A robin hoped along the flagstone path, cocking its head to the side at me before going about its business. As I slowly turned my head in Agatha’s direction, I brushed my nose against my shoulder, briefly comparing the meadow fantasy of the clean clothes to the reality of this garden’s aroma. Though nothing could be compared to the physical presence of nature, the smell of the clean clothes was a nice substitute. Pushing myself up to go back inside, I took one last glance up into the sky and breathed in again the lavender and rosemary.

Beatrix graciously offered the chair next to hers, as I came back into the kitchen. I made an unnecessary effort in ensuring that my chair didn’t groan or mark the tiled floor as I pulled myself closer to the table. I didn’t want to give away that it had been five years since I have sat on a chair— five years since I have sat at a table. Neither of the two women seem to notice. Beatrix was too preoccupied relaying how she wanted to take me shopping with some of her friends and showing me around town at such a energetic speed I thought my head would implode just to keep up with her. My only responses to what she said came in the form nods and a few words.

The doctor places a ceramic plate of a B.L.T. sandwich in front of me. My eyes widen at the sight of the sandwich. Similar to the chair and table, it has been forever since I have had a plate of fresh food that I am afraid to touch it, lest it be a mere illusion. As I study every aspect of this sandwich, I notice that the bread isn’t stale and the sliced tomato isn’t on the verge of going moldy. Carefully, I allow my finger tips to skim the surface of the sandwich and discover it is indeed not an illusion. Had my stomach not betrayed me, I would have marveled at the sandwich all day. Grasping it on either side, I slowly lift the sandwich to my nose and sniff it. The smell of the bacon alone was heavenly and when I took a bite— oh my! The bread was so soft, the bacon seemed to melt with the mayonnaise, and the tomato was refreshing. The bacons’ grease and the tomatoes’ juices were dribbling down my chin.

With each bite, I had a hard time focusing on anything that wasn’t this sandwich. Well that was until Beatrix’s back talk to Agatha’s pleas to not overwhelm me had raised to such a high volume that I was brought back to my surroundings. My brow knitted once again in surprise that Beatrix was still not being punished for speaking out to a woman fifteen years her senior. Was it because her brother was the leader and pulled rank because of it? With this preview of free speech domino effect into vulnerability for their pack to outside intruders?

The way you kissed my lips

The way you were holding but at the same not

It's like you weren't there

You weren't into that kiss as much as I was

In fact, it's like it wasn't even you

That kiss was so unpassionate

I was wondering where your emotion was

You said you needed time

And all I heard was

Goodbye.

it knows i’m at my best when i’m on edge when i can’t help but think of Xzar and his awesome samples my inner voice got embroidered with decades ago

ironically i’ve learned about Oppenheimer through Xzar and not vice versa but another one of those samples was — please can we stop this INCESSANT NOISE???

it knows this INCESSANT NOISE is the best condition to squeeze maximum efficiency out of me when there’s too much white surrounding every black spot and it gets on my nerves as i sit there in the blinding surgical cleanness of the transfer port’s lobby waiting in line to make arrangements for the new arrival

same faces that used to induce such panic back in the day when i was sixteen and not out of the woods when everything was alien and way too spacious now they’re familiar faces no longer paying me any worried glances but rather showing proper attitude according to the prestige i wager due to third parties like dirty cops and shit all that business that Four-Eyes likes to make fun of

might be natural for you but it sure ain’t for me m8

the process flows lazily due to clerk bitches barely moving behind their counters so the line is nearly frozen and i choke on my tenth espresso trying to scheme further actions in advance but my thoughts scatter so badly i can’t even make myself fully comprehend what exactly i’m getting myself into and why and the only thing i manage to withdraw from my memory the same way you do with a broken ATM is the way she arched her brow upon seeing me for the first time and hearing what i had to say then

