{"id":7366,"date":"2014-09-26T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=7366"},"modified":"2014-10-01T10:57:35","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T14:57:35","slug":"a-collection-of-dark-prose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/a-collection-of-dark-prose\/","title":{"rendered":"A Collection of Dark Prose"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Room_585x585\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

War<\/strong><\/p>\n

Internally Godzilla is welcomed. I hope for something large and brooding to be fearful of. Instead my tongue swells with grief\u00a0while the sunlight wrinkles my skin. Time decays waiting for a silver cumulus to\u00a0let go of\u00a0the shoe and I squeeze out all of\u00a0my tears until I have nothing left for the\u00a0rain. What will I do when my body disagrees? I\u2019d rather choke on the dust that I leave behind than the dust that I gathered while I was here.\u00a0This peculiar illusion of control corners me like a beast at feeding time. You would think by now I\u2019d have learned enough to bathe in the sunlight instead of the blood but this\u00a0slaughter is all that\u00a0I know. I cashier myself until my shoulders curve raw underneath\u00a0the flag\u00a0of my own war.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Walk On<\/strong><\/p>\n

We live and we die, and neither occur they way that we hoped. The day doesn\u2019t go as planned, the career doesn\u2019t go as planned, the years don\u2019t go as planned. There\u2019s an affair\u00a0we walk past, or a job offer we walk away from, or a failure of both\u00a0from which we walk on. There\u2019s a machine inside our brains trying desperately to process the rights, the wrongs, the should-haves, the should-have-nots. It cranks on, swallowing the years and the minutes until, before you realize it, those years and minutes have equaled a decade, sometimes two, and your crisis, the servant of your internal struggle has held a million faces. Some you\u2019d like to forget, some\u00a0you beg the universe to etch to the back of your eyes so you can still see them in night-sleep, or forever-sleep, when it finally comes. Then you\u2019re left with the \u201cwhat was his last name again?\u201d and the \u201cwhen I was on a business trip to Missouri once I met this guy that\u2026,\u201d \u201cI remember when I changed careers how I was convinced I\u2019d never eat anything but Ramen noodles again\u2026,\u201d \u201cI stayed up all night long on my 30th birthday in a hotel room in Chicago, with a married man, and just talked\u2026and then one night I didn\u2019t\u2026,\u201d \u201cI toasted a stale glass of draft beer out of a plastic cup to Bobby Knight at a little league world series game in Williamsport, Pennsylvania when I realized after about 17 minutes who it was I was talking to, an impromptu trip that I hadn\u2019t planned to take\u2026,\u201d I was engaged three times and never married, and thank God\u00a0I walked away from\u00a0the first two, or I\u2019d have never found the third, sometimes when you love you still need to leave\u2026,\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve turned down several life offers that maybe I shouldn\u2019t have and taken other\u2019s that bear the same burden\u2026,\u201d \u201cI was holding my grandfather\u2019s hand when he drew his last breath, and was still 15 miles away 3 years later when my grandmother\u00a0drew hers\u2026,\u201d but at the end of the day, at the end of the years, and the end of the decades we have all walked past, walked away from, and walked on. These are the steps of life of which we all must take; without them, we\u2019re merely standing at the door.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Distortion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes my blood stops flowing and pools inside of\u00a0my head until the ache overwhelms my spirit and my sleep. I sit dormant in the dark, helpless to the creature that\u00a0arts the\u00a0colors behind my eyes. My heart swells inside the river of my throat and then pounds like a monster knocking at my door. In shy surrender I turn the knob and\u00a0a flood of defective memories flows in pieces that\u00a0haunt my present with ghosts of my past,\u00a0rushing with it the\u00a0distorted faces of my tomorrow.\u00a0Like a shield it\u00a0shines a mirror that\u00a0robs the sleep from my eyes\u00a0and stabs through\u00a0my ears like a steam engine. Shards\u00a0of reflective distortion then break my bough,\u00a0letting the blood from the branch of my vein until it\u00a0pours out my hopes into a pool of blue, cradle and all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Room<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is\u00a0a danger of pulling my eye out\u00a0with the needle\u00a0that they\u2019ve\u00a0chosen to rest between my gums. Why is the light so great? Is it to display my fear for all that enter the room? How did we ever evolve without the agendas of medical waste? The stairs fall away like dark stars forcing me to walk\u00a0un-tethered. \u00a0My neck slides like a trombone that only\u00a0plays music for the dead. I cough loud enough to earn a respite but\u00a0I\u2019m careful not to swallow the warmth. The shadows outside\u00a0my window wait to fill my mouth with concrete, and\u00a0rust.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sanctuary<\/strong><\/p>\n

You say that you feel like you\u2019ve been walking for\u00a0one-hundred\u00a0years and I watch the shadows carve your face like a razor. I look around your sanctuary while you\u00a0cough your life out over a private sink and I see it\u2019s nothing more than a room\u00a0with black walls and dead flowers. How long has it been since your bones have danced with the door shut? What will you do until the pirates come? Paint your own portrait the color of the water?\u00a0Go ahead and sip your money as long as you can but don\u2019t forget the ferryman. Do you truly think Charon will\u00a0believe that thieves\u00a0filched\u00a0the fare from your eyes? Take a millstone with you when you leave and pray for pennies; and for\u00a0heaven.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Heather Tinker is a freelance writer living in upstate New York. She has just finished her first novel, The Red Door<\/em>, due for publication this winter. She is also the founder and publisher of Writeontheedgeny@wordpress.com, an online magazine that portrays the work of local artists, writers and photographers. When she\u2019s not busy working a real job or practicing her craft she can be found warding off the demons of the world with her 7 year old Great Dane, Grey, her 7 month old cat, Charlie, and the man insane enough to volunteer his time with them all, her fianc\u00e9 Mark. You can visit both her dark and her light sides at her two blogs, http:\/\/greydoneveretttinkerwebster.wordpress.com\/<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Writeontheedge35@wordpress.com<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Internally Godzilla is welcomed. I hope for something large and brooding to be fearful of. Instead my tongue swells with grief while the sunlight wrinkles my skin. Time decays waiting for a silver cumulus to let go of the shoe and I squeeze out all of my tears until I have nothing left for the rain. What will I do when my body disagrees? I\u2019d rather choke on the dust that I leave behind than the dust that I gathered while I was here. This peculiar illusion of control corners me like a beast at feeding time. You would think by now I\u2019d have learned enough to bathe in the sunlight instead of the blood but this slaughter is all that I know. I cashier myself until my shoulders curve raw underneath the flag of my own war.<\/p>\n

READ MORE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":8027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,200,219,217],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7366"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7366"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8030,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7366\/revisions\/8030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}