withstanding time as we know it.

Refuse. All that is refuse has been refused. Denied. Cast away. Made to play another day in the muck and the mire.

Litter. Encapsulating all trash, garbage, refuse. Litter constitutes ownership. And henceforth consequences. Something deemed to be trash has fallen from deep within your palms, and therefore you will pay.

Trash is a teenaged boy, tall, scrawny, a little rough around the edges. He’s been to hell and just got back. His hell is the bottom of the can. Covered in slop, mopped off the brow, who knows how, but he’s back. Back with some lessons learned, ready to spurn some folks on toward love and good deeds, for he, he is the epito-me, me, of beau-ty.

Garbage is a bit on the rounder side. Rotund. Speech is a bit garbled, but he’s brilliant, resilient, nonetheless. A middle aged man forgotten due to his lack of voice, or choice for that matter. Because he can’t speak well, his presence is condemned to hell, the sound of a bell, resounds in his absence. You pushed him out. Released him from your hands. But he finds value outside of you. You do not define him.

Refuse is delicious. Eye candy. Irresistible. The tall, dark, and handsome sort. Paradoxical. He says one thing but means another. Toys with you. And in the same way let’s himself be toyed with. You will not let him in and he will not let you in. Refusing to love. Refusing to be loved. Bars on the doors. Lids on the cans. Denied. And in denial. No is the word, the favored word. A no man is a safe man. Protected by the stiff lines of the N, the unbreakable chain of the O.

Brothers they are. Fathered by Litter. A litter of lessons belonging to the Master. Because He is their Creator, the consequences of their misgivings become His own. He absorbs them without thought. And loves them nonetheless.

The boys grew up without a mother. Scattered about this earth with smatterings of solemnity. Serious. Dignified in their approach to life. Their names self-proclaimed later in life. They lived to love. Although scarred by absence, pain was the flame that lit the world, ignited it with their love.

Until society beat them down. Shoved them into boxes. Into gutters. Into cans. Trash too tall, too skinny. Garbage too garbled and fat. Refuse too beautiful, too perfect. Never enough, or always too much.

A happy medium for this world does not exist.

The people of this planet will centrifugally spin you about until there is no core left within you. They will glare you into the gutter. They will talk you into the nearest trash can. They will envy you into episodes of egregiousness.

You are not who you think you are. According to society’s rigid lines of who you should be. Who you’re supposed to be. You are not right. Nor will you ever be.

They chose new names as a means of breaking the back, attack, BOOM! KACK!, cracked open the egg of Doom. Doom being the name of this mortal world.

By naming themselves according to society’s perceptions, they would play a part in breaking the back of convention. Trash grabbed a chisel. Garbage grabbed a dull steak knife. And Refuse whipped out a hatchet. Together the three would cut the legs out from under a monster, cut the head off a giant, leaving nothing but the trunk of a beast, throbbing, aching, begging forgiveness from the many it had banished for being. Simply being.

The journey is long. It is arduous. There will be pain, but there must with it be perseverance. For what is perseverance but persistence beyond severance.

For we are often cut to pieces. Crumpled. Boxed. Beaten. Bruised. Belittled.

We must all learn to sew. To endure the needle.

We pick ourselves up and become patchwork quilts of lessons learned.

Litter loved prodigally. Wastefully and extravagantly. Those boys grew up without a mother, but were graced with a Father that knew no bounds. The consequences of His love are not known for they are Trash, Garbage, and Refuse.

Be always contrary to what they will think. What they will say.

Take the world by storm in breaking the norm. Become a form adorned with unconventional beauty. Whether crumpled, withered, sharp, sleek, oblique, you are antique with value beyond measure.

For though you may lose sight, your almighty Kite will fight amidst plight. You stand feet planted on this mortal playground but a taut string ties you to heavenly realms. His vibrant colors alight your skies.

Grab your hatchet, your chisel, for the love of all things bohemian, grab your dull fucking steak knife and get to hacking, for society is but a pie, begging to be eaten. Every last morsel.

Know this. The world has been Littered with Love, undoubtedly so. Thank you kind Father for denying consequence, enduring sufferance, commanding with belligerence, and granting us deliverance.

We will lie in this gutter proclaiming what is ours. Sweet Sweet Victory.

Use and be used.

Refuse.

Tangled.

The nail polish was called hot sauce. Sassy red. Fresh on her toenails. She was just about to slip into her size sevens. Lookin’ cute in her open toes. She would often put her shoes on first, before getting dressed, because she liked to walk around naked in her heels for a bit. For some reason she felt empowered that way. Free and sexy. So desirable.

She wiggled her way into her size three dress. The halter one. With the ruffle down the deep V. Ruffles say I want to play.

She bent over, flipping her hair in front so she could tie the bow just so at the nape of her neck. She grabbed the lotion. It was cold on her supple skin. She liked it. Crushed cherries and almonds enveloping her freshly washed up body.

