Nude

Memories shed like skin, taut across the knuckles, bleeding from blisters into the great uncertain. The writings hold within themselves potent meanings, indecipherable for all their worth. Cars rumble by raised gates, with quiet whispers of foreboding seeping through the cracks. The houses with the lowest gates and most welcoming thresholds generally have the largest piles of skeletons in the various closets littering the warmth of a humble abode. Somewhere on a second story balcony, sacred words mingle like the clinking of glasses, and the flow of spirits disrupts a different flow of spirits. White on black on white, and arcane silences break into hearty expressions, deceptively heavy with raw emotion, and the emptiness of misery, despair and desire.

A quiet boy sits in a dark room, counting bruises, cuts, and knicks. One for everyday, all for a lifetime. All for the things he hates, and none for those he loves. A kind spirit presents itself in glass slippers, promising to save him from the pain. His yearning parched lips part for the flood to come forth, and the malevolence burns with every drag of this liquid flame.

He yelps through the night, as the kindly spirit turns away to help more stricken with desire.

"Tomorrow again, my child. I am all you have."

He clings to himself, wishing she would come cling to him instead.