Stone Cold Cowboy

I’ll turn my screams into dreams.

Trying to find inspiration as it seeps from my brain like tar, hot and thick to the touch.

I am anxious, I am an anxious person trying to understand how to get out of their head.

I get stuck in it like a little duckling wishing on a star, wandering aimlessly into oil.

I find myself staring intently into the sky.

The moon thumps angrily and my heart hurts. I scratch at my chest, my ribs stabbing into me cutting off my breath. Flowers breathe clumped together heavily inside the cavity, pushing my lungs out, in.

In, then out again.

I want to scream for help. I’m trapped inside of a room, lit up by the daylight sun in the night.

It’s glass, the rays reflect and I can see all the people walking past.

They look in at me, my mouth gaping, my eyes wide. I’m searching for air.

People staring, smiling, gawking. I must be in a museum. I must be loved, do they love me like this?

I look down, my chest open wide, ribs spread deep and red, the flowers in my eyes yellow and white.

All my shaky eyes can see is black.

Help me see the light, help me breathe.

I’m screaming, I’m thrashing at the walls, my insides exposed to the world.

Can they see my trauma? Is it written all over my face?

My lungs engulf the flowers in my chest, suffocating them.

My heart is restricting, cutting off the flow of blood. The dripping stops, everything turns the color purple, my face turning to stone. I can’t let them see it hurts.

I feel like I’m flying like an eagle in the wind. I feel heavy, I feel like a steamroller.

Anyone I come into contact with is immediately within my grasp.

I am a sucker fish in an aquarium which I do not belong to.

I shove at the glass, I want it to shatter. I beat it with my fists, I scream, I sing. I yell, I thrash, I drive myself crazy.

I scratch at my skin, I pinch, I pull. I want to get out.

Please, let me out. I can’t see in here it’s so dark.

The moon roars at me, the sun is burning. Searing through my skin I screech, he looks in my direction. Please, let me out of here.

I want to see, I want to breathe. Peel the flowers from my eyes, the flowers from my lungs suckling at the bone like leeches. It hurts here, I’m hurt so bad. 

The walls are closing in, the harder I struggle the faster they move.

Stone walls pushing through deep heavy waters, they lock in place. I give up, he’s still watching. Can he see me? Is it me he’s looking for?

I doubt it as I slump into the corner, the sprinklers are automatic, I cannot turn them off.

The garden drowns, dirt pools in little voids where my eyes should be. Flowers muddle through the trenches, sticks in their leaves as they try to beat the quicksand.

My feelings try to understand my fears. I take deep breaths and realize I’m going to die here, and they’re going to drown.

I want to go to the mountains, I want to get out of this box. This glass box I made many years ago, soundproof, bulletproof. These walls are so strong I don’t think I can beat them, I try my best. These walls are so fast I don’t think I can catch up. I run as fast as I can. A voice in my head says, You made them, You can turn them off.

I made them, I can pull them down. I can climb up on top of them and leap off the edge. This little glass box I’m in, I once called home. Is he still here, looking in at me?

I feel exposed, I need shelter.

Tell me how to get out of here. Tell me how to believe, tell me how to climb these trees. Get me out of this room, break down these walls and save me, please.

I close my eyes, I wish hard on the Earth. I clench my jaw, fists full of dirt, I rip the weeds out of the ground.

Help me, help me please! I beg, I beg, I beg.

I reek of desperation, I sway back and forth and I groan.

I breathe my heavy breath, I roar. The watchers, they’re roaring back. They’re swaying with me. They’re breathing too. Rib cages open and welcome me in. I look down, I too have skin. They can see me!

They’re holding torches and axes now. They burn and whack my box like big, strong women, the glass snapping all around the room in hefty chunks like stones.

Clattering gently onto the floor like sticks slapping skin. I see the sun, I grieve and I quim. 

The lights turn dim, the sun turns out. My pupils dilate, I feel like I’m a universe away. This room is cold now, I feel like an empty carcass, lost inside.

I don’t belong to this old home anymore. Where did they go, where did he go? I want to breathe with them, I want to see! I desperately want to know, who is he? This ghostly shadow of a man, always lurking, a particular wavering flame.

He must know me. 

A soft tune begins to play, I look around, I stow my flowers into place. I stand tall, I fall. I’m sinking fast, my organs flip out of place and back again.

A rollercoaster of emotions, I’m locked in tight.

A light turns on, ever so slightly. I squint and I can see, a horse turns and the tune plays out of beat. A teacup turns and a child yearns, in the distance. I long to join them, I stay standing still. The child looks up, turns toward me and turns to stone.

He doesn’t want me to see him. I understand, yet I call out to him to wait. I run towards him faster and faster as the teacup is spinning, I slow down, it slows down.

The little stone boy stands still. He’s gazing out at the center of the Earth and I’m watching, I shiver.