6′6 porcelain doll with a ballerina body and that freezing shodan attitude is capable of fucking you up and over in one snap even if you refuse to evaporate into vacuum like i did and not just because it was the deity of my deity at the time truth be told it’s just a fascinating sight on its own astonishing enough for my ping to jump to unbearable heights and now look at that aggressive marketing at that incessant noise at that imbecile edgelord welcoming the viper into his den and trying to justify it with the need for poison she produces

i can’t say for sure if i should be gloating or shivering so i do nothing just wait to get processed with my arrangements and vainly force myself to focus on the further steps but the only thing my focal machine is able to spit out in return to my kicking and screaming is the fact that april the cruelest month

i drive a battered black behemoth of a grand cherokee not a peugeot but otherwise it’s pretty similar and on my way back i take a detour through the business district quiet and peaceful at this time of day highrises towering on both sides head to toe out of steel rays and dark glass all translucent basked in the setting sun its dimmed rays bleed through their fake fragility making me think of the soft gleaming of a new gun there’s little comfort in thinking of guns not enough contact about guns not as fun as with knives anyway but whatever

i use voice-to-text to send her a message grasping at the routine thought of how weird it is that she’ll get a text nobody typed in and tell her that safe passage has been arranged the rest she’ll get upon delivering on her end

this much sobriety is so sharp it cuts into my brain the surroundings are too bright and overly detailed being sober is the best way to get a meltdown yet i can’t risk engaging 4-Eyes to fix it nor Mischa cos it would be too hard to explain without getting into detail about the whole underground adventure and the ordeals our restless hero went through in vain just for exp there

the bar we meet in is lofty empty and dimly lit sparing me the painful purity of her skin and just like back then many years ago when fucking dracula was just a taunt she threw at me for fun at the sight of my split lip and bloody fangy grin i make out her presence through all the incessant noise that excessive sobriety wraps me in before i actually notice her by the entrance it’s palpable like thick frost transient like harbor fog and even before her twitchy plastique of a glitchy sex doll her long pale joints neatly packed in tight fetish of black synthetics & leather straps and a slick pitch-black waist-long ponytail or her angular face almost bony but smooth like a bullet sharp as a dagger her very presence is enough to rip and strip leaving me with no guts and no thoughts not even a heartbeat just a single thick string pinched in discordance with every breath i have to make manually praising all-father for the gift of excessive adrenaline he granted me upon birth since that gift is what renders my face straight and tense like a livid mask of bluish plaster it usually instills fear in those who manage to make me truly mad but right now i’m just grateful for the chance to hide behind it without making any additional effort cos the remaining focus is tiny and stiff like a laser beam

it takes me some time to make myself get up from the stool by the bar counter and move across the room into the booth she chose and not just because i have to wait for the waitress to accept her coffee order but when i finally manage it evidently takes her some time to identify me and that doesn’t escape my laser attention

and here we go again with that arched arrow of her eyebrow and that razorblade of a smirk on her pale mouth almost lipless and her eyes framed with a thick line of kohl shine obsidian mockery in the dim dusty light she looks quite amused by such a coincidence an unexpected turn of events and says just Hey You Boy With a Scar What a Surprise

wavering on the verge of a meltdown i realize in hindsight that any dumbing numbing material would work even if it was some despicable drugstore shit like synthetic dope anything to distract me from the hypnotizing variety of sensory miracles her presence calls to life within me waking all the flashbacks and aftertastes along the way and for a moment she almost succeeds in rendering me back to that shattered state i got so lost in at sweet sixteen almost evokes that gaylord edgelord full of blood and despair that i was in her bar but this bar is not hers and my nerves have been ripped out cut short polished tempered and shoved back since then and a sudden surge of spite instills additional doubt as i silently reach into my pocket to present her with her new ID and a med card of the sort that the rats have imposed as a must-have for citizens on the occupied territories

