Episode 121 – Two to Go

girl fight 
between friends
both strong
who wins

* * *

A strawberry, ready to pop,
but instead of sweetness,
there is putrefaction,
threatening even friends.

For there are no friends
when love is dead,
only fading moments
when love told her 
she was beautiful.

Then death –
the great eraser.

If darkness disappears, 
she is left with nothing.
Love is dead 
and sorrow squeals
its hatred.

A naked throat 
is vulnerable
to a blade,
to a bullet.

And if the skin bleeds,
the pain escapes,
leaving behind
an empty shell.

Raise your swords, 
if you must.
There is no protection.

Episode 120 – Villains

Rage fills my heart where love once lived 
and fury moves into the room that housed the bullet.
So small the wedge that pierced her heart.

So complete my loss,
that humanity bails
leaving her behind,
still warm,

     (so warm)

a gift for the gods
though they don’t deserve her.

Like a demon hound, 
I track her killer through the woods.
He’s full of words, but no remorse,
not that it would matter.

I string him up between two trees,
silence the savagery of his voice. 
Then I strip him of his skin, 
like pa with a summer rabbit.

Nothing survives 
when rage moves in.

Episode 119 – Seeing Red

home at last
arms and feet
lips on lips
legs and sheets
sweat and sighs
tousled hair
no place to be
but here
and here 
and 
there

* * *

Back to bed 
without breakfast.
Hunger lies 
not in our bellies, 
but lower,
deeper within.

Sweat mingles,
parts tingle.
We disappear 
in rusty sheets.

Holding hands,
we rise
late afternoon.
You dress in blue
to match your eyes.
Me, in white, 
brand new 
now back with you.

A shot.

Your shirt 
(last words).

You fall.

Episode 104 – Flooded

something intimate
in the fading light.

cigarette butt
under boot heel.

white haired man.

sad girl.

shoulders kiss
on back porch steps.

a grin
only for him.

these are lonely days.

something intimate
in the night.

white haired man.

sad girl.

quiet comfort
in the fading light.

Episode 103 – After Life

In white she appears, taking his breath, 
though in truth he’d lost it a century before.  
Her, he’d lost 
seven plus 
      forty plus 
one hundred days ago.
A hero’s death, though it matters not.

She stands small, weary from her journey, 
her hands torn and bloodied. No one guesses 
how they got so damaged, but he knows, 
having fought the same battle back from the grave.

He is tender, soothing her wounds with 
Mercurochrome and gauze, the only one 
she can feel tortured with. He knows torture, 
having dished out and taken his share.  

Her sadness spills from his eyes and he 
slams his hand. In his dreams, he’d saved her. 
But despite strength, despite promises, despite 
love, she died.  

I’m fine, she lies, struggling to make it 
from one moment to the next. Her secret, 
she shares only with him. She can’t let 
her friends know what she’s lost.

She was in paradise, not purgatory, 
ripped back into a world of darkness 
by those who claim their love. 
Now they expect her to be happy.  

But what is happiness to a soul 
that’s been at peace? Can a story, 
once complete, begin again?

Episodes 101 & 102 – Bargaining

Lying underground, 
blond hair on white pillow,
fingernails and hair 
still growing after death,

I awaken in my coffin, 
gasping for air, 
clawing through silk, 
through wood, 
through dirt,
summoned back 
by your heartbreak.

But you, so selfish 
in your sadness,
forgot where I lay 
when you called me back,
and assumed my time away 
was filled with sorrow.

Season 6

The urn is smooth and silky 
in my hands.  The way 
beneath my feet, craggy.

A stumble 
launches her remains
into the wind, 
joining with the mist 
to hide my sorrow. 

You share her face. I can’t 
bear to look upon it.

Tiny creatures gather 
for an impromptu memoriam
as I harvest pieces of her 
from the garden.

Scant nourishment
for the starving.

Episode 100 – The Gift

At the top of a tower,
way up high,
a princess is tethered,
prepared to die.

Our hero, her sister,
fights demons below;
the Slayer they call her,
the ones in the know.

The enemy, a hell god
shut out of her world,
finds a key to re-enter –
a human, the girl.

The princess was ancient,
pure energy, the Key,
made human and grafted
to Slayer family tree.

Slayer swore to protect her,
little sister or not,
so she and the hell god
they battled and fought.

The hell god appears
as a beautiful girl,
strong and self-centered,
all darkness and curls.

This beast shares the body
of an innocent man;
it’s mostly his life,
she comes out when she can.

His weak human mind
drives the beast quite insane
so she sucks brains of others,
her composure regained.

These poor brain-sucked souls
see the Key in true form
and they lead the beast to her,
her sacrifice sworn.

Blood of the princess 
will split open the sky, 
unleashing demons and dragons,
then close when she dies.

The beast can slip back
through the crack to her realm,
leaving death and destruction
for everyone else.

A hell god disciple,
a small elf of a man,
pretends first to protect the girl, 
then slices her skin.

A knight charges to save her,
takes a knife in the side;
the elf throws him over,
though he’d already died.

For he was made vampire
when Victoria was queen;
he killed lots of people,
but is now pretty clean.

With a government inserted
device in his head,
he no longer harms humans,
fighting demons instead.

Helps the Slayer, can you imagine,
he’s killed two before,
but this one, she’s different;
her, he adores.

His love swings a hammer
at the beast’s curly head;
the beating leaves her human
but not really dead.

Our Slayer is a hero,
she’s not like you and me;
when the beast becomes a man again,
she has to let her be.

So a dark wizard takes the reins,
a Slayer mentor true,
and steals the hell god’s final breath;
he’s seen a rodeo or two.

The Slayer scales the tower,
kills the elf with one quick blow,
sees her sister bleeding,
the portal opening below.

The princess accepts that only she,
as Key, can save the world;
her death alone can stop 
what the hell beast has unfurled.

With dragons soaring overhead,
the Slayer remembers a truth:
that her blood and princess blood
are the same, she needs no proof.

So she kisses her little sister, 
and throws herself into the swirl;
her death closes the portal,
returning balance to the world.

    *  *  *

The knight and all who loved her
wept a hurricane that day,
for the Slayer, sister, hero
had forever gone away.

They laid her body in the ground
to rest in a hometown plot;
the inscription on her headstone read:  
She Saved The World

A Lot.

Episode 96 – Intervention

Did I tell her I loved her?
I was so young and the word love 
so ancient.

Across the fire, I see her face
in the desert that appears after death.

With feline grace, she guides me 
across the sands, to a place 
where love is tortured and I am exposed.

Rub salt in the wound.
Forgive the salt.
Love the salt.

Beauty cannot drag from me the truth.
The truth is love and love is pain.
Hold onto love.
Protect it from all enemies.

I won’t forget 
what you did 

for love.

Episode 95 – Forever

Tiny feet 
     walk on graves,
bring her back to me.

bone
     breath
flesh
    smile

If magic could return 
     her to this world,
would I cast that spell?

Or can I believe
she has lived 
her life and moved on
to other obligations,
leaving me
to find a way 
to walk the earth
without her?

It’s okay to cry
     and cry
and cry

because without her
     all I am 
is tears.