Locked for precious moments alone and naked in the shadows. I’m safe at last among my ghosts, dreaming of the moments where art is as easy as vandalism. Running laughing along the edge of night with paint and knives in my hands, every window smashed behind me. All the trees burning. The smell of it. The apple trees on fire.

It’s a glorious day indeed when I don’t miss you. My pen runs away on the page, speaking atrocities with a blue black forked tongue.

There’s a wind on my back. Paint under my nails. Crushed by love and broken by hate there’s no trace left here of any of it, absolutely no scar, no signature. I’m free to start again.

I find the truth in the old words, and my hands come back from the netherworld, flickering between broken and whole. There’s sweetness like honey on my tongue, bitterness like tears.

I am not her. We are not her. We are not always her. She is us. Waiting like a skin slipped out of. She lingers in the shape of my mouth, the way one foot slips shyly beneath the other. The season turns. The lightning comes. I remember so many other nights like this.

Uncountable nights where I could not be captured. I ate the world and it ran wet down my chin. In the company of nightmares is the only safety I’ve ever really believed in. The only place I’m whole.