i put the med card on the table in front of her so she can make sure everything is cool and good squeaky clean brand new genuine and keep the ID between my fingers waiting in silence for her to present me with delivery on her end & i stare at the perfect geometry of her nasal bones to avoid looking into her viper eyes yet make the impression of keeping the eye contact this trick i’ve learned long ago when my brother insisted on educational beating sessions yet the staring contest somehow managed to rob him of the mood and the only issue about it was that i was unable to keep calm whenever i really did look into his eye cos got too angry and snapped so eventually had to resort to creating the impression without actually following the rules and with my side vision i see the smile slowly fading from her lips cos this is the language she speaks the language of business exchanges mute transactions senseless deals trading items like a game

the glass jar that appears on the table in front of me is full of lemon jam bright yellow and translucent shines in soft peripheral lights almost magically when i pick it up and look through but it’s hard to see anything behind the sticker and so i give her a silent questioning glance not sure i would be able to say anything even if i wanted to or my jaws would prove to be stuck too tense to move at this rate locked like a pitbull and she points at the vessel with her chin and drops abruptly — five vials per jar five jars in total feel free to check if you want — and i respond with oh i will before i manage to make any conscious decision about it as usual

they call it impulsive personality disorder now and say it’s a subtype of the same shit 4-Eyes claims to have and in case they’re correct n he’s correct it would explain how the two of us manage to maintain such perfect mutual understanding despite drastic differences in the perception of the world well back in my day they just proclaimed me antisocial and blamed my inability to brake extreme responses to emotions such as rage in time on lack of desire to do so even though from my perspective the idea of consciously suppressing reflex reactions like these sounds pretty ridiculous but shrinks especially those specializing in personality disorders are usually too far-gone and deficient to even hear what you’re saying so i never bothered

oh i will i repeat in confusion and the soft whisper lingers in the toxic red isolation of a toilet cabin where i’m sitting on the closed lid with the glass jar in my hand trying to comprehend how exactly i should poke on the insides to make sure it really contains the vials entertained by the irony of how much more i would have to question the contents of the vials themselves if she had known it was me she was dealing with while packaging but considering she thought serious business all along it’s more likely that the Pluton is genuine

in fact perhaps the most genuine that i’ve ever come across in my life considering it’s the first time i managed to get my hands on the poison brewed by Viper herself meanwhile rumors say and 4-Eyes confirms that the rest of similar products sold under the same name on black market and via various dealers is actually not quite the same cos nobody knows the initial formula she came up with by herself with his assistance and at the thought of that my clunky motor twitches within the ribcage and bogs down for a second making the cabin contract in a sudden spasm around me because the thing i’m on the verge of dipping into lies at the heart of the crossover between the three of them this luminescent yellow liquid you’re supposed to shoot in your muscle or vein ties them all together tighter than any red ribbon this liquid has been leaking through her fingers down into both of their skulls and it was enough to turn both of them into raving pluton zombies shivering in their cold delirium whenever awake and sober enough to keep their eyes open

oh the irony of the fact that the very same substance was the basis which led to eventually excluding her from their circle and i nearly choke on my gloat as i unscrew the lid with a slight pop and plunge inside the bright yellow sweet substance with bare fingers thinking that i’m the shadenfreude twisted schadenfreude baby if only you knew in that moment when you called me disposable if you knew all that was bound to happen later you’d bother to use once and destroy rather than leave me to my own devices but now look at that and i hear the soft clank of glass upon glass spend some more time struggling with the slippery sticky jam to fish the vial out of the jar and wince at the sourish sweetness of lemon as i put it in my mouth to cleanse i examine the thick translucent liquid inside its unbearable phosphoric fluorescence is making me nauseous cos triggering but that’s good as intuitive proof of it being genuine and i spend a few more moments marvelling at the neatness of the rubber plug vacuum-sealed with a thin tin cover just like they do in the real pharmaceutics then shove it back in place and close the jar

oh yes i will some time later when i withdraw 5 out of those 25 in total and keep for myself but for now

stay in line and proceed accordingly

#streamofconsciousness #fiction #trash #splatterpunk #prose #excerpt

His heart suddenly explodes with a dramatic and desperate thump. Blood violently begins pumping through his body again. Painful air begins filling his dry, collapsed lungs. He whimpers and begins clawing himself. Instinctual screams echo off cheap wood, muffled in a tight, airless vacuum. His body begins retraining itself to live. Toes wiggle. Knees pop the wooden lid. Elbows slam against dense oak. Finally, his eyes open. Blinking, straining, and wiping his eyes, he realizes that he is blind.

