I amounted a good treasure's chest worth of resentment when I realized happy endings are tall tales. What continues after the last heavy page of a storybook is trial and tribulation. And so, the main conflict so paramount to an epic plot arises in another time and place. Those heavy sighs I would break into during this adulthood transition lessened in frequency as memories of Prince Charming, mermaid lagoons, siren and bell songs and winged horses dimmed like dying fairy light. But today I'm ready to reinsert and incorporate partial fantasy into reality, until it is my time to pass.

These images are now full fledged daydreams. I'm trying to halt them because they're coming in a barrage of fantasies, so many that they're losing their likeliness. The most vivid is my prized summer goal: to acquire one kiss from you. A saline taste, as we will be being slightly pulled and pushed around by the ocean. It will happen, whether you are cognizant of my intentions or not. When it does, you'll find it impossible to let go of my lips. You will whimper when I pull my slippery arms away from you. This Saturday… my dream comes true.

By way of nightmares, I awake knowing to move out west and purchase a haunted home. One covered with moss and ivy, a tower in place of a rooftop, complete with creaking boards, furnished with cobwebbed antiquities and broken mirrors. I fear no ghost and though sudden apparitions would incite tachycardia and clammy palms, it would only be fear the unknown, not necessarily pale soulless eyes if they have any at all. I have utter respect for spirits because I know who they are and why they're with us. That's why they don't approach me. I must go to them.

Maybe I'll drive by the manatee viewing. We can commiserate about the warm waters and muggy atmosphere. By no means are they a beautiful mammal, but wonderful in creation. I'm very ready to see creatures free of evil and influence. I'm ready to be closer to the shores, away from the buildings that block the innocent intent of the rays. A dumb sea cow can make me smile. They are incapable of hurting me, whether on purpose or not. I can do a few days without any people. Just me and the mindless creatures who live so peacefully among us.

If you asked me right now, this minute, if any material desire of mine can be sated, I would ask for a library! A mountain room with sky high ceilings lined with books on every and any topic. Of course, there would be wooden tables and cushy chairs scattered throughout the floor. Pens, journals and a pair of spectacles would be supplied as part of the package. The impossible thing to come by would be time to lounge around and read all day, not to mention the attention span it takes to stay put for fifteen minutes.

Damned Darkness,

Can I summon your ability to anthropomorphize into the smothering entity you adopt in the night? You see (or you don't), my dream enabling mechanism has broken down and I require some aid to surrender into slumber. Allow your dark matter to swarm into my room. There is light that tries to fillet itself through the curtains. Blind them. Swallow every last flicker of visible energy. Consume even the vague color bubbles that appear when I close my eyes. And this I promise you:

In the morning, I will stand alongside you when fight your sworn archenemy,

Daylight.

There reason I was always aware I wasn’t mortal was very probable. I held to it firmly. My inherent gift from the gods above, below and elsewhere was the precocious seeing eye of prophecy. But it has become more than apparent that my immortality is based on another truth. I shall impart nothing to the dying souls roaming the streets. I’m among the corpses whose body’s function at some cellular level, even after the heart ceases to feel. I will eternally have unfinished business, just like the person sitting next to you on the subway who died some years ago.

Permission to be needy:

When I hug my parents, it isn't whole. Something isn't right. Something fundamental is missing. It certainly is uncomfortable for me. I don't know when this started happening or if it was always this way.

Regular friends: We only do hello and goodbye hugs. I can't touch them for much longer than seconds.

Close friend: We have practiced skits satirizing our inability to embrace without being awkward dorks about it.

I need affection dammit! Hardcore! Bone crushing! Oxygen constricting! Accosting type of enveloping that won't make me feel inhuman and tense!

Back to self-sufficient starting.....
Nnnnnnnow!

Centering myself, quieting down, perceiving with the universe, sending out vibes and receiving signals of all kinds…

What I feel now is…..

Longing.

Pining.

Torturous desires to be everywhere, to do everything, to touch and be touched, to inhale for the first time and exhale for the last. I want to be weightless, swallowed by the ocean and experience the perceptions of non-gravity. I want to give birth to a child, have wild unabashed sex on silk sheets, run a marathon, taste only the sweetest and the tartest exotic fruits.

This is what I'm like on my hypersensitive days.

Sighhhhhhhhhhhhh…………

The position of the taunting moon. The electromagnetic currents spiraling toward the earth's core. Bored angels and demons creating some play. They're exciting a whirling sense of confusion in my uterus. Yes, that's right. The tissues of my woman parts are glowing vivid with the desire to incubate an earthling, push out the creature and cry in awe about it. This defies every instinct of denial toward mothering and nurturing any offspring. It's taking the attention from my needing attention. Each inspiration of breathe in attempts to calm the feeling away is further conducting the stirring of my womb. Yuck.

