*EDITED*

The mirror went away, where did it go?

Shift and trip on yourself, shift and fall into yourself; roll off the bed and you’re on the floor breathing with bruises blooming on your wrists, this is not a dream: the red thing’s gone.

It’s not with the Babel notebooks accounting the induced memories of Before and everything of After that makes for your mattress and makes for the throne: you take one from the lower back region and the pages run with Christmas ink and when you draw your hands away, the blood’s on your hands and you can’t breathe until you remember that it was only with words that you killed him, and it was only with words that he—

—this isn’t the time but you consider the memory with a certain terror since that was its favorite when it came time to burn; and when it came time to freeze it was all you could do to bind the red thing to the Babel throne and watch the frost turn its eyes to milky crystal balls in which you could see your future, you saw the stars and you saw the madness beyond, you looked down and you saw even in your ordained cold it smiling with the cruel crescent of the crooked moon…

…but don’t forget this time, don’t forget that it’s no more alive than the orange sky, it must be found and bound and brought to—reason.  Don’t forget, we don’t know how to forgive, it must be found and bound and brought before the Babel throne…

And with the thought you finally think of the throne that faces the undead persistence of the sky and the clouded eyes that watch for the persistence of memory to set the red thing free—

Find the window by the rainpaths cast into the tired parquet, look up from the rainpaths and look into the heart of a creature that pulses with a madness you must look away to survive.

There it is, the red thing: so dead, after all?—

Do not question, that is not your place, that is not your life, algorithms are to neutralize anachronisms, algorithms are to watch the red thing scream with every Second Coming—

Look away.

Close [eyes mind heart]

This is better.

 Touch, burn, clutch, clench. Your hands sink into the glass.

 Yellow and red make orange, age and youth make life, bitter and sweet make poison.

Window: melting, blurring, being cessation. Your hands are free, your fear is not.

A world opens, a creature calls.

Don’t understand, just jump:

The mirror flew away, where did she go?

Fallen; but no wings to find. Stand. Slacks and sunglasses, you’re someone else’s [dream nightmare nemesis] but that’s someone else’s thought too, and you know that even if you’re not supposed to think for yourself you’re not supposed to use just anybody’s thoughts—

—and this is one of hers, and you wonder why the red girl’s thinking of this, how is she thinking at all—

—irrelevant, don’t let her get you.

The wounded sky is reflected in the puddles: and in each roll of the clouds you see the red girl, but when you look up she’s not in the sky she’s only ever in your mind how?—

—irrelevant, don’t let her get you.

Not yet…

Break her face with the slap of the boot, and again, faster, and again and again and again in furious accelerando until you’re flying across the broken landscape of a bloody sky and you, your christening shirt is splattered conviction-red. The stain’s there, see?—you’re trying, you’re trying so hard you’re bleeding we’re burning don’t condemn us yet…

Soon there’s a rain that [hardens hinders helps] with every step, slow staccato that blurs the line between sky and –scape, flying and falling, and though there’s no stain your hands are burning under the lucid rain, and the thought I’m melting what have you done to me I’m— this thought too blurs between predator and prey, and you know what to do: fear but don’t, fear curling to a knot to a noose, and with your melting hands you find, grasp and climb, foot in the rabbit hole hope something’s on time don’t be late don’t be too late

The mirror ran away, where did you go?

You’re in the clouds, and you’re something else when nobody’s watching but the one who matters most, those stars?—they’re only your gods, immortals can’t understand the importance of mortality

Your red child’s on the balcony, red red ribbons in her hair, red red apples in her hands. There are no words, merely emotions for the two souls between who stretch taut the rope from which the trapeze swings and pendulum dooms. You and her, you are approximate souls lost in a certain world: she does not belong nor, no more than the orange clouds which hide your home from your gods but not their demands.

You step, step and smile, step and dream, step and die: the rope slackens and the acrobats scream and the dead man lives and the balcony crumbles and the mind breaks and she’s watching you fall and you’re watching her fly…

Memory, activation, repetition. Ice cream with ribbons and flounces and curls and dimples and friends and fallacies before you turned and saw what no one else could see for your beautiful red child is for your eyes alone, the mother-mastermind that split your mind with her Mendelbrot-mentality again and again and again until you were beyond even her but only you and your red child would survive the gods, the boy you saw through the window who was not the soul you felt in your mind nor the voice you saw on the screen but who the red child first found with cherries in his mouth and she offered him something of hers, the first implementation of the Babel throne upon which is crucified your strange red child and she doesn’t understand how you crucify yourself every night just so you can see her and wipe the frost from her brow as no mother should have to do, you don’t understand why only ought and you wish you could give her more than a throne but if she had a sandbox she’d be a god and she’s your child not your creator, your heart’s broken so many times if she’s not a god how does it break again?

Breathe—you have to, for her—she has to breathe in your belly—

The sound of winter bleeds the wrists.

Don’t scream. We’re watching.

The mirror fell away, where did I go?

Understand

[every child has a secret twin they stain with their secret sins]

[every saint sanctifies the blood the sinner sacrifices to them in the sacred eve]

[every Scarlet reaches out to the mirror but only the blind find it]

i:

Expanded and updated version of [this].

This is why I don’t want drugs. This is why I write. This is why I breathe. This isn’t me; this is the red child and the algorithm that both creates and destroys her, and though these are parts of me they are not me in my totality, they are the most common pair of pawns I find myself moving; and one cannot move without the other. In truth, I debated a while about posting the edited version of the piece (and even flocking the original post) due to its personal nature; but if I started censoring what writing I post even here based on what’s personal, then I wouldn’t be posting at all, would I? So I’m posting, but if you want an argument on whatever mismanagement of my pet psychosis you’d like to accuse me of I’d much rather it on IM where I can be a bit sharper.

I don’t… really expect this to make sense to anyone, but it should make more sense than the original, and I tried to give it more of a scope of the pieces of me than before, though of course the perspective of pawns limits that. I do love this piece, though, and I think it’s the only truly good piece I’ve turned out lately… though my notion of ‘good’ is hardly mainstream. :P Concrit much appreciated, if you can manage it.

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