I run my fingers down your chest

Top to bottom, never rest

Waiting still, we’re in a stare

Your fingers twirl right through my hair

Breathing slow, there is no rush

As both our cheeks are in a blush

Heart to heart, and face to face

I am here for your embrace

And after all our dirty deeds

You act as if I’m all you need

But need, it changes by the day

So that is just the price I pay.

I was a shadow,

Walking amongst all that were breathing in polluted air

And spraying as they spoke whispers,

While ordering chocolate covered strawberries just for the…strawberries

And they went knocking on opened doors

And choked at the word “fairytale,”

Wearing knee-high socks in the summer and skirts that dragged in the mud.

I was a shadow,

And I only followed what I thought was right;

It was normal to burn toast in a new toaster

And drop pennies into dried up wells,

Sing John Mayor in crowded alleyways while praying for unsaturated clouds

On, ironically, the most clear day of the year.

But I was mislead,

Because what they all thought was so wonderful turned out to be so wrong,

And I slipped away because, frankly, who would want to deal with that?

I was a shadow

But I’ve made my own mark,

Now that I’m no longer a dark spot in all that has potential to be…bright.

Alone

I eat beer-battered chicken in the dark,

Listening to U2 streaming through cream-colored speakers

On a couch where the pillows are flat and the corduroy is worn.

The TV buzzes on blueish purple on Video 3,

Though there’s no tape

And the window blows against webbed panes

And through little cracks in the drywall.

The floor creeks though the only one’s walking are ants.

I try to fall asleep but the though of you alone in this world

Makes me whoozy.

I choke on greesy skin and make coffee with last Christmas’ beans,

Staring at a rusty reflection.

I move to the wooden rocking chair and pray that no one’s really

Taken you away from me.

Alone.

It was a tradition of ours- going to my grandmother’s house every Christmas Eve to eat dry seafood and burnt pies with the filling crusted over. Her dining room always had an unwelcoming  light and everyone was sort of stiff and uncomfortable. It took almost the whole night to get one of us to laugh, and once we did it was almost like we were one of those families you see on television. Of course, the happiness and laughing was always forced. Still, I loved when my parents drove me home and I’d look out the window at the dirty snow and fall asleep. The next thing I knew, it’d be Christmas and I’d be waiting in the living room for my parents to get up. I always opened one present and left the rest of the wrapped ones under the tree until my father took it down. I stashed those presents in my closet, deep down somewhere, to be opened whenever I felt. I stopped doing that a long time ago, stopped going to my grandmother’s house for Christmas Eve too. I forgot what the dark dining room looked like, and couldn’t remember how the pies tasted. I didn’t care, either. I was on my own.