Black Dahlia

The orchestras quieted and all the noise turned to a hum. In the suspension, I found myself hung from the ceiling. A new perspective on all the little people below. Walking on my roof, footsteps on the plaster, unknown and over feeling. A reeling, desperate disaster. Mask off, I saw the world for what it really was. Just cardboard pieces, shuffling broken puzzles. They didn’t see the invisible hands puppeteering their world, because they lived safe inside their bubble of ignorance. Here, dangling from the sky, the hourglass was turned on its side. No more sand to sift, no more time to shift. And none of it was real. The little people go on. The game keeps being played. The black and white, greyed. Wishes, left unprayed. Masks, fully displayed. The laws, wearied and disobeyed. The hands of time, broken and frayed. Racking up a tab that goes on unpayed. Righteousness, delayed. 

I see it all and I am afraid. 

Because sometimes, I wish I had stayed. 

All the little people go on. Breath, the dessert before death. The right to live, the last gift to give. Hopeless and hopeful, while I hang from a ropeful. I think I missed all the joy before death kissed it away. The beating heart I surrendered on my last day. I hear the rhythms around me now. The steady drumming of a still breathing world. It follows me into the places between. I can’t help but watch from my departing dream. 

Is this the love, the life, and the light I relinquished on the day my candle was extinguished? 

Now, I haunt the places you try to be nonchalant. A weeping willow, a black dahlia. The ghost that tried to follow you. A lost soul, a weeping mistake. So, if you see me when you sleep, take a piece of me back with you when you wake. Bring fruit to my coin-less grave. So that maybe someday, my soul can be safe.