Lux

Dwelling in the devil's hour.
Wake up, your head reeling with the last 27 years.
Has it been this long? This life? So short, but dragged out, living so many phases, so many faces.
Each one I'm still brought back to you.
I tear away, like a feral cat. You still lay out food for me, to make sure I'm still nourished.
Like a moth to flame you coax me and I remember the summers with salted skin and soft collar bones.
Index finger circling down down down. And I'm looking up at you.
Looking up to you, and looking down as you walk away.
Things we will. Never. Get. Back.
Things we will. Never. Be. Again.

And with your hand to mine we created colors so fucking vivid that they'd blind those around us.
Our laughter filling the halls, and how fast you peeled my layers back.
And how I learned even faster to build the walls back up. old ways new.
With promises that "It'll be different." Don't think it will.
I will ALWAYS tear you limb from limb, with a grin on my face that I inherited from the devil himself.

When my eyes pour the paint from your paint brushes and you dream of me at night.
It's 3 a.m. and I'm setting your bed on fire, ripping sheets to the floor and like a maniacal demon, am here to remind you of what we never finished creating.
Do you remember the creaking of the door and the echo of the hinges?
I laid on the floor in the bathroom staring at the ceiling when I needed you most.
Reds, Oranges, Purples... and you remind me of a song I once knew.

Singing words we never lived but pretended, finding ourselves through colored glass.
Swaying on boats, choppy waters and clear skies. Land Oh, here, I come.
And pull the drain. Swam up like a mermaid, transfixed on the designs in your eyes.
But when I grew legs, my first instinct was to run.

-Saree McClaran
July 4th 2013

I saw him.

When I was young I used to never question anything as reality. Now as an adult I know that monsters are very much real. I have seen the face of evil.
I have looked it in the eyes, and I've yelled "I dare you" in it's face.
With a smirk on his face, he dared. He tore my skin from my womb, made me shed all protective layers, showed me my own face at the bottom of the ocean before my last breathe would rise.
'Full of fire', he laughed. "get that from your mother" as he strolled away, parts of my soul in a locket... along with thousands more wrapped around his neck.

I laid swollen and defeated was flocked by voices. Dreamers, See-ers, and the such all surrounded me with a magnetic force, lifting me. "You know better". They sighed. A swift smack to my forehead to open my eye and toss me backward.
Cats always land on their feet.
"Close your eyes, close your eyes to see." I heard in a whispering chant.

See I did.
Her wrists gushing in the bathtub. "How fucking dare you" I shouted. "You know better", I cried.

As the car spiraled in three circles at the intersection, I remember the clouds being that perfect shade of cotton candy pink with a slight orange tint and smiling. It always made me think of when I was really young and we took walks together. I Love You. Three Squeezes.
I crawled from the car, I laid on the pavement. It started to rain. but the rain was little lockets gently falling from the sky. One in each hand, one for me and one for you.
I blinked and stood up and started running through a field of tall grass to get home.
The field I got poison sumac covering my body from. It itched so bad I still remember 24 years later.

I hid your locket in an opening under the heater vent by your bed, where the full moon would shine in. A man in white told me you'd find it there. But all I saw were a pair of sharp scissors.
I removed them and used them to cut my bangs short, my hair was wet so you got mad and scolded me. I looked stupid for a month....

But your wrists stopped bleeding... and the bath tub drained. You dried your hair and your eyes glistened again. When you weren't looking I snuck a peek. I cracked open your locket to see.
A ray of light engulfed the room and I fell back.
The clouds... and he smiled down on me. "Close your eyes to see..." he whispered.
I ran inside and held your hand... and squeezed it three times.

-Saree McClaran
June 29th 2013.

Laboring Seasons

Dear stars, come soon, wrap your light around me in a way where I am blinded.
Vibrations like magma, you crawl with anxiety. A quarter century and some change, rattle in your pocket.

Your fingers brush against the curtains as you wait, sun rise then set.
Holding on to the cotton fibers you swing forward; then out the window.
Hair tangles in the leaves as you've met your landing in thorned rose bushes.
Pale skin, light blue then dripping red as you thrash about.

The Galaxies are contracting.
Push. Breathe.
Dancing Dancing Dancing.
Summer Come.
With the hysterical moon rushing in, soothed.
The sun has wrapped her warm arms around you.

Arrive. Our Sweet Summer Solstice.

-June 20th 2013.
Saree McClaran.

I can't stop dreaming about you.

Rattle their bones off the mountain tops. Like handmade tambourines.
Scavenge to find your art, but make it.
Watch your step though, the hands still reach beyond the soil.
Bring you down, then lift you up. Just like you've always done.
We used to wait for hours, stars to sun, and moon met us in the mornings.
There is the soft waiting scent from autumn still on your skin when you thaw out each year.
I remember that September afternoon, driving by scenery and then off the road.
I stared at the blinding rays in the middle of your eyes that matched the threading of that old shirt.
All trust in Stendhal syndrome-esque dreams. The nostalgia ravages me senseless, pulling me with strings, your little puppet.
Obsessed with counting my steps so I could retrace them, the way you traced your finger tips along me...
Slivers from the tomb I've built and carried to my watery grave.
When you opened it and found I was no longer there.

Reborn with the spring, Bring fauna forth, you'll find me sleeping under trees.
Hide and Seek.

-Saree McClaran
May 28th 2013.

Moth

I watched as the softest of snowflakes fell on to your eyelashes the day you reached over to tell me that You loved me for the last time.
I remember the sun bleached rooms, the sheets, reflected shadows on the ceilings.
And the top of the stairs as you closed the door.
I crawled for you, for so long.
Bruised knees and bleeding palms, through the brush to find us in a clearing.
Fawns of Spring.
I was soaking in too many colors; the emotions flying off my fingertips on to a canvas to show you.
You couldn't see though.
You couldn't fucking see.
I chased after balloons like a child, "don't let it go, don't fly away", you said.
She grew wings over night though, and learned to use them 2 years later.
You watched her graze the light post on the street corner.
Eyes met and you lost your breath.

-Saree McClaran
03-09-13

Sea Gazer

You've slipped in and under the darkest words.
The strong sense of need, seething from novelty.
The realization that it was an act, and you were set up.
The rough, sharp texture of cemented dust in the crawl space you've escaped through.
The bleeding of your fingertips as you clawed through ice just to reach a sense of being real.
Profound. Finding.
When the water solidified into ice rushing through your lungs.
And your eyes froze open to watch the waves tearing flesh from your body.

Wake up.
Please! Wake. up.

We meet again, Sleep Paralysis, and she creeps into the shadows of my room.
Crawling on me like a cat, Not to wake a soul, but to Awaken.
Singing her tune, through the dust in the night light.
The terror of her icy hands running along my face and the stinging as they've reached into my soft mushy sleeping brain.
Sea foam.

Eyes open. Surface. Gasp.
Retrograde.
You can not fathom.



-Saree McClaran
Dec 2012.