Games In Your Head

Playing games in your head
Like hide-in-go-seek
Where you tell yourself lies
Then resolutely search them out
Hidden in musty corners or
Lurking behind slightly cracked doors
You tackle them and try to make the truth
Yours.

Or like tag
Where you chase down the dreams
Beat them into obedience
Bloody-pulp submission
Make them yours even if
They're not meant to be
Because you've always wanted them
So freakin' bad.

Simon says: someone tells you something
And you make yourself do it
Not because you want to
But because
If you're truly, deeply, cut-to-the-heart-of-it honest
You care too much about what they think
About you to not
Obey.

Playing games like a child
Concrete running and shadow chasing and
Sticky grape-jelly fingers and stubby-crayon sharing.
Except you've grown up and the games now
Aren't playground friendly.
They're harsh and they're brutal and they're
True.
Truer than you yourself would sometimes like to admit.

Mannequin Lies

  Mannequins fascinate me. They always seem to be so put together. Their jacket drapes dandily, their shoes are nicely polished. They're tucked in, stand-up-straight, neat and oh, so fashionable. But what's this? Their head is missing.
Lopped clean off.
And if one only glanced at them, didn't really take the time to look closely, sort of viewed in your peripheral as you went by, you wouldn't really notice how much they're missing. You wouldn't really see that their head is gone.
I treat others like mannequins sometimes. Spick and span, clean and polished, love Jesus, fight evil, stand up for good, nothing's wrong, they've got a smile on their face and I don't want to take the trouble or have the time to dig deeper and see if that smile is real.
But a lot of the times, it isn't.
A lot of the times, when people look the most put together -- that's when they're the least.
But I treat them like mannequins. And don't even bother to look. To see if they're weary of life. If their smile is simply plastered on, flaking gently off like paint chips on an old house. If their heart is heavy. If their head's simply missing, stolen away by doubt and fear and anger and hurt and love.
If only we took the time to notice the mannequins, to linger just a little longer near the store front, to look deep into a friend's eyes, to uncover their mannequin lies.
 

Heart Stamp

  "Why do you write?" they asked her. She didn't know. No, she did. But how could she explain it?
   She wrote because there was an itch in her heart that pounded on the inside, shook up her soul, scratched like an animal outside on a moonlit night trying to get into the garbage.
  She wrote because her words looked important, all spilled out into the paper, the night-black ink permanently residing on its new pristine background. Proud. Regal. Like how she wanted to be if she had the confidence and courage and strength. And it would stay there. It would last. She wouldn't. But her words might.
  She wrote because writing made her eternal. Because if people took her words to heart, I mean, if they were that important, and if they crept to the back of people's heads and snuggled up there all quiet-as-a-sleepy-child-like, and people wanted to remember them, they would. They might not remember her. But they would remember her words. And that, to the Ordinary Princess, was what really mattered.
  She wrote because when she wrote it was more than just writing. Mere words, printed out, crumpled up in harsh hands, tossed carelessly aside and trampled by heartless shoes. Her writing was a stamp. A branding on the heart. Because when someone reads her writing, that someone might just take those words to heart. And then, guess what? They're branded. A stamp on the heart. And those words mean something. Now. And forevermore.
  She writes because she has to.
  She writes because.
  She writes.

Train

  The interesting thing about trains. You never know exactly where they've been or where they're going. Kind of like people. Each is dirtied by the grime of life, the graffiti of its youth. It squeaks and grumbles and groans but still makes its lonesome way out to wherever it's going. Out there. Somewhere. In the darkness, in the stillness, it interrupts and protests that it still lives. It still works and battles and exists.
  I want to hop a train someday.
  When I can't take life any longer. When all I want is be free of responsibilities and people and work and anxiety and lonesomeness and hunger and tired and captive.
  When I want to be free.
  Trains fascinate me. I always want to know their story. Just like I want to know people's stories. But people are harder to understand than trains. Unfortunate. Sometimes I wish people could be as instruction-book-manual easy to understand as machines are.
  Take me far away, trains. I want to see. To be free. To wonder, experience, open my eyes to the spotted starry desert sky, or take in the foggy-as-the-morning-dawn air that drifts down from the mountains and greets me. To see those who I love, and to meet new loved ones. To rattle on the floor of the cargo train, hearing each little sigh and complaint and lying with my cheek to the side of the train wall as it bump bump bumps along the rickety, dependable track.
  To know that I am going somewhere. That I still work and still battle and still exist. Just like the train.