Flat.
Cracked fingernails gripping the edge of a world without curves. Bloodshot orbs peering downward into the gaping maw of beasts that by the night spin imagination's horrified frock.
Against the wall's blown chamber, hard gritting tears of the fingers that struggle to grip the Real.
Tilt your head backward and look toward the ceiling as it blows away, through stinging eyes and the acridity of a conscious realization that this could be it.
It could be over.
No damning smiles of regret, no lashing tongues of compensatory exorcism.
You really could have.
Really.
But wasted, this is. The only thing here is the bowl of air and the hot winds that sear your Emperor's Clothing.
FAKE. CHARLATAN. ABASED. DECEIT.
You wear her scarred memory like a badge.
Where it once it set your steps forward into triumph, it now reveals only clownish waste.
Mockingly, stumbling, you guard its precious worth, but it is shamed by your hand and cries for what you once were.
Here is where your body smashes, here is where the flaming winds hold you fast to the dry walls. Falling through a glass morning into oblivion.
What awaits beyond the If Mountains? Do you have anything left or has it been spent on the foolish voyages into the small dawns of a mediocre, sad, momentary, brilliance?
You have sold yourself.
"Where will you go and what will you do?" asks the old woman in your eyes.
Can you ever really expect to be bought back, stood aloft, and raised as a flag over your own lachrymose wasteland?
Just lay here, in the vertical spanse between your time and what could be. The fevered disillusionment will keep the winds blowing against you, holding you up on the wall like a torn, ravished photograph, a disastrous witness to Marley's regret.
Over the calescent dervishes look you into the ceiling of stinging doubt and jester's folly.
Lover of chaos, you fell free, spiraling toward the ground in soft madness.
The impact takes years, the crash-breaking of bones and rips of flesh from sinew will last for a lifetime.
You danced for a while, and entertained those who believed in your harlequin desires.
Danced yourself into platinum and diamond dresses spun of mean dreams.
Now you are still.
©2011 Melissa Alexander, Gypsy, The Gypsy Shadow
http://thegypsyshadow.blogspot.com/2011/03/click-steps-on-cobblestones-graceful.html