A rainfall of memories suddenly drown his mind. The doctor consistently and repeatedly telling him that he had no idea what was causing his sickness. The guilt of watching his children play in the fields, trampling flowers and lies in cheap shoes, blissfully ignorant of the difficulty that awaits them. Waking every other night to find his wife weeping, her muffled and choked tears haunting the walls of their crumbling cabin. He grinds his teeth and claws at the wood above him with bloody fingernails.

A week earlier he’d used what little strength he had left to dig his own grave. He remembers the family trip to pick out the cheapest coffin they could find, his wife and children following him like morbid young ducklings chasing their mother. He didn’t remember his heart finally giving up. He didn’t remember his mind suddenly blinking out of existence. He didn’t remember a stranger looking upon his family with pity. He didn’t remember that stranger donating a fine suit for him to be buried in. He didn’t remember the strange man lending them a wagon. The stranger helped his wife load his body as she lead him to the grave he’d dug.

He didn’t remember the stranger struggling to lump his body into his coffin. He didn’t remember the force with which he struck the bottom of the grave or the soft plops of dirt slowly covering the lid. Bloody fingers finally quit clawing and gently rest on his chest. Every breath is deafening as it echoes on wooden walls. He knows he’s not getting out of here. He remembers the adrenaline and anger that fueled the digging of the grave a couple of feet deeper than it probably needed to be. He’d never lived alone. He’d never worked alone. He’d never played alone or slept alone. He becomes very concerned that he has no idea how to die alone. “I suppose,” he says, “I’ll just give it a try and see how it goes.”

He takes a deep breath and starts to hum an old church hymn.

My twin brother MEANT to stab me. I know he did. Everyone, including our mother, still like to say it was just an unfortunate accident, but I know better. HE knows better. And Both of us know Why.

We were born at 24 weeks gestation; premature, small, and sickly babies, the two of us. We were supposed to have been born in the spring of ’89, yet somehow, God saw fit to bring us into the world in the fall of ’88. My grandmother says that God saved us for a reason, brought us here early because we had some early work to do upon this wretched place we call the earth; some early lessons to learn, I suppose.

I am the older twin, a girl, and, having come into the world 20 minutes apart, I suppose that always meant I looked upon myself as older than him, in many ways. For some reason, I told myself that being older entitled me to more priveleges, special toys, private friends, and seperate birthdays, while my brother was meant to live subservient to me; in my shadow.

Looking back on it, I think that’s what caused my brother’s insatiable rage, early on. He was jealous.

And, for that reason, when we were six years old, he decided that he was going to kill me.

Now, I’ve never been one to believe all that supernatural crap about evil twins and whatnot, perhaps only because, if I did, that would have required me to take a good look at myself; because, he and I both knew, even back then, that, between the two of us, my brother wasn’t the evil twin. He was relatively docile, when in comparison to the miscreant that I was destined to become. Perhaps, unbeknownst to everyone else, My brother wasn’t truly jealous of me at all; instead,contrary to what the rest of the world saw and believed, he was just trying, in all actuality, to save his loved ones by ridding the world of what he believed to be an evil whose destruction was both imminent. Although the task was, Im sure, a daunting feat, it was, nonethless, a deed that which my twin must have, in his twisted frame of mind, have somehow seen fit to have been to be incredibly necessary. The death of his twin. My immenent death. My imperative destruction.

