It was not your usual grain-

Spinning brightly, dashes of brown

(Those are life specs)

To whom do I speak, is it the memory keeper?

If I must speak frugally, it was a simple brown.

Lines. Lines of white not so simple

They spread out into the vastness

Teasing the sense of safety

They are the line breakers

Careful as they walk

Watching their back

Timid steps

Into the crack, not over

Are you taking this down?

(Memory keeper?)

Brown. And white. Lines.

Vastness. Safety lurking under the grapevines

Taking away my giggling

And innocence

Back then on the table

Grains far from the truth

And now,

Hiding here on the wiggly time line-
I squirm.

I must remember what good feels like.

Earth odors emaciate my senses,

Thinning

My blood so that I may

Fly without air

Melancholy wine, tendrils of their own

Wrap around me, curling me up

(Please take this down.)

I become pod-like, and safe in my shell.

My breathing takes in all that approaches

Even the white blurs

(Note to the keeper: the following)

Remove the prickly taunts-

Just grab the ant by its legs. It does not belong

This time

(Memory keeper: Life specs)

It was about squeezing what was left-

Wild onion grass underfoot, a bushel of space,

Upside down butterflies,

He loves me, loves me not, I wish I could

Remember. To try. To savor

What was left of adolescence

In memory

Only the sting.

(Was left)

It is later now.

My pinkie nail has grown

filed to a point like a vampire incisor tooth.

The memory keeper is long gone.

My half-life is burning out

but it still fuels the hybrid being that I have become.

The white line blurs within me. I breathe it in.

I have parted, split, broken, and become effused.

The jagged line is there in the middle

between existentialism and aesthetics.

Much later.

I remember spring.

An eruption of shadows, and light.

The fullness inside of me.

Vines that hug skin tight.

And I am whole.