When everything in my life plan is running smoothly, I encounter shadowy figures flashing directly behind the corners of my eyes. These chimerical people live in my peripherals. The Peripheral People… who hide in the sidelines of my conical view when I'm steadily and continually in focus. I've never really seen one, but they swish by with black capes, trying to remain unfound. I'll turn my head left and right, and sure enough, they stealthily escape out of sight. They reside in that dimension where certain disturbed individuals share constant reminders of unsettledness with legendary entities, like a living purgatory.

You look at me and you see a vixen creature, fanged teeth, desirous with thirst for blood, eyes that sear and cast spells of control, curvatures and bends designed to ensnare, lips that burn anything it contacts, that weave convoluted webs to entangle you into vulnerability. But through what lens do you fix your gaze? Because if you would rub the stupid out of your eyes and make the effort to walk around to the other side of the glass, you'd find a simple girl of peach flesh, rosy cheeks, mild demeanor. One who doesn't bite unless you wish it.

Gingerly, I juggle the cold, glossy spherical grape from finger to finger while I examine its method of execution.

The phone rings, loudly, destroying the solemnity of the moment.

Annoyed, yet motionless, I roll my eyeballs to the flashing screen of the mobile device and read your name.

I sigh and return due reverence to my fruit.

Up in the air and back down into my mouth flies the hopeless treat. I strategically rip off the skin from the juicy flesh and chomp it down.

The ringing ceases and the contraption become lifeless.

Just like that, you have become nonexistent.

It started off as a drop here and there. Painless little stings making their mark. Then a light drizzle that rolls quickly off the skin. It gradually grew into a heavy downpour, followed by a monsoon and then cascades crashing onto my brain. Words. Ideas. Songs. Mostly melodies. To my dismay, my guitar's missing strings, no ink in my pen, no limbs to dance. The flood imparted to aid in flourishing my seedling ideas is slipping right through my fingers and draining through the gutters. Note to self: carry and start bottling every little bit of (b)rainstorm I can get.

Character creation:

The ability I had to create a persona was lost somewhere between toddler years and mid-adolescence. Protagonists would pop into my head, unbidden. I would see them, hear them, and they'd dictate details about their likes, dislikes, eccentricities, idiosyncrasies and dreams. I birthed a heroine of utopic cities, a battered housewife, an ambitious next-door girl…a handful of diverse women, sometimes animals, seldom males. But in my personal experience, the mind/heart is too dimensional to give a single character sufficient justice. My challenge should be giving life to a static individual who doesn't think beyond anything he/she says aloud.

Every few moons, (or in today's case) every few suns, comes a twenty-four hour period that stretches and elongates further and further. Like an enormous string of gum you can never pull apart because it keeps giving. I have all the time in the universe to masticate and chew the wad for every agonizing if and what. The end never resulting in concrete. Gummy and gelatinous goo to be picked apart and prodded. Because there is nothing better to do. More so, there is nothing else I can concentrate on except these long hours you so painfully make me endure.

This feeling needs to shaken off until it's fitted into a handful. I'd bottle it up and throw it to sea. Primarily his moving voice, before any visuals of his outdoor-bathed physique enter my mind. It's the clearness when he speaks, like a river flowing, determined to reach the ocean, yet distressfully indiscernible is the velocity it travels from under the serene top layer of shimmering ebb. So yes, I want to encase his river-like voice, toss it in the ocean to be lost in storms, folded in depths or roosted in monster's bellies. Then, I'll peacefully hold my ground.

Of his books I want ownership, but I dare not. The library provides a temporary service of lending his best-seller hardbacks whilst I fly through the pages. Whenever I read his seemingly effortless creations, things don't stir in the dark night, they blend and twist. There are rips of unknown dimensions in my home, uninvited guests in my closet, floating voices of indiscernible origin. Whether it's evil or not, I've never kept his writing long enough to explore the phenomenon further, but I don't care to find out. My favorite author, yet I can't even display it on my bookshelf.

You stare me down. A penetrating gaze that either paralyzes my being or forces my lashes downward. I can't look at you. Partly because you undress me. Not fully, just a sliver of layer here and there. You bend me over with a fistful of my hair in your hand. You touch the ends of my depth with your eyes. The reason I can't linger on the reflection of your irises is that you know exactly what I'm feeling. I don't want you reading me yet until I am capable of deciphering every expression that washes over your beautiful eyes.

Just as raised I my dagger to your heart to extract the relevant content, you ever so delicately started unstitching the damage-done, separating the scar tissue and discolored skin. In a patience-defying process, you move as if time was still deciding the speed to travel at before it set on a tolerable pace. In slow motion, you start rationing your heart with winces and moans indicating the pain and discomfort it takes, but not at all complaining. I welcome this act more than if you would've ripped out the blood drenched muscle, still pulsating, and dropped it in my hands.

