Through The Looking Glass

The knock on the door pulls my mind back into the glaring daylight. The momentary crossing from a fairytale into a nightmare. Not enough time to shield the eyes. To catch my breath. Not nearly enough time to say goodbye. Just enough time for a ripple of static to create a fault across my mind. A sonic lobotomy. A slow-motion awakening in the city of ghosts to the sounds of a lover’s wrist. Three times against the cracked peeling paint of the hotel door. Subtle like the kisses shot across eternities from your chipped fingernails. Sugary steel butterflies that I catch with my chest. Velvet drops of crimson gently kissing the faded linoleum floor. A sanguinary trail that leads all the way back home.

The stale air of the hallway wafts into the room. Miles of cobwebs hugging the plaster walls and wondering where have all the spiders gone. I find myself submerged in the scent of lilac and the taste of black lipstick. Fading elegy of footsteps. Images from eons before. Sailing far away from these twisted numbers on the door that spell 204 in razor wire. A fleeting memory of a phoenix tattoo on the stretch of perfect pale skin. Like snapshots of all the lives we led before. Rising like wraiths from the faintly falling ashes left in our wake. Open your lungs. Inhale.

A lacquered wooden box staring at me from the carpet that's been collecting dust for unbroken eternities. Screaming in black and white. A violent mystery engraved with runes of vengeance and malice. A lesson to learn and digest. With a serving of sharp little shadows that twist somewhere deep in the corners of our prosthetic souls. And within the cold wooden prison lies your sweetest smile, still fresh and dripping with blood. Cut out from your pretty face with a shard of broken glass. A self-inflicted memento, spinning tales of beauty and madness. Stories of scarecrows and shadowlands. Narratives of rainbows and razorblades. And on the bottom, a crumpled handwritten note as a reminder of long forgotten destinies; “I’ll see you in the sunlight.”