Time has caught me sleeping over sixty years, or so it seems. For I am an old woman now, my hair gray and brittle and the tips of my brows streaming into my cheeks as I remember tears once doing. I can barely lift my fingers to my lips, in need of touch, though it be my own. These lips once kissed, once bit out of self-doubt, now feel like chipping paint against an iron rail. They are not worth the struggle of my hand.I am eighty-five today.

Eighty-five candles stand lit against my pupils, their flames strangely calm, unwavering. They seem to stand alone, suspended in air. There is no cake, only fire and wax."Happy Birthday." I hear a small voice say. The voice is not my own, though familiar. I have heard this voice before. Have I spoken? No, my lips have not moved. Have I gone mad?

I sense her body moving toward my own, the energy of one living body nearing another. And instantly, she has me. I am hers. I accept her without a struggle. She feeds me and bathes me and tells me stories of the world outside my window.

"The rose bush is in bloom," she says, "You know, the one we planted when all our loved ones died." She says it's beautiful, a deep red in petals and reaching past the trelace. I scarce know what she means. I cannot see the roses. Therefore, I do not believe. Yet I do believe in death. I feel its hurt and its pain so close to my heart, as if it's taken refuge within me.She wipes my cheek as if to smooth a tear, but her finges remain dry.

"You have not cried in weeks," she states. "That is good."She smiles, and although she says she loves me, I do not fully trust her. Why am I so old? Why can I not recall my youth, yet recall what youth feels like with longing? This woman by my bedside holds it in her skin, so tight it cannot escape, so close that I can see it, feel it, breathe it in.

"What happened to the stars?" I ask. It is the first thing I have spoken in weeks. I have caught her off guard. But then her face, though exhausted, brightens.

"They still exist," she smiles. She seems to find pleasure in my joy squandered.I look to the window or where I think a window should be.

"Open the blinds," I offer, "I'd like to see them." Her teeth meet her lower lip and her eyes grow narrow. It is a look of panic I've only ever seen from the ghosts beyond my bedroom door.

"No. It's too early, I'm afraid. We'll wait until the sun goes down. Then we'll see the stars."

I must accept this for I can feel my skin settle into the creases of the bedsheets, how seamlessly they fit, like my body was made for them.And somehow I know that in our waiting, we wil miss the stars all together, that she'll let me sleep right through the evening, draped in sheets and the darkest blinds.She looks like me, this woman by my bedside, or how I imagine myself to look. I have not seen my face in years. But her skin is smooth, her face tight, and I know somehow that we are different.

I reach for her hand. My breath gasps as I feel it beneath my own. I sense she has stopped breathing."Don't be afraid," I tell her as her knuckles moisten within my hold. Her eyes meet mine bloodshot, her lips quickly cracking like paint chipping on an iron rail, her face growing white and then blue as I swiftly suck the life from her bones.I know that if I leave my hand there, she will die. And maybe if she does-If I find the courage to kill-I will see the world outside my window. I will see the stars. I will see the rose bush in full bloom-the one I planted after all my loved ones died.

I drove with Death straight through the night past caution signs and rest stops poised for the lost. We never stopped, only filled the Jersey Turnpike with exhaust, like blood through living veins. The night was dark but darker still was she, her black cloak draping the passenger's seat and licking the window for release.

"Where is it we're going?" I asked, but she did not reply. She did not even glance my way. The silence was louder than I had ever heard it, as if the volume on the radio had been turned completely up and only static filled the airwaves. I thought, "Surely I could go mad in this."

"I've stayed with you," I tried to reason. "I could have left you long ago." But it was only my anger that tapped my ears to boiling red, only the deprivation of reason that kept me going further and further into darkness.

Before I knew it, I was passing a hundred miles per hour with the rubber sole of my sneaker nearly dripping hot like candle wax onto the floormat. I could not see a thing. The road signs had seemingly disappeared. The world as I knew it had disappeared. I turned the knob for the high beams but they would not give. Click-click. Click-click. Nothing. My fingers turned frantic as if those lights would gain me clarity and salvation. Click-click. Click-click-and the headlights shown bright ahead, seeping into the fog. It was then I saw them, the carcasses lining either side of the highway, creatures I had never seen before. "My God," I spilled forth, and choking on the foul air, gasped for each breath like a fish slapping the hot boards of a dock.

"What of your god?" Death snapped as one by one a new creature fell from nothing, their bones splitting on the concrete. I turned away for just a moment toward Death, who did not flinch one bit, but remained stoic, unaffected.

"Are you doing this?" I panicked. But silence, once again.

"Answer me!" I screamed in desperation. "I've seen you look at others. But you've never once glanced my way. Why am I so different? Why won't you look at me?"

"Child," she spoke and the word felt like the cleanest sword piercing straight through my stomach; a pain almost pleasant in its severity. "Can't you see? I do not need to look your way because you have never once taken your eyes off of me. You are mine. There is nothing I need do."

