[x]

strings of pearls and breathunderwater they are mermaids. patterns of poolwater-caught sunshine dancing in soft-edged white upon their long legs (tails). red hair like ocean fire and fingers ever reaching for the bubbles, like pearls but from out their mouths. darting up between their fingers.

there are places here, beneath here, beneath the sound of their mother yelling at their father and the loud rough of the neighbour’s dog’s bark, where they can breathe. breathe the dead leaves in water whirlpools beneath their feet and breathe the chlorine, leaving eyes red and hair green at the tips. breathe the quiet of their bodies and their imagined underwater world

dear diary, today i diedshe's a ghost of a girl in the mirror. dark hair tangles like weeds below her shoulders and cuts at grey eyes. harsh shadows don't leave her with a skeleton like she sometimes hopes, but she feels it in her mind. feels the sharp edges and the trembled fragility, the silent cry for another's flesh and that outward plea of don't break me. cold fingers make love to cold glass while the sky cries over and over for sun.

this afternoon death made to kiss her lips but missed. he'd come so close she now knows what nothing doesn't feel like and she cannot fear it. it's a blankness so removed from consciousness she cannot reach it with thought- but sh

before, beforei am only just thirteen. he is sixteen. i am in love/lust/crush.

my best friends big brother, or friends ex boyfriend, is tall. once or twice i imagined kissing him. but he never would. he is friends with the boy who is sixteen. and besides he is my best friends big brother or my friend's ex boyfriend. and i am not a bad person.

i am tall too, you know. i am stretched skyward but there was no more to stretch, just bone. so i am not really that tall at all. but i pretend i am. how tall are you? oh above average, you know, pretty tall.

the brother says want to come and see j? and my heart leaps and i sing yes but he only hears a nod and ther

intoxicationi see naked bodies in the gutter as i walk queen street at 3 am. they make love, awkward but warm in the concrete curve. i don't place their clothes. i think it is wonderful though. the heat, the heat.

my entire body is rolling from heavy to light, like the shore. my head is humming and my limbs ache dull. there is a sickness in my stomach or in my throat. i think that maybe my stomach is wanting to force itself out my throat- but i won't have that.

i walk further. there are no straight lines to follow but i picture them in my mind and still cannot walk across them. i trip, tumble on the edge of the pavement and no one sees. the alcohol pul

lilyat cliff edge my darling dances, tiptoes and windswept honey-gold hair. i say, 'my sweet come to daddy, come here princess, you're scaring me.' but that roar of wind is so loud in her ears she sways and looks upon me a moment like i've been only quiet admiring, never calling. she laps in the taste of salty-wave and sand, and she is magic in all her softness. but she is so close and one toe pushes rock downledge and i'm running, oh dear me, i'm running for my darling on the sea cliff, i'm running and i'm all love for her. for her who is me in those eyes and lips, who is me in those smiles. i'm running and she's stopped, standing with her littl

sickDeath slouches over the edge of her bed, licking his lips as he caresses her thighs. He sings the noise of wind and rain crashing all around and her head throbs with the sound. Her head is hot. Her forehead is on fire and her cheeks catch alight with it. She burns silently and sees red, red, black.

Tiny insects have crawled beneath her fingernails and they dig with tiny claws and teeth until they are swarming beneath her skin, biting outward at her flesh. Each vertebrae carries bruises and as she tosses her body about the bed they ache loudly and sharply.

All the heat has rushed to her face, her body shakes like a leaf in wind and goosebump

this aprilThe moonlight falls through squinting blinds, bowing softly to hug the arc of his naked body. The blankets are strewn about his toes as a girl, no more than sixteen, lays wide-eyed and warm-bodied beside him.

She silently watches the dreams come and go beneath his eyelids, she quietly feels his chest rise, rise then fall and she listens to the heavy breathing that accompanies it. Beautiful breathing, she thinks, tracing generous lips with fingertips.

The air is cool but she is alight.

