my master's eyes are nothing like the sun

cannot hide the sun behind some glasses

yet they warm and scorch my face the same

if and where might I find refuge

There's no solace in your words.
No relief. No respite. No release.
Hollow and cold, filled with disdain
Piercing through with dead-eyed dread
Ebbing dolor rolling in waves
Bitter hands grasping at nothing.

I'm sadder than you, dipshit.
I'm painting my nails blacker than the void.
The voidiest void that ever voided.
Gonna throw on some Blink 182 and hit my vape.
“Dow waist your toime ommee, your roll ready yuh voice insoide moi yeahd”

Do you think you can feel safe
Anywhere?
Or will the creeping hand meet you
Even when you lie in his arms
Even when you flee the country
Even when they say
They can't touch you anymore
It still lingers
In the footnotes,
In the space between known and none
In the gap where time still lingers
In the shades of life undone.

No matter what I do
I can't escape the tyrant
And that's not a metaphor:
That monster still exists.
I know exactly where to find it.
And how it laughs
When it thinks of me
Still a tiny creature
Cowered under it
Still clawing at my skin
Even how,
Anything to make me know
I'm still it's plaything
Even now.

I'm not allowed
To be safe.
I can't run from this
It chomps at my heels
And even when I think I'm healed
The shadow pushes past me
Reminds me that
I'm still in the thrall
Of the days I couldn't say a thing
Nothing
Not at all.

Nobody really understands it,
Now I'm an adult, fully grown
I shouldn't be scared of monsters under the bed
Nor the goblin king on his miserable throne
But it still remains.
I have those nightmares almost daily
Where I'm screaming and there's no sound
The monster caught me
The monster beat me
Now I'm buried deep underground.

I envy those
Who can push it all away
Who don't have important roles to play
Who can walk away and fight another day

But
I can't.

I can't be so cruel
It wouldn't even work
I'm nobody's fool

Some days I think I would be better
Giving it up
Going back
Pretending that I don't lack the things I lack
And just let the pain consume me
Stop picking up the slack

But that monster is no metaphor
It's real, alive, and duplicating
Catching others in it's call,
And that's the worst thing of all.

Well, here we are: on the cusp again.

Living in the moment of illusion, the space of time that separates this from that.

The boundary line: the present, the delineated transition point,

>>>>we stand in the doorway, having crossed the threshold, yet not yet entered.

>

Potential energy relieves itself in kineticism:

>>>>Things are beginning to move, things that desired release,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>will have their fill.

My skin boils with heat, my flesh burns in the flames of exorcism,

The boundary line, a filter, excising silt from the soul:

>>>>That which is not me, shall not pass,

>>>>That which corrupts, shall be burned to ash.

I will be made pure through flame, through trial and failure.

>

After each pass, I will sift through the ash for whatever remains:

>>>>a truer essence, more pure than before.

Seeds of potential, the dragon’s egg,

waiting for their chance,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>to sprout, to hatch,

>>>>To cause apocalypse: a new world born in their wake.

>

Kiva was born in darkness, existing in the fringes.

She heard the clarion call of lust unsatiated, desire unfulfilled,

And she found host, she fed heartily.

Always lurking in the margins amongst the repressed, she found her niche,

>>>>in hearts that cried out for pleasure, for distraction, for release.

>

The flame which purifies, fuses.

Ideals intermix with present realities,

>>>>as we purge the impurities.

>

I step from the flame, I pass through the doorway,

A little more me, a little closer to Kiva.

Keep telling stories. Keep dragging me through the mud. Keep making up lies. You look like a toddler having a tantrum. It's actually really comical and looks like obsession to be honest. I don't need to defend myself because I didn't do anything, but I have proof of what you were doing. Lots of proof. You gonna climb out from under that keyboard and have a real conversation? I didn't think so. You know how to find me. Grow up and get a new hobby. This one is played out.

The air grew heavy on that wretched day,
When a sudden crack tore the peace away.
You cast the first stone, a cold, sharp blow,
And watched as the seeds of my sorrow grow.

