What Happens in the Dark

She sits, sometimes, in the carnival
glass dome of her skull, dreaming
of home,
Sits, wondering, not wandering, for she is not
lost, where the paint-by-number
line of fissure between reality and
surreality sits, between this and that,
here and there....everywhere and no where...
But as hard as she searches, valiantly searches,
it is not something she has come to find
as of yet,
Perhaps, when the artist painted her,
some lines bled and ran down the canvas
of who she should have been,
Could have been, had they not all
smudged and smeared together,
Maybe...

The mirror sucks her in, you know,
Voice booming like some unknown god
in the atmosphere, lip-licking, haughty sonofabitch,
swirling debauchery into her veins through
the tiniest hypodermic needle he could find,
he screams

She stares, Alice looking down the rabbit hole,
yet again,
She stares, hours and hours lost to
the unwanted presence of things upon her flesh and
beneath it that must be, MUST be, expunged,
a hair here, wrinkle forming there, cellulite...
Oh God, not that!

& Ana, the beautiful one, points out
each bit, standing behind her always,
here, here, there too, don't forget this...
She makes mental note of it all,

When they vanish, she slips to
the stark white cube, her own Pandora's
box, inside, the horrors and cure-all's
to life, death and whatever may come beyond,

One small bottle, nameless, faceless,
tiny, compact, spherical, magical,
She pops the top, attached to the crud-crusted rim,
yellowed over time, and pours magical pixie dust
filled pills into her bony palms,

Breaks each one, leaving them to
spray heavenly white powder on her
tabletop mirror,
One line, two line, three line, four...
Rolled up piece of paper in hand,
Clear the sinuses, up it goes, bend over
and breathe...
Inhale each bit until it hits the carnival glass
and shatters it...
Finally, finally she can't hear them,
see them, nothing...
Just sleep... that's all she ever wanted in the first
fucking place, wasn't it? Just to fucking sleep...
Not this, none of this...but there isn't a thing
she can ever do about it now...

Except sleep...