It had been just barely six months since she’d flopped belly up on shore. She got lost in her head one day and found herself floating on a boat. In the ocean. Aimlessly.

We’ll all float on okay.

Her boat beached. Body washed up. The girl that found her there, celestial, took her home.

A budding friendship, sparked by a tortured soul. Out of darkness bloom roses of white.

Celestial was Bee. Tortured was Olive.

Bee had been out of college for a couple years now. Buzzing around this whimsical life, she had a bubble about her, not an all-inclusive mind on me bubble, but one that swallowed all those who came near. Her positive attitude contagious. Smiles beaming always. Her voice had a lilt. Honey on her lips. Her giggle, her giggle would catapult you out of depression and into meadows teeming with break-dancing fairies and ribbon-dancing unicorns.

She had magic in her touch.

Olive had been pickled in the juices of a horribly fucked up family. Her mind raped. Her body trespassed. She lost her will to live somewhere back in a dark bedroom, shivering under a dirty sheet. Her face void of expression. Heart locked up in a brittle cage. Frozen.

Her eyes were holes in the earth.

The party was for Olive’s twenty-fifth birthday. It was a mid-summer night and the air was like warm cotton candy. Sticky, but somehow soft with its caress.

Bee had gone too far for this party. A bit overboard. Olive hadn’t a clue at the magnitude of this extravaganza. All she knew was the attire. A black and white affair.

Olive’s dress was black. Bee’s white. Two parts of a whole. Both darkness and light.

The party was a tornado of torrential happiness. Swirling the two into a tunnel and then up, out, into the air, where they floated for awhile. Buoyantly thriving on a friendship the two of them never knew existed.

It was extravagant. The party. Comparable to a wedding. The union of two individuals in perfect fratrimony. Guests were dressed in black and white but the decorations were all vibrant colors of the rainbow. Glassy eyes reflecting shades of light.

It seemed Olive’s gloopy juices of darkness would swallow Bee’s warmth, her positive energy. But alas, darkness only serves to amplify light.

The party was full of Bee’s friends and family, and even some strangers. Olive thought it quite strange to invite strangers, but Bee, Bee couldn’t have cared less about it all. People need people. And so she invited all of those that bumped into her bubble.

Bee was a bumbler, but not in the sense of being so clumsy, she was a bumbler in a manner of humming. No matter where she flitted, a hum would fly. People noticed her. Flocked to her. Her hum flew out like a net, alighting on those nearby. Strangers unknowingly fell privy to her joyful contagion.

And so she invited. And so strangers were innocuously infected. Light and energy intravenously injected through her electrical touch. Her hum like a current, her selflessness shocking.

Olive tried to remain social at the party. Tried to come outside of her box. Shove herself into the circles of others. It still felt strange. To talk to people. To smile. To laugh even. Those last days before the boat, were black. Black like her dress. Memories dissolved beneath the curves of her hips.

She remembered drinking. Tequila. A lot of it. To Kill a Mockingbird. Her favorite book. Tequila Mockingbird. Her own concocted cocktail. Lots of tequila. With Mountain Dew. The Code Red kind. So delightful. Kill this mockingbird.

Code Red. Code Red. Code fucking Red. It always sent her to the floor. This time it sent her to a boat. The boat floated.

But not to her demise.

We’ll all float on okay.

Bee bumbled along on the beach that day. Olive awoke to her humming. The humming brought hope and with it the will to live. The sun shining on her skin brought warmth and with it a whisper, a subtle slight of God to be strong, to be brave. To let go.

As each day goes by, the light strips away the darkness. Layers of an onion. Tears are shed at the intensity. Tears fall. Skin sloughs. Tender is the night. Faithful is the morning.

Bee will never know the immensity of her smile. She unknowingly emits a beam. Walking about life living for others. And like sponges they soak it up.

The party ended. The night came to a close, but not before Bee rallied the crowd for a deep bellied bout of the birthday song. All eyes on Olive. And Olive, never once the center of attention, nearly crumbled beneath the weight of their light eyes. And like a sponge, she soaked it up. Letting her heart fully thaw beneath the warmth of so many smiles.

Then Bee asked Olive to dance. The crowd began to hum. To hum in perfect unison as they doted on the most beautiful image before them. Two parts of a whole. United as one. Dancing in perfect harmony.

Because without one, there cannot be the other.

Tufts.

I once was innocent.

I once had unblemished skin and a naked heart.

A baby. Both soft and sweet. Gerbering. Giggling. Slobbering. Slippering.

That was before I ran away to be a sword eating, flame-throwing hermaphroditic mime in the circus of denial.

People always say that money can’t make you happy. Can’t solve your problems.

I lie in tufts of it. Letting the sweet kisses of dead presidents caress my cracking skin.