She has a hate relationship with the trailer home, but I find it to resemble a castle more than anything. The soft pounding of family walking through the carpet. The cats scurrying about the place, bouncing from sofa to couch, begging for a rub. The familiar warmth exuded from a blend of quality lighting, the oven hard at work, and reminiscent bilingual chatter. Usually the TV is on, though ignored. The patio door slides – open, swish, close - portals the deck, extending the living room where more friends lounge on plastic lawn furniture. There's no other place I'd rather be.

As a child lays supine and sleepless, geared in his/her bathing suit with floating device ringlets around their arms the night before a trip to the water park, my mind is hours ahead of this moment until I hit the road toward your house. My blood bubbles with excitement. The mind sees nothing else except you and me splashing like kids in the ocean while waves sway us back and forth. Tanning oils are lined up, towels packed, extra shirts prepared. Unlike a child, I'm aware of the unforeseen tragedies that might strike. I'm dreading cancellations, rain and flat tires.

Worst case scenario triumphs! Misfortune events and I'm sitting in front of the computer, wondering if the powered monitor screen emits UV rays, while withholding the strain of disillusioned tears. I had the mind of slathering sunscreen on my shoulders and wearing a two-piece underneath, just because it was meant to be. But apparently, it was meant to be that the cosmic forces put me in my place and keep him in his. There shall be no electricity, no magnetic attraction and no pheromone exchanges. Maybe its time we stop putting effort into this. I don't handle multiple disappointments well.

Demented Sent Text Messages:

Today's suicide method: Cyanide Cupcake, French Vanilla Buttercream

I wonder if electric shocks are legal. I can really go for some right now.

I like margarine on my butter.

I'm just busting your pork chops.

Texting Tourette! Onomatopoeia!!!!!

I just wanted to say balls again.

Sounds like we're planning more of a suicide, less of an outing. Nevertheless, sounds delish!

Snot encrusted yeller bellied salamander!!!

How about Mrs. Banana Grabber?

R is so gonna be bonin at the holy place in his 'holy place'.

I can't believe we wax our snatches for them.

Knight Industries TwoThousand

Demented Received Text Messages:

If you try to hug me, I'll come at you like a spider monkey.

It's a Veruca Salt Day

Can you help me get my feeln back?

Put a ripe banana into ur favorite ear

Articulate… Imaginative… Horny

I fart all day at work! Hey, it doesn't smell and it's silent.

If its clowdy we'll hang in the hot tub til our skin falls off.

Its all pros honeychild

Made you eek!

I'm getting propositioned in the elevator.

I don't understand. Or are you drunk?

My friend thinks you're smokin. Told him you're on the patch.

How many songs go unwritten, stories untold and words unspoken due to the bondage of labor? Think about all the frustrated poets and stuck authors that lose valuable words and melodies in the infinite span of time because of the 40 hour a week and overtime debt. Businessmen take their work home, but visionaries bring their imaginations to the worksite and continually find ways to save humanity, preserve history, innovate the invented, paint the colorless, only to be lost and buried into the inextricable subconscious because of demanding clients. If only Dreamer was a professional career move...With benefits of course.

We young siblings would watch romantic comedies. The protagonist couples were always frustrating. I would yell at the screen during their feuds. "She wants to hear it! He needs to say it. JUST TELL HER!!!" Someone usually refused to stand down their pride or plow through the fear of exposing oneself. They didn't end up together or spent years apart before the miscommunication was cleared up. By then, an illegitimate child was involved. I find myself in a tube, yelling at myself to just tell him, but now I understand how your heart locks up and the words won't come.

Grey said it best. A silly prime time drama summed up the stupidity of girls.

Why do we keep hitting our heads with a hammer?

Because it feels so good when you stop.

My head still throbs. If I didn't delete his number from the phone, I would probably keep asking him to pound the metal top on my skull. I'm precariously mindful how easy it is to retrieve it info from a previous bill. There's a strong likeliness, when the pain subsides and I think I've regained full consciousness, I'll beg him to take a shot at my brain.

It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over. It's over.

No caps. No exclamation marks. No unnecessary dramatic undertone. Just over. I'll keep repeating it over and over until I get so disgusted with my own voice and don't remember what the hell it is that is over.

You want to taste her so bad
Not just to claim that she's been had
Limitless inches to explore
Yet consent dare not implore
You'd never shrink down to her size
Though willing to reel her in, to mesmerize
Standing looking high at you
Every idea, hint and clue
Concentrated into tears
Collected in a vial, also fears
So you can swig the DrinkMe bottle
Humble downward, to her grotto
Level your gaze, swish the saline in your tongue
Confess she tastes of songs unsung
But pleads of miniature, unworthy of attention
Crushed her with your heel, not unlike condescension

Once upon a time…
There once was a fair maiden…
The thing is…

There are tales of an unfortunate summer love story. But it is better that there existed a story to tell, than if only a summer wind blew, knocking tumbleweeds about and not much else. Its better that the season brought upon torrential rains, tropical storms and dangerous tides. Because that means the sun will come poking its hot head out again. This means she has been loved and will love again. That means her heart is tired, but ever so resilient.

…and she lived tragically ever after.