Dark Poetry Prose Poetry January 15, 2006 Dark Poetic Prose

1-15-06 sunday 3:01pm

Legs crossed. High up the chair. Feet tucked into her abdomen like a tortoise inside its shell. That is how she'd sit. Where she would count. Her life in songs played and beer drunk and words written. In soft pajamas with legs too wide and long. Striped shirts that hung from her shoulders like uncinched nooses.

Glancing at the phone. The battery aalways charged. Two red pinpoints of light in a steadily dismantling darkness. That the sound was present. And the chagrin of the night prevasive. The chair squeaking lightly as she adjusted herself to dig deeper into the keyboard. Certain there was something more to come. And just as confident that she might never reach it.

The speakers were stalwart. Always loud and stoic and strong. She took comfort in the position where they flanked her like wooden soldiers that whispered everything she'd always wanted someone else to say.

The TV was so passive-aggressive. Sternly illuminating the back of her head as she sunk into the dim of the monitor searching franctically. Blindly. Offering no sound. No real images. Only a dull light behind her and surreal parodies of the world she missed.

He was never real to her. Nothing. No one ever was. Not in that sense that she could believe she was what they wanted instead of the million things that could be taken from her. And so she always just gave it to them. What they wanted. They never had to take. Because she needed something to write about and any kind of pain would do.