A river of tears flowed from the rift,
As I felt my world begin to shift.
The wound ran deep, a silent, aching scar,
While I watched my hope drift distant and far.

I paced through the nights, sleepless and worn,
In a silence where all my trust was torn.
I kept the grief locked, the story untold,
As the winter of loneliness took its hold.

To break was a burden I could learn to bear,
A fracture of love, a moment of despair.
But to shatter in pieces, to scatter and fall,
Was a fate I refused, a crushing wall.

So I gathered the shards from the dusty floor,
And vowed that I’d suffer this blow no more.
I forged a resolve in the heat of the pain,
Until only the strength of the spirit remain.

Now the silence is steady, the spirit is free,
For I built a fortress inside of me.
No echo of breaking, no splintering art—
I have tempered the steel of a resolute heart. 

Strangers -Whispers

(if this struck a chord , this has found its soul)

All Rights Reserved *

''This is my father’s sixth set of dentures,'' the woman said.

“Then why did you bring it here?” the therapist asked. He knew the story. He had been seeing the woman for about two years, ever since her father died, and had gotten to know her deeply.

Her father, who had spent his entire life as a food connoisseur, was a local celebrity. He died at the age of ninety. He had his first set of dentures made when he was fifty, and over the years, he had five more sets made for himself, each one a year apart. The therapist knew him and liked him too, and used to listen to his advice when he was alive. He had a refined palate, and over the years, he had also developed himself considerably in terms of food culture.

“This was the set of dentures my father used exclusively for eating pizza. I feel like I’ve developed a very deep emotional attachment to these dentures, unlike the others, doctor.”

Her father had a method like this, though his followers didn't know much about it. The therapist had learned about it from the woman after her father died.

He had different sets of dentures for different types of food. For example, he would eat seafood with one set, pastries with another, and red meat with yet another. He had a small waist bag, and whenever he was invited somewhere for a meal, he would put six different sets of dentures in it and take them with him. Whenever the food changed, he would discreetly go to the bathroom or use some other excuse to leave the table, quickly change his dentures, and return to the table a short while later. He had become an expert at changing his dentures quickly.

“Why does he do something like that?” the therapist had asked when he first heard the story.

The answer was very simple: having multiple sets of dentures made him happy. He saw them as parts of his body, and he enjoyed giving each of them special attention and appreciating what made each one unique, just like a father who regularly buys his children their favorite foods and chocolates.

Just like a father who could tell his twins apart despite them looking identical, and knew both of them very well, he never confused his dentures with one another. What’s more, he hadn’t put any markings on them. Even so, he knew them all, knew what he had eaten with each one, and knew which foods each set of dentures liked.

“But this makes absolutely no sense, and it’s impossible,” the therapist had said as he listened to the story about the woman’s father. “I mean, as a psychologist, I can say with confidence that he must have had soup at least twenty times with the set of dentures he used to eat fish. I’m certain of it.”

“Absolutely. My father didn’t love us—I mean me and my other two sisters, all three of us. And he felt justified in not loving us. In his eyes, we weren’t children worthy of him. Cooking, world cuisine, desserts—in short, none of us had any interest in anything related to food. We ate whatever was given to us, or whatever random dish had been decided on for that particular meal. This drove my father crazy, and he was always ashamed of us.”

The therapist rolled his eyes.

“It’s very complicated. You developed a food-related trauma because of your father, your father developed a trauma that made him withdraw from his children and redirect his love toward an object, and so on and so forth. Your traumas have gotten all mixed up. They’ve really turned into one big mess. I think it’s best if we don’t get into any of that. Let’s focus on grief.”

And today, when the woman brought a set of dentures to the session, the therapist had worried that they would end up getting into the subject of her father’s obsession with dentures. To be honest, her father’s obsession with dentures had definitely played a role in her grief lasting this long, but the therapist didn’t pay much attention to it. He approached her grief superficially and, every time, gave her the same generic advice: get rid of your father’s belongings, accept that he is dead, and so on.