It was a breezy and yet relatively sunny day on the day that it all occured; we were sitting side by side, at the breakfast bar, waiting patiently for the babysitter to fix our usual noontime meal of peanut butter sandwiches. I was being a typical six year old, finding an unrivaled amount of joy from simply swinging my legs back and forth, and watching curiously, as my small, brown legs dangled down from what was, then, an enormous height upon the barstool which I sat. My brother was next to me, eyeing me interestedly, mimicking my movements as best he could. I rolled my little eyes back in my head with as big an eye roll as I could, and sighed. Lately, he was all about copying me, and it was growing tiresome, and fast.

“Minnie, make him stop! He’s doing it again!!” I whined, my soft and squeaky little voice was laden with annoyance and aggravation.

“Minne, make him stopppp!” My brother repeated, deviously, with a smirk around his lips. He was no doubt enjoying my friustration, and couldn’t wait to see what I would say or do next. Thankfully, I chose not to feed into his provocational tendancies,and simply huffed, crossed my arms, and pouted as I waited for Minnie to speak up and admonish my errant twin.

Much to my consternation, no admonishment ever passed Minnie’s lips.

In fact, all had grown surprisingly quiet, as I looked down upon my folded arms.

Too quiet, I realized with dread.

I quickly looked up from my glowering position on the barstool, and glanced over to where my brother had been sitting. However, where he should have been, he was no longer. My eyes widened, and I quickly whipped my head around back to the counter just on the other side of the bar, where moments earlier, Minnie had been dutifully making us our lunches, expecting Minnie to greet me with her usual calming smile.

Except Minnie wasn’t there either.

I swallowed hard.

What was going on?!

I quickly slipped down from the barstool, and crept around the towering wall that was the breakfast bar, and gave way to the kitchen counter.

I gasped.

Minnie was sprawled out upon the floor, her face plastered with an ungodly grimace, perhpas the last expression that her pale, pasty face would ever make in this world. Her chest was bloody, it appeared as though she had been stabbed multiple times with.... with what? I wondered.

All of the knives were kept in the drawer,which sat way above either mine or my brothers head, far out of our reach, and even so, was accesible only to grownups, or, to one of us, by climbing onto the cabinet doors, and balancing, just long enough for one to pull open the drawer and grab a knife, but not before falling down with a thud onto the linoleum floor.I hadn’t seen nor heard a sound from either my brother or Minnie. so how on earth had Minnie been stabbed? Who could have done such a thing? Who would have wanted to STAB Minnie?? And, More importantly, WHERE was my brother? Was he hurt? I couldn’t see him, hear him, or feel him; the latter being of far more concern to my immediate anxiety than anything else. This was the first time in our six years of life that I hadnt been able to place him at least within 5 feet of my body at all times. The realization was stunning.

With my heart pounding at an utterly frghtening and interminate rate within my tiny chest, I crawled on my hands and knees over to where Minnie lay, making slight gurgling sounds, blood bubbling up from her mouth in a frothy red bubble of spit.

“Minnie?” I whispered, nudging her gently.

She didnt move. Didnt acknowlege me; simply kept staring, sightlessly up at the ceiling. I wondered if she was in pain. It was a stupid thought, I knew even then, but at a mere six years old, I had very little Idea as to what to do. We had never had any type of emergency within our family; at least, none in my conscious memory to date. I had not yet been taught what I was to do in times of peril, which, sadly, rendered me helpless in times of immediate need. I definitely didnt know the correct procedures as to what to do when it was grownup in trouble. I didnt even know where the phone was, much less how to use it.

Shit.

“Minnie!” I whispered again, more frantically this time, shaking her as feircly as I could. “What happened?” I leaned in close, placing my ear as near as I could possibly manage to her bloody lips, praying for some type of answer.

I got nothing.

I sat back on my heels, my heart pounding, tears of fear and desolation beginning to well in my eyes.

What do I do?

“She can’t hear you.” My brother’s voice peirced the silence, making me jump.

I whipped around, springing up off of my position on my knees, from the floor, and stood, shaking, facing my twin.