I used to wear polos. I still wear polos. Reminiscent of composure.

Shit figured out. Collar popped. A starchy statement. I am who I say I am. Nothing more. 

Somewhere along this cracked up sidewalk, I learned that today is all I have. Today is a freshly sharpened sword awaiting battle. I eat these swords like Pop Rocks. Prickling on my tongue. Belly full of weapons. Days gone by. Each dagger, a lesson awaiting regurgitation, onto some unsuspecting ninny. Someone who’s forgotten. Today.

Yesterday is a defeated Goliath. Headless. Gutted. No more. Can’t go back now. Ghosts of yourn dissipate in today’s resilience. Forget yesterday. It’s back is broken. Crumpled.

Tomorrow is nothing but a fragment. Twisted imagination. Void of promise. Plans for nicompoops. Indubitably, the Master will wave his ribbon-dancing wand, and your plans will slither away, to tremble under the bathmat. Soggy and worthless.

I once was innocent. That was before I became a subversive little prick, acquiring a PhD in bullshit, scraping artery walls, choking off life.

Let me tell you the story.

This is a picture of me at fifteen months. Pacifiers. We’ve all got them. Mine used to be literal. Now the myriad are figurative. They pay a storage fee to sit inside my mouth. Let me tell you about them.

I dreamt inside bubbles of tomorrows. I would grow up to be a firefighter. Rescuing the lives of others. Endangering my own to preserve another. Selfless. Self. Less. Every morning I would pry myself out of the brittle cage that was my body. Self outside of self. So that I might pitch this cage into burning buildings. Without thinking twice. And then one day a beam fell.

Crushed.

I would never walk again.

A crimson curtain enveloped me. The fire I once lived to fight, lapped at my ankles, snaking up my whole lower half. Gnawing away at my composure.

The issue was not the cold hard steel of the wheelchair.

The issue was the bleakness of the future.

Life without legs.

I acquired a daily routine. Mundane. No job. No hobbies. No friends. Just one-sided conversations with the television.

I’d awaken every morning at 7am. Shocked out of the darkness of deep rest. Body seized up. Contorted. Ravaged by the ghosts of tomorrow. Misery seeks company. Here I am beckoning. As the sun rises on the world, it neglects my papery skin. It neglects. No, I neglect. Myself.

I wake up every morning and I lie there. Rotting in my own cloudy visions of what this day will bring. A glimmer of hope flickers on the ceiling each new day. The glimmer that gets me out of bed. I chuck my dead legs over the edge. Hoist myself into the chair. And roll myself out to the television.

And there I live. Die. Dwell. In chasms of wretched depression.

I rarely eat.

I feel the gift of speech slowly being leeched from this swollen tongue of mine. Tongue swollen with words. Words that can’t get out. Won’t get out. Puncture with a needle and let the words ooze out. But no.

I am a pussy. A pussy with a penis. The fear ropes me into a cubicle. Boxed up. The fear chokes all remnants of life out of my feeble body.

Like a hot air balloon growing plump with the gas, so my body gets fat with aloofness.

I don’t give a fuck about this dastardly life of mine. All I think about is the compost heap of yesterdays that never got mulched into my dead garden of todays.

And then it hit me.

Then something happened one day while I was wasting in front of the television, literally. Warm piss dribbling down my dead chicken leg. Watching the Game Show Network. Siphoning off some demented form of hope from the right answers I shout at the cold glass. The pacifier of morbid self-pity just plopped out of my mouth.

Some eerie voice in the dark hallway shouting at me.

“You only have today little fucker.”

God wouldn’t call me a fucker. Would He? I guess I deserve it though.

No. Banish self-pity. Cast it off like dead skin. Sloughed. All for naught. Yards of twine heaped on the carpet. Days of a life forgotten.

No day but today.

This moment. In this moment. Call it an epiphany. Call it the transcendent light of Christ glowing upon my skin, thought bubbling my brain into pure and utter ecstasy. This day is all I have.

Fuck it, I’m goin’ for a ride.

And so I roll to the closet. Don a stale yellow sweater, with a polo underneath. Collar un-popped. Composure. With no arrogant undertones. I am who I say I am. Nothing less.

I am an invalid. With hope bright shining as the sun. For I know not what I’ve done, nor what I am about to do. I know this moment. This day. And that is all.

And here I am at the threshold. The dark hovel of a home lies behind, with nothing but the light of the world in front.

I once was innocent.

And I am innocent once more. The crimson curtain of despair has been torn. The crimson blood of Christ cleanses my sooty soul.

For grace abounding rains upon me. Reigns upon me.

I am undeserving. And yet He calls me by name.

Beckoning me out into cement meadows, where butterflies of urban sounds alight on the cusps of my ears. Colors. Magical colors pierce my retinas.

For today is a gift to me.