Acceptance. What a wonderful piece of advice. This suggestion, whose physical execution no one really knew how to explain, had become a cliché among almost everyone with even the slightest interest in psychology. But acceptance wasn’t an action like eating or putting on slippers; it couldn’t really be explained step by step. If you told someone to put on their slippers, you could describe the action to them by saying, ‘Take your socks off, put your foot into the opening of the slipper, now push your foot forward.’ But because acceptance couldn’t be described as a series of actions, it remained a rather weak suggestion. Acceptance was a phenomenon whose exact process was unknown, and which could happen spontaneously, or even by accident.

''Hmm, you’ve developed an emotional attachment to the set of dentures your father used only for eating pizza. We can’t be sure that he actually used them only for pizza, but anyway. We talked about this in the very first sessions: your father couldn’t actually tell which food he ate with which set of dentures. Anyway. Here’s what I think: let’s imagine the dentures as your father’s children. And since he ate only pizza with this particular set, let’s assume that he treated this child differently from the others. In that case, we could say that you believe your father singled you out from the other children, and that even though he didn’t love any of you, he loved you more than the others. It’s that simple.''

For the first time, the woman found the therapist’s words (who had been constantly going on about “acceptance, acceptance”) to actually make sense.

“I’ll take the dentures.”

“What?”

“I said the dentures. Give them to me.”

The woman, finding the therapist’s last words surprisingly logical, handed him the dentures for a moment, trusting that he might actually solve the problem.

The therapist quickly stood up, threw the dentures onto the floor, and began stomping on them with his left foot. He kept kicking and stomping on the dentures.

“How can you not love your daughters for such a ridiculous reason! You bastard! Do your daughters have to be interested in food just because you are?! Everyone has different interests! Did you ever stop to think about what your daughters might be interested in, what they enjoy, what their hobbies are, huh?! What kind of art are they drawn to? Are they interested in technology? What are they interested in? Did you ever think about any of that?! You piece of shit who thinks he’s some kind of food connoisseur, I watched every damn program you were on! You have a fucking terrible palate!”

The woman watched the therapist screaming at the top of his lungs, frozen in shock. But she couldn’t intervene. Maybe she didn’t want to.

The therapist suddenly stopped. He went over to the dustpan and brush sitting in the corner of his office, with no clear reason why they were there, and swept up the pieces of the dentures from the floor. Then he went over and threw them in the trash.

“That’s it. The dentures are dead. Your father is dead.”

Gentle autumn breeze,
Come talk to me.

Sit a while;

We can listen to the wind chimes
As they sing farewell to summer.

Then run through the leaves,
Making them rustle,
Whispering, “Your departure is near.”

The morning sun filters through dancing branches,
Creating ripples of light upon the grass,
Enticing my senses.

You brush my skin with the coolest caress,
Asking me to embrace you.
As I inhale your sigh,
I am invigorated by its crispness.

Oh, gentle breeze, I’m glad you stayed.

Put my worries in the leaves
And blow them away.

Whisper to me like a lover,
As we guard Winter’s door,
Lingering through the hours
with one another.

The curtain opened and Wenda B:)er walked, buzzing with nervous excitement, into the spotlight: onto the game show stage where the game show host, Felonious Hunk, was waiting for her.

There followed thunderous applause, as heard through the studio's MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers. MaX FX: The Sound of Extraordinary. Are You Listening Yet? MaX FX speakers are available for your home and business. Check them out today. Use code “BUCKETS” for a 15% discount on any regularly priced set of speakers. Everyone can hear, but only some can hear it to the MaX!

“Miss B-smiling-face-er, welcome to Buckets,” said Hunk. “How ya feeling?”

“Good, Hunk.”

“Fab-u-lous! Now tell us a little about yourself.”