Everything in this room bathes in blue shade. She watches the alarm clock beside the bed, numbers coming and going out of fashion before her eyes.

asthmashe smokes marlboro cigarettes with the bedroom door locked. i taste it on her breath, lips and skin everyday after school. her bed is a mattress on the floor. sometimes we make love on it and i wonder if she'd rather have her mouth around a cigarette than me right then. she has asthma too.

she is my second cousin. i didn't know this until two years after we began fucking and three years after i fell for her. i don't think it really matters. emily says if i ever made her pregnant she'd make me punch her in the stomach, heavy and hard. but i never would you know, i love her.

the smoking is killing her. i hid the cigarettes beneath the sink,

the weeds across the street.She’s the little girl with flaxen curls at four pm flouncing down her driveway with her hands buried in her pockets, lips pressed out like she’s whistling. You’ll watch her out your window, with your tea lukewarm on the sill, and splutter a cough; fogging up the glass just enough to miss her smile.

You saw her once, twice eating petals off the roses in your garden. You’ve forgotten how to converse with children, you cussed between the wheezing and she stared right past like you were simply a knurled twig catching the wind in its leaves.

One morning you found her; purple stockings, blush mittens and a head of sunlight cur

of storms and skysee my hair dance wild as wind-strings jerk it about//hear the ocean-wind heave itself against us all- crashing into our eyes and mouth//feel the winter-wind brush our skins in summer//then inhale the heaviness of air and sink through the dirt- because darling, you don’t deserve god’s beautiful violence.

(it drags the tree by its leaves saying kiss your trunk, kiss it and it does; releasing with a snap. the other trees flitter-flutter violently, crying within the cacophony of rain on concrete. white stars fall where light exists, and only sound where it disappears. the sky -the colour of sunburnt skin- watches it all with hunger. a

the fluttered- a collectioni

Hear my joints dislocate, coming apart at the notion of sunlight. It falls and it settles in pictures of loveliness, golden tree branches and hints of leaves; of autumn, of spring.

I am so tall in the water. My legs are never-ending, crooked lines of peachskin- watching my fingers draw out ripples until they strain and buckle and fall into the cool. I’ll touch my toes and loop my figure and I’ll make giant ripples, abhorring fallen leaves and sending shivers of blue through his legs.

It’s a faded crimson red holding my breasts, tugging my hips and leaving my ribcage bare to the current. It’s smudged lipstick and smear

letters from no one.dear someone,

i know you probably don't care.

i know you're probably busy watching tv or dealing with your own problems, or maybe you're busy laughing and chasing butterflies. maybe you spend afternoons in the grass, smelling the sun and tasting life.

maybe you don't have time to worry about me.

but i'm going to pretend you care. i just want someone to hear me, honestly.

i don't expect you to understand or care or even listen.

i'm just hoping that you will.

dear someone,

i guess i should start by telling you that i wish i didn't have to live anymore. free time is spent wondering if there's any way i could possibly suffocate myself.

i

winter heatwaves, love,you wrap yourself in a dapper coat
and a tortoise shell of lies
so you can kid yourself hopes
that i will never catch you out.

i can beat anyone in poker, because people are predictable
but you say "you can't win every time, you can't predict me."

mundane games of scrabble
break way to heaving breathing
my hands graduate from just words to skin,
and the weather patterns in your cheeks
become more erratic and spin wilder.

-

during winter we migrated to the city.
we walked to the shop for morning coffee
and every time you whispered down my neck
i would bottle your cold breath in a jar,

and when you were sleeping and dreaming,
i

love and justice: a blind dateI now prefer
my beauty
nameless
so I can quake
and curse fate
blameless
bereft
of the burden
of discovery

avoiding left by
almost alright with
anonymity

see

once you learn
to love
it's like
riding a bike
and it seems
I never met a liar
that I didn't like
and/or
I love you's
not a sentence
that lasts
for life
or perhaps
(and this
possibility

just occurred
to me)

there's a sort of
painful
parole
obtained through
perjury

so

what's a boy
to fear
when fear's not
what it appears
to be?

how to
intuit an intent
when purpose is
a question
in perpetuity?

you can't feel through fabrictonight the rain becomes the earth
falling from hidden spaces in the sky and swollen clouds
i hear it make mud of dirt, and lovers of friends
and ask, quiet, where are you going but down?

