He’s dribbling down her throat like a PineSol tap.

So covertly, sensually, he slipped lemon wedges into those finite creases of her lips so that she tastes him even when he’s off sowing other seeds, so that he grows in her, eternally.

(I’ve never heard of a tree dying naturally; have you?)

Whenever she speaks, every memory of his acidic tongue runs over the inside of her cheeks, burning open wounds. He socks her with dangling whispers of pulp.

The peels of skin he devoured from her mouth bluster out of her when she breathes like strands of glossy rose ribbon – he unwrapped her. She never knew how badly tulle and tape could ache until she felt them tear off of her with such a burn they stole pores and hairs on their way out.

“I want you,” he sears, and he takes her, and his teeth are splinters stabbing into her gums. Every second he stakes his roots into her soft, malleable hollows another iron curtain deep within her comes undone. Before she can even speak she is naked dirt - Mother Earth - torn up, raked raw, chewed up as cud for him, spit out.

“How do I taste?” she flusters, bleeding citrus, oozing sap.

He grins as he widens his wolf nostrils and inhales her life force, stealing the dregs of her anythings. He nips. He growls hungrily,

“Like me.”

And she convulses uncontrollably, wishing with every tremor resonating low in her limbs that she could learn to hate the sensation of being between his teeth.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[I think we all have a little bit of Stockholm Syndrome.]

Repeating dreams. What silly things, you think.

…But then you have one. Them. Feel them writhing in the crannies of your brain, etched into the sockets of your eyeballs like fate.

I never much liked the concept of fate, but it would be pretty damn easy, wouldn’t it? Slipping into a dress the seamstresses of the universe sewed for you, and only you, not having to think about what to wear in the morning, or that infuriating ‘I know that shirt is clean I need that shirt where the hell is that shirt I hate that shirt I hate this mess I hate this all of this.’

Pause. Breathe. Rewind. Repeat.

What a slick little mantra. The little black dress in the wardrobe of the world.

When Mother Nature gets dressed in the morning, what does she wear, I wonder? The elements, spun in fine snowflake silks, draped in sheer cotton sunshine? Does she get dressed at all, lounging in her bare glory instead, the curves of her body supple in the clouds?

I had a dream about a woman who wore no clothes. A nightmare. Many nightmares. Plural, like a skip in a CD, infuriating and terrifying every time your favorite song plays because you’re not expecting it to be ripped about at the seams as all the precious notes tumble out like gems.

Tumbling down,

down…

             down…

Some people have dreams like that – falling dreams. They grip the edges of the mattress just to hold onto anything, just to feel the comfort of a familiar fabric as they whisk through the open door closet called the sky. Up there, there are no hangers – just liquid sleeves and billowing blouses. Unbuttoned. Loose –

Loose lips sink ships. Quiet now, quiet. Time for bed. Shh. Shhh…

There was a lake – is a lake – carved into the reel of tape playing in my head. A midnight matinee, expect I’m the only person who got the memo, and I stand alone up to my waist in freezing cold, black water. When I slip my palms underneath the surface, I feel like I’m slicing glass with my fingers, chipping into the devils diamond. Feeling it up, discovering it, replaying it like an old song. Sexy. Tangos in the dark, sand between my frozen toes, everywhere else hot, hot - hotter. I’ve got that tingle radiating out from the center of my body as my limbs start to tremble and the only way I know that my hands are still attached to me, that they haven’t been slit off and boxed like dead fish all cold and icy, is the sight of the ripples they’re making from shaking underwater.

I’m convulsing. This lake is far too cold.

“Come inside, everyone,” a voice says behind me, beneath the porch light. My grandmother, maybe.

Ben and Haley and Dad are standing in the water too. We’re all scattered and shattered and still, waiting for something. Someone. Still watching for it. Her.

The lady in the water. She’s back again, she always comes back.

Pause. Breathe. Rewind. Repeat.

What was that? – a disturbance in the window pane calm of the water’s surface.

It’s easy to mistake a banging heart for something erotic, something lower and deep down and up and right there –

Am I creating the ripples?

Quiet now, quiet. Don’t make a move. Don’t make a sound. Shh…

Haley sneezes and her snot goes everywhere. Achoo. Ah-ch-you. Chyou. You.

Oh, please, anyone but you. Anyone but her.

Shit.