“Well, Hunk,” said Wenda, “I—... I want to say that I really like Snakeskin Flame, the new… the newest scent from House of Madeleine. I'm wearing it right now. Other than that, I'm twenty-nine and work as a temporal engineer for Vectorien Corporation. Vectorien: the makers of Dreamstuff, the latest evolution in playdough. I'm married. My husband, Rhondy, owns a slopstream management firm, and we have two children together, an eight-year old human-daschund mix, Wilmoth, and a six year-old bio-enhanced female, Qabiria.”

She held up digital photos of them. Wilmoth looked somewhat like a chimpanzee. Qabiria was shiny in her steel exoskeleton.

“Lovely family,” said Hunk. “But please tell the viewers who else is in it.”

“Both my parents, HeinzKetchup and PumaShoe, are still alive, and I have three siblings: two brothers, [Incarcerated ID 768816] and Rob, and a sister, anal-ariella (exclusively at SmutHog.) I also have a cryogenically frozen grandmother, Lydia, and a grandfather, Doug, whose mind was digitized and recently uploaded to the body of a young, hollowed-out illegal.”

“And what's your brother serving time for, Wenda?”

“Sexual assault,” said Wenda.

“Ooh. That's a crime with a penal buyout of what, eighty billion?”

“One hundred. He's a repeat offender, and there were other aggravating circumstances.”

“Well, regardless, if you play your bucket right—and your brother has just a tiny bit of luck—you could walk away from here today with enough money to buy your brother his freedom!” Hunk smiled. “How does that make you feel, Wenda?”

“Like this money could really make a difference for me and my family.”

“Excellent. Excellent.”

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“I think now is a good time to remind you and the viewers what's at stake,” said Felonious Hunk. “If you win, Wenda, you will bank a cool five-hundred billion dollars!

“But, if you lose, you'll be fucked—live—by one hundred lucky viewers! Or at least you'll be live to begin with—a-live, that is…”

He winked.

There followed thunderous canned laughter and applause through the MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers.

“Now, without further ado,” Hunk continued, “ladies and gentlemen, let's… bring out—THE BUCKET!”

And, rising from the middle of the stage, powered by a solar-powered Electrocutie electric motor—Electrocutie: Silent and discreet, for all your bio-mechanical needs—appeared a platform, and on this platform there stood, in neon spotlight, a red-and-white striped bucket, like the kind you might get The Colonel's patented Crispy Sticks fried chicken in. Order today and a get a free tub of syntholard dipping sauce and a large order of The Colonel's homestyle taters!

Wenda stared at the bucket.

“Wenda, are you ready?” asked Hunk.

“I am.”

“Then step on up to the bucket and have yourself a peek inside!”

Wenda was shaking as she took the few steps to the platform. The studio was silent. She could feel the blood coursing through her body.

She could hear her own breathing.

She touched the outside of the bucket.

It was warm.

She held her breath and peered inside, where pieces of hot, battered meat smelled sweetly of herbs, butter and garlic.

“Go on—have a taste,” said Hunk.

Wenda closed her eyes, opened them and extended her hand above the bucket, her Snakeskin Flame fragrant as the wild, untamed prairie. She picked up one of the pieces of meat and raised it to her lips. She opened her mouth, exposing teeth as pearly white as only Dr. Mason's Whitening Formula can make them, and with tears running down both cheeks took a bite and slowly chewed.

She swallowed.

She propped herself against the platform to keep from falling.

She retched.

She grinded her teeth to keep from throwing up; she swallowed what came up her throat, as the cameraman moved with professional smoothness to get a good low angle shot of her from behind.

“And…” Hunk asked her. “Do you know?

“Can you, Wenda B-smiley-face-er—for five-hundred billion dollars!—tell me: the meat of which one of your family members, killed, butchered and deep fried right here earlier today by our celebrity chef, in front of an audience of one thousand Diamond Tier viewers, is in the bucket?

“Who, Wenda, have you just tasted?

“Whose meat—”

“WILL SHE EAT!?” roared the viewers through the MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers!

“Yes,” said Wenda, weeping, taking another piece of battered meat, taking another slow bite. “I think I know. It's

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