He was grinning, with an evil, calculating smirk accross his small dark brown features, and absolutely drenched, from head to toe, in what I could only assume, was Minnie’s blood. My eyes, which I’m sure had grown as wide as teacups, gave away all the fear and confusion I felt inside of me, feelings I knew that, if I was feeling,then he too, was feeling them right along with me.The twin thing. I shuddered.

I knew right then that my brother had had EVERYTHING to do with this. The only thing I didnt know was why.

“She was in the way.” He spoke softly, as if to answer my question that I hadn’t yet had the chance to even speak out loud. He ALWAYS knew what I was thinking.

“In The way- the way of...what?!” I mumbled, my confusion and fear growing all too evident to him, much more so than I was comfortable with. I didnt know this person. I didnt know this brother of mine. Was he still my brother? Surely, he couldnt be.

He must have been possessed. Had to have been. It was the only thing that made any real amount of sense. I knew very little about ghosts and demon possession, and the little I did know stemmed from the viewing of the many forbidden, rated R movies that I had managed over the last few months to sneak into our mothers room to watch, and those were enough to have ensured my unwavering belief in the supernatural. But I wasnt entirely certain that anything about this incident truly WAS supernatural. At least, I prayed it wasn’t. WHAT was happening to my brother?!

“She was in the way of my goal.”

His smug answer was marginal, at best.

Okay, seriously?

First of all, What the HECK was a goal?!

And secondly,how come HE got to know about it before I did?!

Of course, My jealous and utterly incorigible bratchild mindset had taken over. Not that this was at all the correct time nor place for any type of jealousy whatsoever, but I mean, cut me a break here. I was six frigging years old, for crying out loud.

“Your...GO-al?” I repeated, sounding out the word, getting used to the way my lips moved as I pronounced the new myserious word. I still didnt know how he knew that word or what it meant.

“It’s time to go, Selene.” He continued.

Go? Go where? Mom wasn’t due to be home for another ten minutes, And Minnie, well. The boy had clearly killed the babysitter.

My brother moved toward me, ominously raising high above his head the bread knife that he must have wrenched from Minnies fingers as she’d been making our lunches just before he attacked her. My eyes darted between the weapoon and him, and then I did the only thing I could think of.

I turned and booked it, like a bat out of hell, out of the kitchen.

---------

When the cops came, they discovered me, passed out under the bed in my mothers bedroom, covered in stab wounds. They handed me over to the care of the paramedics, who in turn, whisked me to the nearest ICU, where I remained,in critical condition, long into the night. When My mother arrived, after having been at work all day, she was startled to find the babysitters corpse lying in a pool of stale blood, dead fro, her wounds inflicted by my brother. She immediately called the police, and then went hurridly throughout the house in search of her children. She found Sam, crouched in the basement, hiding, his body glistening with sweat; his eyes aglow with childlike trepidation. But there was nothing childlike about Sam that day; not anymore, and I suspect my mother knew that. Somewhere deep down, she must have realized that there was something very wrong with this little boy, something very wrong indeed.

When the paramedics took me away, and my brother was escorted by the cops to the asylum, its been said by many a neighbor that my mothers face was akin to a woman who has just been sentenced to death by a jury of her peers in a court of law. She was pale, and she appeared shrunken, and older than her mere 30 years of age. Im sure, looking back on it, Losing both of us in one day haunted her for the rest of her natural life. What mother wouldnt be haunted by such a devastating turn of events?

The babysitter was dead. Selene had been taken to the ICU, and Sam was the cause of everything that had transpired, and, therefore, was destined to spend the rest of his childhood locked away behind the walls of an institution for the criminally insane.

In one day, my mothers life had shattered. And in our incredibly tiny and unconventional family, there was no one else left behind to help pick up the pieces.

I was never the same afterward. I had trouble breathing properly, where the blade that Sam had weilded had punctured my lung. I would have lasting scars all througout the expanse of my body, physical remnants of the attack at the hand of my twin that had nearly cost me my life.

