The house of the heart
Is it frozen over or made of cards
Is it a mansion with secret passages and rooms forgotten
Or is it a gutted cathedral
Desolate in the dust and left to ruins
Stay in the center
It’s dangerous out there
They can smell your blood and taste your fear
Some splinters pierce from dreams
Some stones crash forth from long ago and break your walls
And leave you with powder and rust
Each stakes a chamber
Burrows deep and hooks the skin
Sealing tighter than a coffin
Only to howl with ache at a scent
Or spell of song
They never give in
They never leave
This labyrinth california
I never could navigate it
Not to please others
I feel suspended
I offer free will
And refuse to choose
We are haunted
Pieces of bone from history
Whether bitter or broken
Or simply drifted with the water to somrwhere foreign
We are haunted by flickers from the future
A deja vu
A skip outside of time where you see it all
From the second the stars align
To the purpling death as the sky begins to fall
Revolving doors of honesty
A carousel of speaking
Or not speaking
Sometimes the ghosts are right in front of you
Breathing
Someday wine will water the flowers
Golden glittering
Poured molten into the casting and forge
The key created cutting through
My sewn lips
Such secrets snicker and slip
Kissing shadows in their escape from my sanctuary
Leaving me vulnerable but free
All the world’s a masquerade
A carnivale of beasts and maidens
And very occasionally a glimpse of genuine
Our hearts tend graveyards and hotels
Of those lost or never found
But no one tells
The choices you’ve made
And who you’ve locked away
Ironies and mysteries
Collide in the night
And light of morning
You wonder how you can live authentically
In a world where everyone lies and hides
So slowly
You cover your face too
And curse and curse and curse
That it’s outwitted you
We are clusters
Of frightened experiences
Oblivious to the sharp blade of death ever at our necks
(Giving us too little time however you make it)
And glutted on our fears and next years
Making us all fools
And yet I too
Feel the chain and can’t break through
In the shade of my ribcage
I keep a nest
Of feathers and flight
Of warmth and sunlight
I leave the precious things sleeping
Because it’s cold and cruel out there
There’s no safety in numbers
And nowhere to run
And the hunter has come
Sing a lullaby
And hold on
The house of the heart
How many rooms
How many more
Beyond this silver door
It feels like my tomb
The loneliness hollows out the tender cavity
The spectre fingers plunge into our chests
We all dance the same
Never knowing our names
While the clock measures our breaths
Craving connection
But crippled and slipping
Hands
Unable to unmask
Because we are so afraid of
Our Selves
That we veil
And become someone else
To protect ourselves
And pretend the cloth is steel
While we tell ourselves it’s oxygen
And this facade is real
When instead we’ve been dead
As our beliefs
And our ideals we leave by the roadside
When fragility and
Vulnerability
Are too much to ask
Poisonous
We sneer at taking a crack at the glass
And smack away the antidote
We’d rather have locked doors
Than open heart surgery
So in what position does that leave me
©️ 2018
Originally posted on my DeviantArt
Mischa Fox 