..on the wall

Something is wrong with the mirror in my room
It recklessly confused the image of my smile,
And instead returned the sublime of my thoughts,
Thinly caught between the glass and the pane,
Shards of sincerity are plastered away,
Because apathy never had face-value.
I probably become more see-through every time
Someone cracks open my insides.

Copyright © 2008.

Her steps trace the contours
of a familiar space
pacing the beat of ignored cramps,
but she
would continue to dance,
tapping across the cedar floor
of a hollowed room,
and the core of her body breathlessly consumes-
Rhythm, and each of her movements are measured
By time,
Twisting fate around, spinning circumstance to blind
Pain, to remind her again
what she lives for,
Spiraling in turn and this cure doesn’t burn
Her insides,
Absorbing instrumentals up from her stride to her spine,
But now she cyah find
Her balance.
And then her eyes, would sometimes
Drop so far from their focus
Her gaze grows a little more anxious,
Then I get extremely nervous,
Because (pause)
the doctor insists that she came with a ‘best before date’
printed somewhere around the same place
that they make the opening to insert the tube,
giving her until December to live,
and that date didn’t include,
when she decided to stop taking treatment,
stop making payments for medication,
stop storing her passion for living,
and sometimes her breathing
stops for too long
and her two lungs, begin to shut down, and
soon the ground meets the discreetness of her steps
and second-guesses her compressed-
stare
but She’s losing her hair,
remembering how much drop-off dis morning…
Sitting
at the edge of the bed strumming each strand in the light blue of her hand,
Unsteady, so it shakes the hope off of her ‘awareness’ wristband,
Looping a green satin ribbon
Around the frail of her fingers,
Unveiling her flesh that peels off with the fever
Her skin colour is changing…
And the blood under her thinning- skin
Never had such a rush within her vessels,
My only wish is that frustration didn’t make her so doubtful,
That she still have a chance in all of this,
Choreographed remedy, therapy for her illness,
That God would will this
madness away,
And that she could learn to trust Him one day,
Because dancers don’t die…
Their music gets cut-off.
And while she coughs- up blood
To wash her own self down the sink,
My prayers are stained red,
Too little time for me to think
of being at ease,
The cancer is taking over her kidneys,
And her steps are slowing down.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

skinned

Skin is the only thing that bonds back together,
After I interrupt its brown cover with a blade
Smiling open sensation
This exhilarating raise of
mini-slopes standing for my fingers to stumble over,
Slitting open the continuity of this mask,
Quenches questions of this reality,
Or did he really steal the last
Of me, the last time his own body
Pierced my flesh,
And this is the gutted cut that made me the hopeless
Hemophiliac,
Bleeding open a gap that
No woven fibre of scab could ever try to seal,
And these skin scratches are the only way for me to feel
If I really am who they say,
And these scrapes across my skin only
Takes the sting away,
So that I don’t numb myself to sleep.

-Arielle John copyright 2008

In unsolid stare to heaven, my forehead rests alongside hers, temple to temple. and the ruffles on this bed-sheet might only resemble snow angels without their wings, but she might think that my fingers in her hair is the most relaxing thing for today, leaking some of her hurts away for a while, and her short wild hair never bands together, faulting the feeling of rain stabbing the ends of my fingers, goodness, she is so beautiful a human, and quietly she tries to listen to me breathe so she could mimic my patterns, perching ear against nostril, inhaling her essence, I swear she smells like the rain trying to brew the nectar of earth’s flowers, but the scorch of her sun only makes her blossom brighter, and true to form she was born a fighter, and this is one war where she relishes in a victory that I cannot understand yet.

Sweetest thing I've ever known...

baby cousin on the beach.

...where my scratches came from

She’s afraid of needles,
And the mere thought of it cripples her.
She’s here
Standing, staring, wearing a daze,
Tearing
at the flesh of my stomach,
..she can’t stomach it.
Swaying and moving uneasily
I’ve gotten accustomed to her
faking immunity
Inflammatory tragedy
That can all but stabilize
This fragile life,
Left hanging from the centre of this room,
From behind the bullet-proof
Of these green curtains
And behind the uncertain fixing of her face
…she can’t face it.
Neither can she erase the hitting out
Of fathered palms,
He injecting her,
Slowly, deeply, to force her to a calm,
Almost too dead to feel,
Her body
I wonder how he feels,
Thinking that nobody
Else knows
What he does to her.

-Arielle John

copyright 2008