As for Sam, I still see Sam. Nearly 20 years later, I still go to see my brother, and still attempt to uphold a relationship with my Twin brother, despite the fact that he once attempted to end my life. Sam is still Sam, although just barely, due to the effects of the massive amount of sedatives they keep him under at all times.

It’s for his safety, the doctors tell me.

More like my own.

Because, unbeknownst to the Doctors, Sam doesn’t appear the same to everyone. To most, he appears mute, docile and harmless, sedated and effectively confined. But, in my presence, and mine alone, He speaks.

“My Goal.” His eyes whisper to me, Nonverbally confirming what we both know is true.

My twin is evil. Mistakenly, all those years ago, I had believed that I rather than he was evil. But I was wrong. If set free, He will stop at nothing to ensure what he deemed so long ago, as a necessary occurance, but, failed, miraculously, thankfully, upon delivering.

My imperative destruction.

It must be the twin thing.

-Smallsiren.

#historicalfiction #short #twin #smallsiren #lgbtq

She was beautiful

In the ways all women are

But she was different

In ways that when compared to those of her sex

Set her most noticeably apart

Her eyes were of the most piercing bluish tint

Providing her with an almost eerie look upon her gorgeous face

Whenever she would squint

She had the most tempestuous mouth

That beheld the softest lips one could have ever been blessed with the pleasure of having kissed

It felt like pure sunshine

Radiating its warmth and pleasure upon my lips

Her hair was that of the most golden flowers in any field.

So upon deciding to bestow upon her a simple heartfelt gift

And after having a handful of flowers gathered into

One fist

Along the way I cast them aside

Because it was then that I realized the truth in all of this:

No use bringing her daisies

Daisies never did her justice.

-s.

So maybe Im no back alley tango

But perhaps a dark closet waltz?

Passionate mix of sugar 

And a sudden dash of salt

Grips of silky hair

One sock on and one sock off 

You touched me once and broke down my walls

They say that the eyes are the gateway to one's soul 

When I looked at you 

I loved what I saw within yours 

You had me 

I'm sold 

A dance with light rhythm 

Chests and hipbones 

Skin on skin

Lips on lips 

Kiss by kiss 

I've never had the luxury of having an experience like this 

Sweet and gentle

Such a kindness you've shown 

Laying in your arms 

I feel protected

I feel at home.

S.g. 

It's Christmas again in the Briggs household,

The grands are outside until they get cold.

My wife decorates and prepares the dinner with ease.

I string the lights on the tree so that my wife is pleased.

Our daughter lays out the clothing

that the grands will wear on Christmas day.

All are waiting for Santa to come our way.

Our son fixes the lights on the front yard tree.

His boyfriend comes over and gathers up the leaves.

My daughter's husband put on the Christmas music to enhance the mood.

There's nothing like Christmas and the Briggs Family food.

We make ham, yams, turkey, and gravy.

We make mac and cheese, rolls, stuffing, and maybe,

pies, and cakes, and collard greens,

rice pudding, corn pudding, and freshly picked string beans.

We all settle down for Santa to swing by,

we left him eggnog and some sweet pumpkin pie.

Christmas is for loving your family no matter the reason.

Appreciate your family for this is Briggs Christmas season.

Gay.

Intriguing, a word once used to define a feeling,

a sense of bliss as well as delight,

A label to illustrate a colorful and vivid soul,

A name that meant feeling and expression of the mind,

But once another speaks of being so,

it's frowned upon for such shame and disgrace,

for they shall not feel the same as thee,

and therefor they shall be amiss, or improper in society,

in this world we are not permitted to be unique or ourselves,

especially when it comes to being in love,

or so that is as we teach,

that is what we preach,

we make them feel as of though that word, label, title, is out of reach,

we show them that to be who they are,

is to be incorrect,

is to be outrageous,

we speak as if we don't make others feel this way but opinions can be contagious,

we say that to be gay is to be ecstatic, joyful, jubilant, colorful, bright, vivid,

but we make those who are feel anything but,

and we inform them to keep the closet shut.