AlisaTamna

i.        Night comes once again and her lashes only flutter. Her eyes do not close. She is as predictable as the cycle of the moon. Oh, come sacred Sleep! Steal through her window and bless her with a nepenthean kiss. Let her dream serenely till her mind is quiet and her limbs are loosened and let her not wake for days. However, inspiration sinks its claws in her and she awakens before she can drop her guard and surrender. The pen she clutches looks more like an extension of her gaunt hands that have no time to waste when seizing notebooks off the nightstand. Pens can never keep up with the quickness of her thoughts. Whe

You used to tell her she had bird bones— it was only a joke, but you would hold her tightly so she could not fly away. Now you carry starlings in your pockets to feel their little hearts fluttering much like hers did when you lay your head upon her chest, heart beating the way yours did, before she flew away with it as you always knew she would. Tonight you are haunted by a swan with a broken neck. It is a dream, just a nightmare, but you know that it is her... She has returned to you decked out in feathers, choking on a heart, and you're frightened as hell at how god damn beautiful she is in broken symmetry, but you find relief in

     You told me once the rain on the rooftop disturbed your slumber, not from the storm, but from the rhythm in the chaos. The thunder was discordant among the count you tried keeping.    At night you’d wake breathless, not from nightmares, but from crushing claustrophobia, even when you were alone. You said the darkness felt so heavy, that it sat on your chest and tried to eat you alive. Mouth to mouth I’d bring you back, entwined, you’d share your dark and I would share a spark of life. And long did you lament the earth’s rotation for not allowing light to reside always on your part of the world.        Sometime

     There is a fisherman sitting on a rock by the shore; his forlorn grey eyes watching grey clouds rolling over apathetic grey waves, and beyond, a grey horizon. He sits with empty hooks, empty nets, empty stomach, wrapped in layers of clothes like broken shutters that do not keep the chill out. Young and tan, he is, skin chapped by the wind, broad shouldered and well muscled from breaking his back dawn to dusk. That must be all he knows, a grey life of work and water. Fisherman, fisherman come to the shore, and I will meet you there. I am velvet, I am smooth. Oh fisherman, come down to the water. Slinky Silky Selkie. Fisherman, fisherm

You made me paper cranes, gave me birds that couldn't fly. I tried to teach you origami, but your hands were clumsy and you preferred to cut than fold. You stapled together pieces with glaring metal stitches; it wasn't art, but surgery on something we both knew was dead. Your signature, ligature marks in bleeding ink scratched in the corners, nearly indecipherable; the words "hate" and "love," they always read the same to me (however it was written.) I tried to teach you how to fold a heart to place your love inside. "I love you" (deep) inside... But your hands were clumsy, and they crumpled each attempt. So you made me birds to se

We lovers are blessed, we lovers are flawed, we adore words of honeyed devotion, for, when in love we are easily awed and miss the candy coated deception. Romantics will find their sweet teeth rotten, strange, how we can fall in love with the lie, but we poor lovers have an addiction, and a craving that we must satisfy. From a love whose honesty none deny, or the lips of a silver tongued devil, we need words of love or our hearts will die; insecure, but reassured we'll revel. With fear and hope, we are always searching for true acceptance and love with meaning.

I die when you die, Such was the impetus,         Cyclically I die every year. True I'm a fantast, Somnambulantly going through life With your voiceprint and visage Ubiquitously living And wakeful In my mercurial mind. Dead to the world, I sleepwalk endless miles, A shadow amongst shades, Searching for you In memories colored darkly To bring you home. When I find your hand To pull you into my world, Back where you belong You disappear, Slipping through my fingers Like smoke in the air. And as I cruelly wake, Cyclically you die yet again.

She is the raven at my door, unmoved, her eyes are hard as stones, crying never, never more, collecting on my debt of bones. "Never!" she screams, hands in my skin, the woman whom I call Lenore. Her accusing fingers tighten around my bones; she whispers, "more." "More is due me, you must pay more, there is no hope now to atone. You left me nameless on a Plutonian shore - never can you pay your debt of bones."

Hereditary.        I learned the meaning of the word when I was young on a summer afternoon. Too hot to play outside, I was sitting with my dad on our blue couch with the small white polka dot fabric. In retrospect, it was probably a tacky piece of furniture, but love is unconditional when you are small, and I sure did love that couch. I remember my dad watching Winnie the Pooh with me every Saturday morning on its spotted cushions. That day, though, we had a conversation about eyes that I never forgot, and even then, its deeper meaning was not lost on me.        "Daddy, your eyes are green like a cat's," I said. He smiled, and told me t

     The oracle gave me a fortune cookie that was as stale as her smile when she wished me good luck with the rest of my life. I came here for answers, but the words on the paper read, "Get used to disappointment." Oh, I am. Bitterly.      I am writing you an elegy, but the trammels of grief have caught me too well and my words are all stutters. Answers are needed. I stepped in melancholy somewhere along the way, it's still stuck to my shoes and I don't even know who I am anymore. I can't forget the pain and I can't remember how to live.      Mnemosyne, I brought a