I wasn’t a suit. The rented jacket was a shell and I a snail seeking refuge, but certainly not a home. Father’s tie tightly clenched my windpipe, stifling my voice and trapping any butterflies seeking flight.

“How do I look?” She asked.
        “Like a parrot with boobs” I thought.
“Stunning!” I spoke. 

We were greeted by a sea of known faces and unknown postures. Classrooms no doubt envied the dance hall’s rigid spines like a country girl dreaming of the big city, neither realizing the shallowness behind the glamor. Though engulfed by serpentine dresses baring flesh seldom shared, my gaze was drawn to the towering monoliths of tux-clad figures. I knew them all; four years had turned other lost wanderers of the world into friends. Yet, their selves were smothered by donned apparel.

“Do you wanna dance?” She asked.
        “I brought a date?” I remembered.
“Not really in the mood” I spoke.
  “All the other couples are…” 

Unbeknownst to I the soldier, my uniform entitled duty. To call what I saw ‘dancing’ was itself a stretch;  More apt a visual would be gaily dressed women rearranging furniture. I declined a ride on the bandwagon, instead sitting alone while she sought to salvage the remains of her prom night.

Sharply I loosed my tie, untucked my shirt, and coolly exited the sepulchre where living ladies danced ‘round macabre maypoles. It wasn’t me anyway. I’m a witty t-shirt, clean but with more cat hair than cotton,with an open button shirt certainly wrinkled.

I
(Though at that point in life I was still blissfully unaware of the transcendent grandness of which I was but a part, there was still a light sense of brokenness from the solidarity I had so adored. Granted, the pawn never sees sacrificial hand determine his fate until it’s far too late.)

Danced
(Before that day we were a Rubix cube, all sides uniformly aligned as a single shade of untarnished color. Perhaps we’d been long ago solved or simply untouched, but whatever the case that day we scrambled ourself, each side becoming a unique mosaic wholly unlike it’s neighbors.)

As Though
(How somber a realization that these choice words are a necessary admittance of inevitable failure. As much as I’d tried to hide it, the hopelessness of our relation was as clear since its inception as it is in the clarity of hindsight.)

We’d
(We would. Not as long as one might hope, but would we did.)

Love
(Not my favorite word, but one falls into a paradox with its handling. So unique is the sensation of love that no other word can describe it, but so oft is it described that it loses its uniqueness. Were I to further delve into what ‘love’ entailed, the splendor of barefooted dancing in winter snows and ill-pitched ballads under icy rock may overshadow my true intent.)

Again.
(Though I hope for the past and future to become as one, perhaps it is best it never does. Were there ten thousand Mona Lisa’s, would not each lose it’s beauty? We had our go, and to go again would lose sight of where we’d went.)

Jake,
the envy of the marksman’s arrow.
You say ‘jump’,
he flew.
I was skeptical back then,
now just revolted.
He’d rather starve than bite the hand.

Madame Juniper deserved better;
I repaid kindness with a hand in her pocket,
but I was young right?
Hadn’t been told enough
what I want isn’t
what I want.
The madame cared for us,
the children of the night’s negligence.

Madame Juniper kept with her a coin
of the likes I’d never seen.
Said her dad gave it to her from France.
Called it the most valuable thing she owned.

Then, I didn’t realize the fluidity of value,
the subjectivity of worth,
meaning we instill to world.

So I took it.
Jake was perturbed,
reminded me of ‘wrong’.
But as I dragged him to the butcher
and his stomach growled a painful reminder,
even his eyes began to glow.
I gave the butcher the coin,
expecting a feast, receiving a chuckle.
He mumbled something about ‘coward-coins’
tossed the money at our feet.

We stumbled to the shelter,
hungrier than ever.
Jake wanted to return the coin,
sneak it back
to avoid the blame.

I couldn’t. It wasn’t guilt;
Bad conscience was still a stranger.
By stealing it,
I’d given it my own meaning
(what an accident!)
It could buy me nothing,
but I had taken it and it was mine
and no one else’s.

Madame Juniper was broken for days.
Jake was unavoidably Jake, and did what he thought
(or had been told,
if there’s a difference)
was right.
When he turned me in, Juniper took back the coin.
Never mentioned it again, trying to make me punish myself,
but that never worked.
I was never one for second guessing.

He had never before seen himself, not in the shimmer of a lake or glanced in the half-reflection of a bus window that rended him part from the hollowed cityscapes beyond. In a well polished spoon, he saw only his absence. No face could he find when exploring the oft hidden world beside our own.

She had never before seen any object, only their echoes etched in blurred detail. Where no reflections were found she was blind, and so fashioned herself an array of mirrors and lenses that rare left her face. No thing was to her real.

Since stumbling upon one another, they were inseparably in love. From Moscow to Paris to Buenos Aires their curiosity took them. In their world of shared visions, Big Ben gazed over London air, yet too floated feebly in the Thames.

