betrayal among lilies.

it's funny how i see it, i feel it, and i hate it - and then i don't see it, don't feel it, but still hate it anyway.

i've been betrayed by logic, by the absence of logic, and the very presence of presence. 

spirals of smoke swirl up from the chimney, but no fire burns in the fireplace below. all there is are the glowing embers from the night before that refuse my stamping to transform into cinders. die, i say, die. and yet, green shoots sprout out from the hard winter ground, between the non-existent cracks and up into the polluted air - dying the moment they came alive. thorns are enmeshed with the roses until all that you see is brambleweed and poison ivy that stings and sweetens with calamine lotion. i taste the sour odour of garbage in the air at the back of my throat and gag, bottle caps falling from the sky. tin cans are crushed every day, buttons pop, threads snap - and i am glued together like pieces of a broken china teapot that has been flung from the top of the empire state building. soft linen, silky and fresh, cover the table with the bowl of steaming chicken soup, labours of love. 

rifles at point-blank range go off, i blow out your brains, you kick me in the shin, i embrace you and stab you from the back - again, and again. and pull out the knife in my own back. then, white light, red light, green light, golden. poppies in a field. i've been betrayed, and i've never been more alive or dead at the same time.