the eight part poem {florence}

A young girl walks through fog and finds herself in heaven.

A young girl walks through fog and finds herself in hell.

A young girl walks through fog.

"Welcome, welcome." It whispers gently, she clasps at pearls in the sky,

a perfect beaded necklace, a perfect hanging noose.

"Welcome, welcome." She falls in love with the thought

of falling in love, and she strings herself along her beaded companion.

A young girl walks through fog.

A young girl walks through fog and finds herself in hell.

A young girl walks through fog and finds herself in heaven.

You watch her dance elegantly through the golden gardens of the arena without a care in the world and you notice that her wounds are no longer dressed with bandages as they are stitched together with a careful hand. It must be hers. You can't help to admire her handiwork, it was always her specialty; alas, it was one thing to be talented, and it was another to stitch a dress of skin, no matter how close it hugged your thighs. Better a dress of skin, than a dress of flame though, and you can't help but look down and think that.

Watching carefully, you push through clouds and kiss the bright blonde hair of the girl below, and wish she could feel your ghostly lips urging her forward. But she doesn't need your coaxing to move forward, almost as if a gentle tigress leaping through the wild, you watch her shoe-less figure dance forward towards the volcano. There's nothing you can do though as her toes no longer touch the soft grass, and find the cracked soil. You find your body wants to scream, but your lungs don't let the air come, they don't do much lately, you find. But this is important.

There's nothing you can do as you watch her naked toes dig deep into the hardened soils, twisting the cracks and kicking up rocks. You know that she knows that there is no life there, but that won't stop her. She's following wherever her body tells her to go, it seems. Death seems to attract her more than anything, and you should have known that coming from a graveyard would do this to her. You should have known. Yet, death has been nothing but a friend. You know that death has treated her kinder than any friend that she'd had.

You know that death will greet her soon, and yet you kiss her yellow head.

It's time you stopped.

She hides behind a mask of shadows. Each day she wears a different personality upon her sleeve. A goddess, a scared doll, an angry lioness, a backstabber. Each mask contained a personality she did not yet know, but she'd always been quite fond of dress up - and these qualities only seemed to appear further in the arena. The only thing that seemed to stay the same was her love of clothing. If only she could live - then she would know what the game of masks truly was. Changing each day, sinking out of her body, a snake slipping out of it's skin and adopting a new personality.

Today she liked to dance, but she thought maybe that would change tomorrow. Dancing had never been a specialty, but today, on the road less traveled, she let herself twirl and prance every time she so felt it - she felt it a lot. Maybe, she was a ballerina today, but she hadn't decided quite yet. That was the great part, with no one around she could play around as she pleased. She was the swinging hand of a grandfather clock, swinging around as time passed, and she was willing to keep playing as long as she liked. Which would be until her faithful demise.

She danced today, but a ballerina she was not.

Still, she danced, and let her toes dig deep into the dead dirt directly around her. Twisted the rocks and let them emerge on their own. Perhaps today she was Robin Hood, freeing the weak from their confinements.

No, that wasn't it.

Today she tried on a mask, and didn't quite know what it was, so she danced and danced until she could figure out what it was.