It was during this time that they happened upon a carnival, and to her he read the words “Mirror Maze”, which fetched a grin to her face. She removed the delicate apparatus that’d grown accustomed to the contours of her face to suggest they proceed. He feared what a mirror maze might entail, but his trust in her was implicit.

It was terrifying; it was beautiful. A chasmic abyss and an endless field. One drank of the walls while the other drown in them, but so completely did they share of all things that neither experienced one sensation.

When years passed and finally they drew ship to harbor and settled down, they bore a child who saw the earthly light as would both parents entwined, more vividly than any other. Reflections of reflections were as visible as the staunchest realities, and all that lay between.  Each year they became pilgrims to the carnival once again, and with three gazes faced another universe.

Fair-youthed Adonis spied Narcissus
gleaming in a mirrored pool,
  full in himself enamored.

‘Were I him I’d know no love save my own,
  but were reversed,
he’d know not even that’

I don’t regret nothin’ we did cause hell a body’s a body and if it weren’t one I knew then it weren’t my business any more than whatever hell the neighbors raise when they keep the lights burnin’ throughout the night guffawin’ over family jokes but Ned took to regret a good deal more sayin’ what we shoulda done with the cops and how we coulda looked for his family and “wouldn’t you want Gail to know if that was you” but I don’t rightly think I would and a body’s just a damned body but Ned said for months that the empty eyes kept him up and I says “if they’re so empty then there ain’t nothin’ they can do” and he’d stare at me like I didn’t get it and maybe I didn’t but Ned’s stare bothered me a good sight more than the dead ever could cause it was just a damned body and good bodies don’t wait for god in swamps

Lauren bloodhounded the air with a massive inwards sniff. The smell-flecks were… Bacon? No, this was much too alive and far less crispy; this bacon still had bound in its step. Wild boars had gored three of her kin the night previous, and her heart yearned only the vengeful taste of pig ass (though really, who doesn’t? Pigs are delicious, delicious things, insatiable blood-quests aside).

Silently she crept through the underbrush without snapping a twig. She had trained for this: For years back in the Old World, she’d lived under constant threat of breaking her mother’s back if she’d dared step on a sidewalk crack. Little did she know this psychological torture would later be the difference between a boar feast and an empty stomach. She could see her kill now, its yellowed eyes dancing frantically but never landing on its predator standing before it.

Lauren’s heart skipped a beat: this must be Ole Blind Eyes. The locals assumedly called him that because he had Eyes, but they were Ole ‘n most certainly Blind. If she could bag this kill against an old, weak, and physically debilitated member of the boar community famous only for its former glory, surely they would sing her praises. She loaded a 9mm round into her bow and pulled the string taut. Were the circumstances any different she would have reprimanded it for its inappropriate posture, but now wasn’t the time.

The bullet was loosed from the embrace of its bowstring cradle and into the much warmer hold of the boar’s heart. Maybe were it a fair fight between two honorable warriors at their prime, the combat may have been more interesting and a little more climatic. But this, dear audience, is a story of fact, not fantasy, and sometimes reality is rather dull. Suddenly a hawk swooped out of the sky and ate Lauren whole.

And the town rejoiced, saying “The boar is dead!” But then the younger boars killed all of them too. And all of humanity was gone and there was no one to sing the praises of Lauren the Great Huntress.

Snow attests a Winter night,
Darkness looms for hours more,
This solitude do I abhor,
Yearning now Apollo’s light.

Life seen just through windows closed,
Dickinson my sole consort,
Her words the lighting does distort,
Macabre verse the past composed.

Alone I lie, this bed for two,
Brahms lulls gently me to rest,
This void beside do I detest,
No concubine nor belle of pew.

‘Fore eyes do close and dreams begin,
Thoughts creep in the vacant sheets,
Thoughts of ships composing fleets,
Wooden hulls and life within.

Drenched planks remember not the crew,
Who sailed with them a hundred years;
When last stout sailor disappears,
Lumber’s instilled purpose be through.

I apprehended then the thought,
Of poems touched as they inspire,
Of songs that weep as sung by choir,
Such fantasies could not be wrought.

Spring extends the bright king’s reign,
But I - no longer his subject,
Do now expressly him reject,
For my distraught brings him no pain.

Stagnant life without affection,
Stands no more a towering cell,
Down Rapunzel’s locks I fell,
I yearn to share my imperfection.

“I’ve never seen a rose so white as you, nor as not-so-thorny” He seduced with a disgusting measure of success.

“Oh, Charles” she smiled coyly “Your giving me butterflies!” At first she hoped for them metaphorically in her stomach as she did not want a physical gift of butterflies, but was less than humored when she got the worst of both worlds and felt the beating of wings inside her stomach.

Within seconds his stare became disappointed, then stern, then infuriated. “I think you mean ‘you’re’, my dear”. So hotly were the words spoken that the consonants began chaotically fizzing and popping about while the vowels melted into a puddle at her feet.

