The Grown-Up

He swings

and he swings

and he swings

chubby legs propelling a small body

into the sky

his face illuminated

rosy cheeks and tangled gold hair

and bare feet

with tiny toes

parading through the grasses.

He swings

and he swings

and he swings

and it's over

he steps away from the plate

flings the bat to the ground

a spray of profanities

erupt

clouding him with more than disappointment

or melancholy

more like hate.

He swings

and he swings

and he swings

a stray punch finds the wall

which doesn't bruise so easily

and he stalks from that room

that smells of her powders

that is decorated with erotic pictures cut from magazine covers
that is cold

and he swings

and he swings

and he swings.

Explained here

The Sniper

With an arrogant display of humility

   he claims none of the credit

   for the work he has done

giving it all to fate

to the gun

but he loves to pull the trigger.

Evident in the way he cannot refrain.

He plants his feet

as if he belonged

and the adrenaline swells

the I-AM-GOD rush rises passionately, angrily, demanding blood and pouring red hot through the cracks in his careful facade

   jaw clenched - teeth worn to grittle -

   but his hands still do not shake.

He takes his time.

With precision and almost motherly care

he flicks the safety to off.

In a moment of eerie silence

gravity is suspended

and he is alive

for he lives to pull the trigger

although it means someone must die.

It isn't personal.

  just a spray, a spattering of life on the sidewalk.

He relishes the moment of freedom

   but it is just as much a chain.

Explained here

Empty Hands

all of my emotions

pour out of my hands

out of my heart

and transform themselves into

these

tiny words

these

fragile inadequacies

that throb painfully

and

spill their inky blood all over this page

staining it

with every word that was never whispered

and every touch that was never shared

and you are my phantom limb

the touch of your hands

that i never felt

is what is burning my skin now

and i scrub at your stains

with harsh bleach

but you are in my every pore

soaked through

and

permanent

and i can't stop touching your hands

that won't touch me back

and i am losing you.

i am dripping inky blood

and memories

through the cracks between my fingers

and the harder i try

to hold on

the more i realize

with a horrifyingly raw honesty-with-myself

that there is nothing

for my aching fingers

to hold onto

anymore.

Explained here

Differ. Halt. Imagine.

carrion birds descend

   even they approach the dying

   with halting steps

then

tearing

life from the living

starving beaks exposing

your inky words

that bled into my bones

and stained me.

vicariously now - some would say lesser

   (here I beg to differ, for flying is flying)

my eyes catch

a shard of blue

and my fingers brush eternity

I am finally flying in dozens of pieces

each piece still mine.

scattered remnants of consciousness imagine

   a forever flight

but too broken to grasp the concept

I turn

to simpler things.

   like a silver flash still trapped

     barren

     flightless

        and mine.

inventory is taken

then

the missing piece is realized

recognized

hardly recognizable but it is what it is

a heart

a tin man's heart

indigestible but more importantly

never for anyone but you to take

to devour

to mark with blood red ink

then

ensure that it could never fly.

wings beat on

through stifling, wavering heat

vultures have no need for hearts

the world spins on

and I am flying

   but still stained.

Explained here

Buffer. Transition. Unity.

I am Kii and I am not a hero, nor a queen, nor a boy on a journey to transition to man, not brave, nor strong, nor beautiful - nothing like anyone you'd want to hear the tale of.  I'm not even a proper storyteller, which is why I'm writing my own words instead of a proper story.  For anyone not sun-blessed and trial-passed, even a girl-child of fourteen, the punishment for speaking the ancient legends is blindness.  To get the attention of the skies and earn my name as a teller of tales, I must tell a story of my own.  No light in the sky would want to hear the history of a brown-eyed sparrow of a girl with large feet and flat cheeks, so I will write my own legends here in this book.  Soon, when the skies and the elders accept my offering of words, I will be preened by elegant hands and dressed in bells and paid to weave spells about bronze scales flashing sunlight though a sullen fog and handsome young men with rings on every finger and age-worn sheepskins tattooed with maps, searching for names of their own, and an ancient treaty forged before any beating heart can remember, that first unity between sky and ground that formed my people.  No one will be able to see my ugliness then.

I am Kii, and words are the buffer between me and the world.

Explained here.