Curious Things

Curious Things

In this spiral of endings and beginnings all things are changed.

Cut and stitched, the patterns alter.

Pulling the thread she ties a knot and seals the stars on strands through time.

Binding and weaving blood and light, she artfully crafts such curious things.

© JM Tiffany 2024

Nexus

Wet ribbons of highway pass asphyxiated exits as noise pulsates from the dashboard.

The undulating interstate winds into damp darkness toward a vagant interworld nexus.

Hypnotic neon lights pulse, like vampiric dream-serpents of mind-killing urgency.

We pass under aqueducts where new gods form like obscene angels.

© JM Tiffany

Disremembered

I lay with the lights off and whisper to the Night. “I feel sympathy for monsters,” I say to Her, “Because I know what has made them.” My wounds are invisible in Her darkness, but the cuts and contusions are everywhere. Little valleys and hills, amid coarse patches of lethargy. “Must those broken continue to break?" I cry. She is quiet. The Night is a good listener, yet she never offers me any advice. I bind the cracks with chemicals and sink away, slipping into Her belly to be disremembered until dawn. © JM Tiffany 3.18.2024

Ninety Seconds to Midnight

They displayed her to us, a sweet, battered doll. Coy and precarious, they called her uncertainty a victory. She was small and quiet. As I looked at the savaged girl, I watched her wringing her hands. A tired young woman, shifting and slightly broken, she was like a pink petal tugged and battered by the swift dark undertow of privilege. They promised us that she would return to the world what was stolen from her, and the absurdity of it curled my lips into a snarl. The stupidity of the insult drove a stake into my chest. but the subtle cruelty of the display was lost like the years trailing raggedly behind her. If they saw my tears, I do not know, but they bled like acid and burned as I swallowed each one.

I marked the time: it was ninety seconds to midnight.

© JM Tiffany, 3.16.2024

Strangers

In the darkness there were strangers with wide staring eyes. Lovely broken things, like roses never picked. They revealed themselves to me, and together we fell.

There, in the shadow of the edge of the world, I listened for their singing but heard only whispers that faded into silence.

I whistled alone then and threw rocks into the abyss as its black lips swallowed worlds whole.

The teeming void reeled, and everywhere the dead drifted past me.

I am not like them, I thought, whose dull eyes sank like stones in wells. There was yet fire in my skull, and I would carve its signs on the walls of the night until morning set me free.

© Jason Tiffany

Thunder

I lived in the thunder of white cracks in a broken sky. Its shattering gray and violent breath strained my wings, streaking my soul with bitter rain, until I saw through the eye of the storm a heart that could not love me.

©️ JM Tiffany