“I..I suppose you’re right”. She had never in her entire life been more embarrassed. Her cheeks were shamed redder and redder until it was her forehead that was blushing white on her fiery skin.

“You can either take the 40 lashes or execute 10 of your finest manservants.” Ms. Aldridge didn’t care for either option. Her forehead stopped glowing white and turned red like its fleshy neighbors (they were the jealous type; the cheeks resented the firm stature and taut skin of the forehead while the forehead envied the luscious bobbing of cheeks, but neither mentioned it when at parties together and thus remained silent rivals) as she slowly cooled down to decide. She looked at the pale white of her back and decided that a permanently red face was damage enough to her physique for a day and the servants were more replaceable than her flesh-tones.

“Fetch me Wallace, all of his brothers, and ten pistols” She told her nearest servant. For the first time in his life the servant was glad that he was not related to Wallace, who he admired greatly. Just not enough to not let him be shot to death by bullets in the face. The servant grabbed ten pistols and loaded them with powder, then fetched Wallace and his brothers who were enjoying a satisfying game of “Really Demanding Physical Labor” during their break. The not-related-to-Wallace servant carried all the guns and all the Wallaceian brothers to Ms. Aldridge.

“You” she called soothingly to Wallace. The words would have floated to the ceiling and maybe even through it had they not been tied down to her mouth like festival balloons. “What is your name?”

Wallace was a little disconcerted. He looked up and saw she called soothingly to Wallace and wondered why she needed to know his name when he’d already been introduced, but he told her anyway.

“Ah so you’re (she paused slightly and grinned at the correct usage) Wallace!” she let out in only a little less than a joyful screech. “All the servants say you’re indispensable in the kitchen”.

Wallace gave a sheepish grin. “I wouldn’t say indispensable miss, but I do apprecia-”.

The “-” is where the bullet entered his face region and exited the back of his skull region.

The numerous brothers of Wallace were bewildered by the sudden loss of their most prominent brother and unifier of their identity. If not brothers of Wallace, they were each their own man and none of them enjoyed the concept. Their confusion and displeasure of having a self made killing them somewhat easier for all parties involved.

“Well that was messy and unpleasant” Ms. Aldridge sighed. Before she could find new servants to clean the blood of her dress, one of Wallace’s youngest brothers began coughing up blood on the floor. The bullet had gone clean through his left eye socket and out the back, but that didn’t seem to phase him too much.

“Miss?” he asked politely. Even near death he knew better than to abandon his manners, for they along with his relation to Wallace were all that defined him.

“What is it?” she replied with such quaintness that a butterfly or two flew out of her mouth. It was a little disgusting to wonder what they’d been doing in there, but the beauty of the imagery outweighed such insights.

“Earlier…earlier you used parentheses inside of quotation marks and I was wondering if you said that out loud or if it was a side note” said the remarkably polite Wallace-Brother.

Ms. Aldridge was ulnabe to form wdors she was so furious. She’d already lost her pale white face to the forces of word-play and grammar today and she had no intention to lose any more. Lacking pistols and the desire to learn how to load one, she grabbed her shoe and threw it in his general direction. It missed by a few feet, but the shock of being disrespected coupled with the severe bullet wound to his somewhat vital brain finished him off completely.

“So, where were we?” she turned back to her Charles, her suitor. He had fallen asleep and thrown on a couple hundred pounds since they had met minutes before. He startled awake and mumbled something about he could never love a ‘your’ lady before again passing out.

Ms. Aldridge in garments white and red (both made by the servants) with flesh much the same decided on the spot that she did not enjoy the company of men.

I never wanted to be an astronaut as a kid. I couldn’t have explained it, but I loathed the naïve desire to spread human imperfection to the cosmos, the one place truly untainted by our innate destruction. Only our eyes and imaginations had pierced the soul of the night sky, and in it one could live wholly in the past, each star a worn and aged image from before they were born.

“Look! Do you see a kite?” you said, tracing four of the specks with childlike enthusiasm. Before us, a priest had no doubt gazed to the heavens and beheld the same stars as a celestial cross. A knight looked up before that over the countless dead and spied a sword cutting across the sky. I saw no kite, no sword or cross, no signs to pardon my choices and sins. To simplify the infinite expanse of the night’s sky to worldly symbols insults its grandeur, looks beyond its real beauty. Every star stands alone, a stalwart beacon against the ceaseless tide of eternal darkness before it.

Each dimly glowing light could host a planet staring back at us, unaware that so innocuous a sun is filled with such vigor. The center of our life could be naught but the belt buckle of the hero of some ancient alien tragedy, plastered across their night’s sky. But none of that matters as we rest half entwined, two hearts with different galaxies before us; even as the unending expanse grows forever outward, all things possible in the monumental splendor that spreads before us, I know with impossible certainty that nowhere is there anything like you.