Elucidating Questions

I wake in such a foul mood

With all the ferocity of a rabid dog

Off the scent of the hunt for weeks

I wake with a gnawing in my stomach

An emptiness in my heart

And a madness that has never been kept behind walls

I wonder how he got them in the chamber

Did he ask nicely?

I wake in such a foul mood

The dropping from there to here

With a bite waiting for the snap

It never quite sinks in

Never quite sinks in

That every morning I awake

Alone

Tired

Hungry

And here once more

Everything I begged not to happen just before blessed sleep stole me from his world

Only temporarily

Only temporarily

Making fifty thousand tiny changes all at once

But they said they felt better

Maybe because they could actually talk

I wish I could make myself over with friends

I’m only alone alone

Frightened adults gathering around the child non parentus adult

I don’t know how I got here

I don’t know how this happened

But I live with the consequences of actions I still don’t

Understand

I can’t hold it against her

With a life like this I’d want to graduate from us too

But looking back

I feel like that happened a long time ago

Right around the rabbit

It’s difficult to know, to realise

To know

You’ve never been loved

All the people

You’ve met just fell away

Never worried about losing you

Never got as attached as you

Never did

Never did

That you’ve never been loved

That no one thinks about you and misses you

Because you’ve never shut anyone out in a way they couldn’t get to you

They’re not coming

Circling the cage

The cage is getting smaller

Hands on ears fetal sitting occupying

Living in the cage

He steps foot around it

One two three

Turn

One two three

Only pacing two sides of four about-face

Alone in the cage

No one is coming

He whispers

They never loved you

They never cared

Gone one and all and those who are aren’t afraid to lose you

Not one person is afraid to lose me

What a pitiful state alone tonight alone in the cage

Though I may be alone tonight alone in the cafe

The only one open

But no one will find me

And another day will pass

Empty handed

Bag ripped to shreds

The contents long gone

The road never ends

My god

It never ends

I’ve given into madness

Given into madness

When I was alone on the floor

They reminded me to soar

I always really panic

I always really panic

I inhale til my lungs are sore

Because I have no one anymore

But stirring whispers trailing fingers

You haunt every second of my life

No remnants tracing lost thoughts racing

You haunt all seconds of my life

I finally realised

Why my accent comes out

Remarkably easy without a doubt

The “West Coast” accent

I find it so harsh and in a conversation with an

Irish

British et al

Australian

New Zealander

It comes out when the conversation besides to sound

Like a saw on wood in a noisy shop versus a coursing river in a green den

A quiet evening breeze through the silent rolling hills

The rush of the river splitting the once silent nighttime city in half

A night under the stars while the bugs sing their songs

None of the things fit together so I try the softer one

The one I like better the one that phases in and out like an echo from the past past

I don’t really know the story

But they were slaves

And I am homesick

Because they were slaves

When they ask why I changed my name, why I didn’t change it back

When I answer it’s because my dad told me my mother named me after a guy she had a crush on and possibly slept with

True or not

The name is tainted with the memory of the telling

Will their eyes open wide?

Will they see every moment my father must have had with me from start to finish?

Will they see what kind of mother I had? What kind of father?

Will there be a look of shock, something dirty being revealed and they wish I hadn’t said it?

Or a nod of complete understanding

Of course, my father has made me privy to information I didn’t need

Many times

But I haven’t told anyone

Because at the end of the day my name means more to me

Briar Rose

Than

Ashley Rose

Every did

Ashley never rose

She only crashed and burned out

Lost in the darkness of a cold room

Begging for love in a world that never showed her

She is for before the accident

We are for after

And forever after

I do

Stuck with you

Every day

My name is yours is mine is yours

We share a name

And then it stops

The clock