It’s cold when the sun sets.

The boy shatters and falls to the ground. He chokes out a sob, it’s all my fault.

Little boy, little boy, please don’t cry.

I beg quietly, I beg silently. I call out to him, Little boy. Little boy. He looks in my direction, again. His face all twisted, and sad. He contorts his jaw, locks eyes with mine, and screams.

Please, just let me go. I want to go home.

He’s trapped inside, I look down, his chest cavity roses breathe achingly against the lungs, the vines thorn his heart pumping blood. He says it again, quietly this time, Please, let me go. I want to be known.

I cannot leave a small boy alone, trapped exquisitely within the realms of an abandoned Coney Island.

He stares, sadly. I’m all I can be, it’s getting hard to see, and it’s beginning to feel like I don’t know where we are.

This new feeling unfamiliar as I crouch down, I hold him close.

He skips a little beat, a hiccup erupting from the garden of mine. I hold him tighter, as the teacup we’re now sat in, spins ferociously. The tune plays as the horse bobs around, two horses appear, now there are three.

Smoothly now, a lullaby tells a lonely bird to fly softly away, away. The little boy screeches, clenching his fists, his body stiffens. I hold him tight, he fights. I shush him, I shush the lullaby, I shush the bird that caws, and the sun, and the moon.

The teacup halts, and booms. The carousel disappears into the darkness and I hold the little boy, shushing, shushing. The sky sucks us upward, into the abyss. 

My bleeding hearts open wide, the little boy quivering. I lean up against something, someone. I can’t breathe anymore. I think I’m trapped inside.

The daylight moon shines down. I see the glass, it’s reflecting on me. My box smiles down at me, the only place I feel safe. The sunshine darkness bleeds through the blinds of my room.

White noise drowns out whimpering sighs and I open my eyes. My eyes, my big brown eyes. My small eyes, my four eyes. I am fading out. Is he still here? Can he still see me?

Is this all real?

I hear a train go by, off to somewhere. The streetlights shine, I peek out the window. Across the street I see the light flickering in a window up high.

It’s him, he’s begging for my help. He’s in a house, in a room, on a bed I recognize.

He needs me now. I sneak out onto the roof, I climb into his room.

This room is mine.

The bulb in the lamp shatters and like a chemical wave, the aura of the room sways. I spark a lighter to see, flowers breathing on the floor.

I see him, he cannot see me.

I hold him close, his chest is bleeding. His ribs are broken. There’s dirt on the floor, and mud in his eyes. I spot a mirror reflecting a soft light from the sun. 

I can see it now, he is me. I am him, we are one.

He is 11 years old, and his bones are worn out. I am a stone cold cowboy, stuck within handmade stalwart roots.

We are born from a fire, impervious to the ticking time. 

I whisper to him, Can you hear me now?

His roses dream, he opens wide.

I can hear you, can you see me?

I can see him.

With my big four eyes, I place the glass in his eyes. First, he looks up at the stars.

Clenching his jaw, heavy, he wishes hard and small.

I’m holding a steady glass of wine, sitting tall. I can see it now, I’m ready to dive. I’m still learning to love, I’m ready to try.

I am ready to live, I am ready to love.

I open the door, the little boy swallows the moon from the sky.

I close my eyes, say goodbye to why, I want to set him free as I try to get to sleep.

He holds my hand and we fly to the weeping willow tree. I climb higher, high.

I’ll try to get home in a dream, and he gets gone. I’m lost and confused without him inside.

Without pain, the breeze blows the foxgloves into a gentle bruise.

I’m at the top, the walls tumble down, I fall. With scraped knees I smile, suddenly, unexpectedly.

I am free.

Like a reflex, I hold my hand out to the girl at the bottom, I run to her.

I’m getting closer and she's standing still.

She isn’t running from me, I’m not turning back.

Tears fill the deadly wells I have for my eyes. She fetches a pail to help me see, she breathes with me.

I am no longer lonely.

The bulletproof glass I built up around myself so long ago, laid down in slivering puddles on the ground.

Dead flowers swell and ho, heave and woe, on the cement in the center of the sun and they sizzle.

Wallowing no more, I, a little star, shine bright next to the little boy fishing on the moon. Balloons fly up and up, I tie wishes onto them. The wishes that I’d once mistook for asphyxiated whispers, with deep desire to yawp barbarically. 

The woman smiles up at me, she says that I am found. She’s holding my hand and says that I have built the place in which I have longed to be, within me. It was just on the other side of the wall.

My screams turned to dreams, finally.

Bridges burning bright, and I am turned loose from the chains of my mind that held me back. 

The cage sits still, flesh rotting inside.

I’m on my way to a new place that I will be from.

Filled with hope and with love, where the doves will cry, no longer will I.