i’m not all there in the head
you’re not all there in the head, my mother says
i’m not all there in the head i repeat
sometimes i’m there in my toes and fingers and heart as well

and now - in this downpour moment- i lie on the street
so warm that i think well that’s where love’s gotten to
but where is your shirt n? oh someplace else
and is that a light flickering in the house across the road? hide!

i rush in soaken w

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easteri'm in the back of the car, sucking my chlorine hair and watching with sleepy eyes out the window. brown dirt is soon ochre and we are nowhere in particular yet. we are going to the atheton tablelands for easter. i fall into a broken sleep on my sister's warm shoulder and when i wake up we are there.

it is nighttime and my cousin is only still a baby and she cries from inside the house (which is really only a very large shed). out of the car the air is like freezer air but fresh and crisp like cold water. my eyes become wide at the rolling of the hills around us, the living green they are, the horse paddocks, the shapely trees. there is a lo

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owl boy

by ~Pretty-As-A-Picture, May 5, 2009, 9:15:52 AM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Short Stories

Light spills like milk from the window. It drips bright upon his face. He is naked, he is the milk spilt from the window to the floor. He is sleeping now.

Sun whistles her breeze in the trees this late August and the birds are drunk with birdsong. He sleeps on through the sound. A quiet, dreaming boy. She kneels and kisses his fingers, soft.

Sun dances, warm and alight, across the sky until she is weary, disappearing with sleep herself. Calling, ‘Moon! Moon! I’m so tired my love, I will fall a moment and sleep’ And he will become her in the sky, following after her until sleep becomes of he, too. And the chase will continue into ‘morrow.

But sun and moon are none, because he wakes. He wakes and he breathes slow like the beach when there is only you to watch. He wakes and the colour leaks behind half-open eyes and he is naked, so very naked this cold now-night.

A clock hand whispers the fleetingness of each moment from the wall and a cat drinks from a fish bowl. The world has stopped outside. There is only he.

But where is she?

She is on the roof. Writing him love notes by streetlight. After, she lies back, making a pillow of her hands and she watches, silent but notso in thought. A neighbour looks and sees she is alone here, under the stars.

Though many nights before they made more than love here. They made much more than love between the warm breathed kisses and her watching the stars fall to earth around them. He does not think, but she feels. Seeds grow in the soil.

And so, she is not alone here.

He cannot find her. He is cold with without and he is calling her name. She is silent a while, and then she is there, against the sky. He is still naked, the neighbour coughs behind now-closed curtains. She is smiling bright. ‘Hello owl boy’ says she. ‘Hello’ whispers he.

They lay back, fingers interlaced. ‘How much do you love me?’ breathes he. ‘More than there are stars in the sky. I couldn’t tell you because there are far too many to count.’ ‘I would count them for you,’ he says ‘I’d do anything for you.’ And she is melting into the tiles of roof.

They are quiet a while and there is only wind.

‘How much do you love me?’ ‘I love you with everything I am and ever will be, with every cell and breath of my being’.

She doesn’t sleep tonight. Awake she dreams of a child of both sun and moon shine and together they breathe love, love, love.

Morning settles over all like a foggy blanket of light and they fall asleep by the milk-spilling window. Sun and moon are one and there is nothing else.

owl boyby ~Pretty-As-A-Picture

Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Short Stories

a little fiction a little non.
this is me with fingers in my throat reaching backward for words.
i'm not sure why i'm writing this way just now.

m, i'm sorry, i'm so sorry, i will write you something special soon, i'm so sorry.

(our love is too magic for words and i'm so tired.)

love 2 2

~~joy 0 0~~

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~~mad 0 0~~

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~bless-you Mar 18, 2010

you must be deeply in love.

warm words, nice to read

~mothfly Sep 2, 2009

romantic

~runningthroughtrafic Jun 1, 2009

and

this is special

~runningthroughtrafic Jun 1, 2009

i love your write ting
its beautiful

~SuperTaate May 21, 2009 Student Writer

absolutely beautiful. this paints so many beautiful pictures....

~JazzJam May 16, 2009

"he breathes slow like the beach when there is only you to watch"

My favorite line because it's beautiful and makes me catch my breath (i have no other words)