...

Silver is just a coward's gray glittering with such conviction. A sparkle like hope that conceals its absence to give the surface its company. Love like magnificent's consequence litters the planes of my face, still, bleeding untruths with authority, breathless. Frequent expectation defied and souring the softest of mouths, which would speak cruelty casually and hypocrisy proud. If but one thing assures my belief, I speak words that must mean nothing.

...

Your hands tend to the unspoken for--their touch, an intrusion upon shame. With a voice descending the depths of disillusionment, still your hands return, having never learned the difference. Within the master's footsteps a servant is born, secreted in his obscene necessity. (If the pale light falters will you open your eyes, or have you always welcomed this belated invasion?) And do you know the conclusion of each joy will come? Impartially, and yet, inevitably. Will you withstand its arrival as ever it is anewed? So careless a celebration can destroy with discouraging ease, you may hardly notice at all. Cradle the fragments of that which you hold dear but relinquish at last the strength of their memory. Please. This life is but consequence of some unknown before and will dry the tears of tragedy. Except that we are not allowed an indulgence of life. Stiff in the threat of furtive glances we have placed our faith in the folly of hope and are fearless, already outdone by the surrounding haze. (The only standard deprived of conclusive worth, laid writhing now within such knowledge.) Freed to explore the limits of this injustice, we're confined by its conviction. But after the acceptance of deception hits us, determined or not, we'll have to fail.

...

We were naked so I wiped away your tears with my hair. If our spirits were trees we wouldn't falter so easily. Your eyes looked like tragedy when you confessed, “There is no beauty save the shadows of the clouds.” If the rain felt its descent only it would know my stagnant fear of a graceless existence, but it shows no sign. Your hands were beneath the snow until you lifted them to touch my face and let me feel the melting ice as it shrunk back from your fever, beaten. Your fingers are pensively restless, exuding desolation, and it's how I know: your faithlessness belongs to the willow's angel. I respond with silence and lay down, pulling you beside me. I kneel over you, your face a flinch away.  A darkness rests upon us while you shudder and I can't breathe, but you tell me not to worry as my sadness colored hair, drips.

...

Of all the ghosts I think I'm most alone. I'm ravenous for someone else's breath. My best friend thinks of her easy beauties, “Whatever, I fake it well.” It 's easier to believe her a liar. When I smile don't take it personally, I like the taste of my cracking lips for their ever pulling apart. Watching from afar my failing sight I can never stave off the cruel laughter, most loyal a mockery of hope spilling out my own mouth. I tell myself that there are things I need so as to give the waiting a purpose. Whatever, I'm good at faking it. My very faith makes me a liar, but how could I cry with what I know? If I weren't here alone before I am now. I whisper it to fall from my sleeplessness, sometimes, and it's still alright.

...

Gray noise of the folk, crazy bass sounding and the hum of humanity. Who would have thought? You're here now, with whomever you're here now with. But where will you go? And who would have thought? To the hum of humanity and other things I speak the end to stop the gray noise, and my head raises on accident. When my dwindling attention is caught with a sharpness I can't explain, I can see the sounds descend.

I advise you not to click on this button:

'Tis my first attempt at publication. It's very bad, let me assure you. I certainly wouldn't have bought a copy were I not the author. There are at least three pages with quite shameful typos. But hey, for a good idea of what not to do...

A Bright Sort of Dread & some poems.
Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

To be fair, my dog Sierra liked it when I read it to her. Though not so much as the Spanish dictionary I've spent many an hour reciting. I have nothing more to say for myself.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (12/2/06)