STEAL AND SCRAPE INTO ME

DAWN

I am a small girl alone. I have a secret.

DAY

Streaks of sunlight on my eyes, I waken. My world is different in the day. There is grim rest. Daylight gives me hours to live and wander. Not sure what is. Though I eat, I taste no food. Though I talk, I don’t hear me. I move, but I don’t know where I go. My somewhere is nowhere. I think, but it doesn’t matter. I’m nothing, no-one. No smile, no laugh. Worn and weary, I must be old. Most of the time, I don’t feel, don’t care….til dark falls.

In the space of day, I do this, I do that, I don’t remember what. Unnoticed, ignored, I go hide in my sister’s room. Browsing through records, I take off and fly. Putting the headphones on, I turn the music up. Loud and louder, the blare of songs belt and pound out beats that throb my lips and drum on my soles. Tremors so loud that the room, the house, and you disappear.  The music heavy beats hammer against bone and cheek as music swells and crashes, soaring me high through the rush of air. The room around me swirls and falls away. 

Unbarred, I hurtle into bliss of lost and heaven, I swim towards the bright and float in the sway and dance of breeze. Bobbing and drifting on seas and gushing rivers, waves froth and break over me. Gliding down vales and valleys, I run and run through sweet cool mist. Flying under the glow and gleam of crescent moons, I skim and tumble through starry skies of balm. Warm waterfalls thunder, spraying solace and singing hum.  Rolling on the greenest of grass, I trace the whitest of clouds scudding across the boldest of dazzle blue. In this haven of pearly white peace, there’s no limit of space, no hardening, no time, no you. This high up, the air smells clean and spins out never ending dreams.

DUSK

Music stops. Dream ends. Looking out, I look around. Day, sun and good seeps out of the thinning creases of horizon. Dulling light turns a gauzy hue, mulling over dusky winds. Dread unfolds and crawls up my legs and squats on my chest - can’t wrench it off, can’t breathe. Unease pulses and swells, drenching my palms, can’t smear it off. A harsh gnawing burrows in the hollow of my belly, draining me. Dusk, do hold on, leave me light and sit with me. She sneers, her light thins and fades. Dark surely nears, ghastly and gleeful. The clock ticks on.

TWILIGHT

Brood and hate of muddy darkness nears, it smirks at my beseeching and gloats at the smell of my fear. It yawns and stretches lazily as it sucks dry the clay-grey of fast dimming light. Twilight rich and dense, taunts and hovers. I ask twilight to stay. It twitches, circles and teases. But haughty, she slinks away. Loom of lonely whispers in weaving a slicing cold in me.The clock ticks on.

NIGHT

Dinner is done. Table is clear. Dishes are washed. Talk is over. TV is blank. Beyond the ghostly room, evening bares and sinks her fangs in deep ink black of mischief night. Faltering, I walk to bed. Sleek darkness coils like a snake and winds around me, preening and brimming with evil bode. I know her promise, she hurts. Goading, she nibbles at me nightly, sliver by sliver till drunk and full. The clock stops.

Last night you promised you were going to stop. You promised the night before and all those other nights.

Quiet hollers at me, daring me to shout for help.  But I am bound and veiled in secret. Trapped, lonely for someone to save me. Like all nights, I wait. No one stops it. There’s no hide, no safe, no home. Dreading you hurts. That dread and baiting quiet picks away at my flesh.  Close to the doorway of my eerie cage, I lay rigid, watching for shifting shadows and the rustle of you entering, hunting and hawking. Like all taut and mean nights, I wish I could stop breathing. Shadows lift. You come. It begins. The dying of me.

The secret. I am bad and black. Soiled and decaying. This secret has a fervid knowing. That knowing is part of the air that I breathe and the sun that I look at. The knowing stirs me in the morning, it walks in the rhythm of my steps, it stares back at me in the mirror and it soaks my sleep. It melts in the water that laves me; it skulks behind my eyes and roams my placid days and galling nights. I taste it all the time. My knowing is if I break the silence, it will kill us all: Mommy, Daddy, sisters and brothers. Somewhere deep in me, forever sifting and being, I simply know that if I am silent, my family lives. If I cry out, they all die. They are mine to guard, my family. They are all that I have.

Holding my breath, I curl and steel me from you. From the edge of the bed, you slither up to me, unquenched and craving. Rummaging for me, your hungry, stealthy creep is urgent. Heaving, you claw at me. Trying not to make noise, you choke back grunting gasps. Oily, moist breaths fan and sicken me.  Brother, your want swallows and pummels me but I hold on. I guard our family with stout heart as you part mourning me. I am too small to take you in. Too small to break your grasp. Too small for your rank fever, your wreck, but as always, I lay for you and hold fast the secret. Straining, you grind me deeper into the abyss, nailing and stabbing me with the thick wet of unholy you. Splaying my legs, vicious, keen shards of you wound me. With dank skin, hot and coarse, your brutal rubbing sears and gags me. It goes on and on. I cling to visions of petal-soft white, of summer day, the shimmer of cold dew and flying higher up a bountiful, glinting sky. But, shooting, ripping icy pain blots out my sky. You pour into me and I am greased with your hateful, dirty spew. In silence, I thrash inside, lost, helpless and begging for hazy drift and dusty blur. Shame bursts in me, haunting and battering. Loathing every bit and piece of me, I want to spit and stomp on rotten me, shred and blacken me, crush the light out of me. I hate me and want to sob and scoop out your muck from the depths of twisted me. With bruised, raked thighs and scorched insides, I yearn to scream, to hurl out massive, lurking and roaring rage. But I stifle me, my family must live. Hush. They must not waken. Steadfast, I guard the secret. With fouled and mangled body and fading sinew, I guard them. If I could only leave.  Or if I could only die. Squeezing my eyes close, I dream of slicing me…rich, beautiful rivulets of garnet blood, falling from me, drowning and cresting over our awful, grave deed. Death calls, I want to go. My dying would kill your seething and simmering. End the long moaning and crazed, evil thrusting and licking.

Your familiar shudder finally subsides and your pants slow. You unclench. Let go. You finish. Lying limp, pried and cleaved open, I fight to live. In the moonlight gloom, our eyes lock. I see the dawn of your horror. You tentatively reach for weak, wretched me, heat and hankering gone. Tenderly, you wipe some of you off of me. Drawing me close, you stroke me shakily. In the awkward cradle of your legs and arms, you rock what is left of me. You comfort me? Your hands tremble sorrowfully for you see the small of me, gashed and scarred. Grief swims and blisters in your eyes. Forlorn spreads in you like disease with curse clanging and brawling in you. Regret drips and bleeds from your face and core. Cowering and drooped, you are sad and sorry. Sickened, you hate you too. Too late. I am smashed and vile. Gored, I fester in your arms, crumpled, little, stained and sordid. I see you churn, ache and weep at what you did… but tomorrow, you will steal and scrape into me again.

Dawn. I am a small girl alone. I have a secret.

Day

Dusk

Twilight

Night…

Dawn. I am a small girl alone. I have a secret.

Day

Dusk

Twilight

Night…

 No End