Get Haley out of the water, now. Someone get her out of this cesspool, before –

Zip. She’s gone. Her tiny nine year old body disappears under the liquid shadows we all stand in, mortified, not swimming.

My grandma is screaming in the background and her voice tears like a scratched record player and I can feel my ears bleed, bleeding blood, bleeding bloody, itchy jewels…

There’s crimson around my waistline. The water is tainted.

Zip –

My father disappears in the same spot my sister did. He had been looking for her, trying to pull a ghost out of purgatory. I love you, dad. Goodbye. Again.

There’s terror in his eyes as his pale skin slips under the surface - raw, primal fear as hot and molten as sex sizzled and doused in the lake. Snuffed. Enough! –

Zip –

My brother sloshes under as easy as a rag doll being flung over the shoulder of an overactive toddler, only this child is fucked up. It wants to gauge out the eyes of every doll and strip off any scrap of clothing and discard them all naked on the shoreline, food for the snakes and eels in the morning. Eyeless, exposed, dolls. Mouths wide open in a final scream. Red ears and frostbite toes.

I wish it were only a child.

She looks like Ana to me as she rises out of the water, naked. No dress, just skin and bones. Skin the color of bones, gleaming off of the impenetrable vortex I’m frozen in like a cornered animal.

In the water I see her hollow eyes, black on black, demonic beetle pupils swimming in motor oil, wriggling in grease. In the water, I see her gaze shift upwards – upwards – towards me in a slow, reaching drift – again…

P-pause. Breathe. Brrr-eathe. Brrrrewind. Rep-reap-

It’s me and her alone, the lady in the lake. She’s translucent, a ghost, but so palpable all the same; if I touched her skin it would be slick, an internal organ smothered in jelly. Her albino white hair is stringy and dank as seaweed, snakes, Medusa – strangling me.

But it’s those inhumanly long fingernails. Those fucking fingernails that scrape across the surface of the water as if they’re digging into a chalkboard, making screaming noises as if the lake is begging, pleading – I hate this mess I hate all of this don’t touch me don’t touch meee –

Screeech –

I have a phobia of two things:

Chalk,

And drowning.

I feel like she’s going to claw me to shreds and pull me under like a great white shark and suck me inside of her ribs that look so much like gills, ingest me like a cold, dead, fish.

Rubies in the water at midnight, and she’s salivating for a taste. She. It. This thing –

Is coming towards me –

This ree(a)l of tape keeps playing inside my head.

It’s day like this I learn to hate the present tense. 

Repeating dreams. What silly things, I thought.

…But then I had one.

And, it had me.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Does this happen to anyone else besides me?

Also:

Be a cool kid and support To Write Love on Her Arms.

(It doesn't hurt that their clothes are really cute)

Firstly, thank you all for your comments and encouragement on my last post.  

But, I have to come right out and say:

I am leaving. Please don't hate me.

For college, I need to be completely focused on my studies - I mean, if I want my English phd, I'm gonna have to kick my own ass a little. Professors are very diligent people, and I should play the part of the role I want  [fingers crossed, that I do get what I want] - and I'll tell you exactly what I want.

1.  I want anyone who was close to me on this site, who I've exchanged comments with, who is a fellow writer, WHO KNOWS WHO THEY ARE, to message me their email/aim so we can still talk. And, knowing me, I'll still come back to visit. I'm not calling this a goodbye, because I still do love this site.

2. I want to publish either a book or a collection of poetry...or both. I want to walk into a book store and see my name on the cover, seeing readers soak in what I have to say. I want it more than anything. I salivate for it.  

So hopefully, you'll see me outside of xanga as well  

3. I want all of my subscribers to know that they are truly amazing individuals - and my subcriptions to know that they are, without a doubt, insanely talented and above me in so many ways.

and 4. [I don't care if you've never read my blog or if you don't know who the hell I am]:  

If you ever, EVER, have struggled with depression. With an ED. With self harm. Or with painful parents:

Don't you dare end it. Hold on, you. Find a reason. Find a word or a song or a book or a flower and make it your anchor that holds you here. And if you can't find any reason, not a single ounce of salvation... 

Just hang tight so that at the end of the day you can hold your head high and tell the bastards that you won.

Shine for all the times I didn't believe that I could.

Always [writing],

Amy Victoria

<3