It was one of those nights when no amount of sweating or bathing could release the demons from her soul or cleanse her skin of their stench. She had realized that very afternoon that most of her life thus far had been spent spinning fantasies, like a record that continuously circled a needle and yet, never produced a single sound. She sat on the toilet seat in a towel, her dark hair dripping tears of water down her shoulders. A Q-tip rested in her mouth like a cigarette, the cotton end drinking from the tip of her tongue. She would later question how it had found its way there before tossing it in the waste basket at her feet. She was only twenty-five, though an urgency gripped her. Somehow, she thought, she was running out of time.

She dangled there with no restraints, like a stone swirling and sinking to the bottom of a lake. “Is this illusion?” she thought; the ability to float in time and space without gravity or the pull of ones hand within her own, to safety or constraint.

She had dreamed of this moment since she was fourteen, this complete freedom of will and being she could never define. If only she could box it, constrain it for her own pleasure and use.

But it is not hers and it never has been and it never will be. It is a fading vision, a mere illusion caught for a brief moment in the gaps of consciousness.

The Pity Queen

Madeline ripped the sheets from the king-sized bed, the two metal posts staring at her from beyond the pillows, which depicted the faces of a king and a queen. Her husband had been a blacksmith, a talented craftsman, who had been forced to vanquish his art for another man’s fire and steel. For twenty-three years he had toiled, pushing buttons, as a machine did the work his calloused hands had once performed.
He was dead now. Everyone said he would most likely die before his wife. Stress had grayed his hair and work had grinded down his joints. He was like a stone continually sanded in the rolling tide, growing smaller with each new moon.

“The poor guy,” his sister would lament and,
“It’s a shame. He could’ve really done something with his craft,” a family friend would comment.

And Madeline, over time, began to feel insignificant.

“What about me?” she wanted to say. “I clean and cook and I’ve raised three children. Could I not have been more?”

She was grateful for her husband’s income. She was not resentful of his manhood or even his occasional late nights out with buddies from high school who had since divorced and were on the prowl. Questions of infidelity never once placed a skip in her day to day. And yet, she despised his pity; the pity others wrapped in silver foil and presented to him like a chicken dinner while she remained starved for attention. She could smell him still on the sheets, the scent of Old Spice aftershave mixed with the sweat of chronic nightmares, which now laid crumpled and subdued on the carpet. She missed him and so began to cry.

But this was what she wanted, was it not?

The ambulance and police sirens would soon trumpet through the glass windows of her house, causing her to shake for just a second before regaining the certitude of her actions.

"Woman Brutally Stabs Husband in Their Bedroom" tomorrow’s paper might read. Everyone will surely read it in bold letters on the front page. How could they possibly miss it?

“I thought she loved him,” a close neighbor will say before quiet contemplation and then, “There must have been more going on there than we could see…the poor woman.”

Madeline wiped the tears from her right cheek with her hand, allowing her husband’s blood to leave it rosy. “Ironic,” she thought, “how even his blood smells metallic.” A smile crept upwards to her ears while she fantasized the outcome of her decision; as she fantasized the pity that would be solely hers at last.

So I'm trying to figure out the purpose of this whole blog thing. I've never been good at keeping diaries, though I sure tried. My sister, Brianne, and I shared a room growing up and she would spend a half hour before bed each night, scribbling ravenously in her diary while I laid back reading the latest Calvin and Hobbes. I always envied her dedication. Yet, everytime I tried to do the same, I'd look back on the week to find nothing but mundane lists of what I had eaten, the things I had done, and reasons why on one particular day, I was certain of the pure hatred my siblings held for me. I began acquiring stacks of barely used diaries; the blue one with the basset hound sporting a party hat on the front cover, the one with the leprachaun holding a spyglass, the plain white one that I bookmarked with a self-breast examination instructions card...These were all books my grandma had picked up at the 99 cent store and doled out over the course of birthdays and christmases and st. patrick's days. I just never found my life exciting enough to write about. Brianne, on the other hand, had boys lining up, desiring a brush of her hand or an awkward hello at youth group Wednesday nights. I know this because I read her diary. I still remember the gold lock and the code, which involved the Hallmark crown symbol. 7, 2, 4, crown, 5. These were also the days of reading Anne Frank's diary in school, which as we all know, as far as diaries go, rocks. I quickly realized that if my diary was going to make any impact, be an exciting page turner for anyone, say hundreds of years from now or tomorrow, I would have to make crap up. It began with made up crushes and fist fights with neighborhood kids, but with each entry, the tales became less and less realistic. I travelled to Russia and Brazil to nurse sick babies and play professional basketball before having a sordid affair with a Tahitian male prostitute in the Galapagos Islands. My fake life was spinning out of control. I was pregnant with said male prostitute's baby and struggled with the idea of abortion before becoming addicted to marijuana and losing the baby in childbirth. This was all before the age of 13. So, I don't think this will be used as a diary persay, but more of an outlet to share the characters and stories inside me: my schizophrenic self, whether true or make-believe, here I am...walking into blacklight.