What Hope Is (an excerpt)

I wanted to swim, so you obliged. But when the water reached our hearts you pushed me under and now hold me there, in that place of fading daylight. So I hold my breath, grasping that hand, I won't fight it because I believe in its equal ability to pull me back out. Here I wait with patience in the eve of the moment I'm to live or to die, my fate residing in the strength of the hand holding me under. And that, my dear friend is what hope is in its rawest and rarest form.

~"If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”~

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3 Scene 3

The Story of Herm

When I was a kid I had this imaginary friend named Herm. I don't even know why I named him that, he was just Herm. I never told anyone about him. Whenever he was around I never pointed him out or talked about him because I wanted him all to myself, I was never going to share Herm. He was my best friend. When you don't have friends, you make them up. Herm and I used to build things. I was determined to build a town in my basement out of these cheap cardboard blocks that my parents had originally bought for my brother, but he never used them. Herm and I never finished because there weren't enough blocks. Now I look back and see that there really was no excuse for that, I should have found something else, anything else in the basement that I could have used to continue the buildings in our town. Herm was gone though, and we never really got to finish what it was we said we were going to do together. Every once and a while I get a real friend like Herm. We dream things we're going to do together and then one day I realize, they're gone, and I never really got to finish. I keep hoping that someday I can finish and finally put the story of Herm to rest.

To Be Set Free

To be set free would be such a wonderful thing.
I could see trees and stars and sun in spring,
I would be everything, everything he wanted me to be,
I would be strong, I would be passionate,
I would throw my whole life away for his dreams.
That's the way I want to be free,
I want to give everything.
But at night I walk alone,
I see his face and then I'm home.
He doesn't see what I could be,
He's too worried that I'm not free,
He doesn't know he holds the key.
Yes, to be set free
Would be a wonderful thing,
Too bad he'll never quite get to me.

October Tuesday (Excerpt)

~I love trying to imagine what I will do with my tomorrow, trying to actually script it. When I get exhausted thinking of all the glorious things I'm going to do with my day, somehow the script gets thrown out and the actors are all asked to improvise when the play starts. Nevertheless, I constantly find myself lying in some field wearing the wrong costume, reading the wrong book, and considering that maybe that's what eternal nothingness is.~

In The Hourglass

And so they fell apart.
Through the center of the hourglass tumbles she
he, at the top, her, the bottom
she gazes up at him,
envy and undying love bury her in silence and block his image.
She suffocates in the grains of her empty dreams, clinging to hope which still lingers.
But she knew, as always,
it was only a matter of time.

Inside Out

A mirror in the dark can unlock a certain gateway and introduce yourself to a new face, a person you've never met before. Stare into a mirror in a dark room and find yourself, the way you were meant to see yourself. The memory of that image which I cannot bear to see creates a parallel universe system, one in which I dress with a smile and another, deep inside me, where I live in constant fear. It's just my face, but there is something deeper than that hiding in it's dark image as if it were my very own soul staring back at me. I fear that effigy of me so much that I must refuse meeting its glare with everything in me. The reality of who I am and what I've done to those around me creates a terminal fear that is deeply manifested so that it haunts my daydreams.