The wolf's cry rang out through the night,

My older brother warned me to sit tight.

For if moved bad things would happen,

For if I moved I would be captured.

This was but a tale my brother told me,

to keep me up all night without a wink of sleep.

As a child I could not see,

this horrid trick he was playing on me.

For as a child my imagination was wild,

never letting any possibility be exiled.

Now, I know that story was a heap of shit,

and I let those fears surrender and quit.

But, although I don't believe anymore,

It doesn't mean I can't still dream and explore.

Because now I can take my dreams,

and try to make them a reality...

None admired her soft curves or the thin layer or powder that clung to her face. Always shadowed by her her sister, her light and bright twin. She was all anybody ever saw. Iridescent and radiant, men sang to her and wrote poems of her beauty. Her aloofness, her subtlety. None spared thought for the dark twin. Left in the hollowness of isolation, she had beauty to match but she could not turn to see the rays that shone from the sun. Trapped in a world in which all she felt was the dark. Jeered at as inaccessible and cold none cared to make a light big enough to illuminate her, to let her radiance shine as full as her sisters did. And so invisible she would stay. The dark side of the moon. 

Poetry is like a flower. While some flowers smell magnificent, others coward away in fear that they will be rejected. But a flower's intended role isn't so that it could be accepted by humans; its role doesn't require it to be the most beaming flower either. 

The role of a flower is to exist. As it was crafted with what was needed, each detail was inspected, so that the finest combination of perfection could be present on earth. 

The role of poetry is the same, to exist. Words deliberately chose, much like creating the perfect flower. 

What was the point of using flowers to define poetry, you may ask? Flowers are a requirement when describing poetry. Both can be loved, hated, and felt. While flowers what you can physically touch, poetry is meant to touch someone where only a few things have felt.

One's deep, dark thoughts. 

It should be easy - to say that I'm in control of my own life. But as much as I wished I could say that, I know that I could never. The one in control of my life is someone much greater than me. Someone I value too much to say the name of. 

Of course, my best friend never intended to be in control of my messy life. I mean, to this day, I don't think he knows that he is. But the day we met, as he quietly stood behind his friends, I couldn't help but not notice him. It started out perfectly... until I realized that I was falling harder than he was. 

It was the smallest things that caused him to take over my life.

First, he simply asked me to stay up a couple minutes longer so that we could text. Without a thought about what I had to do the next day, I agreed. So, as my grades started to fall, I leaned on him. He seemed like the only boy who was willing to listen to me rant anyways. 

Then, he convinced me to sneak out of my house at night. The two of us did nothing that we would later regret, and when he dropped me back home, I wished that I was always with him. It was as if he had ignited an emotion in my body that without him, never mattered before. Like a drug, I needed him. Any second not by his side was a second laced with a scent of death. 

But then, then, he kissed me. He finally kissed me, and suddenly, everything that I once deemed important found its place in the bottom of my priority list. Was it wishful thinking or stupidity to assume that he felt the same way about me? That night, he was too wasted to remember what had happened. 

As my friend brought it, he just laughed. My cheeks began burning, not because our friend had mentioned a scene that I had imagined happening since the day I met him, but because he laughed. He laughed. 

It wasn't a soft chuckle, where he was embarrassed. No, it was a full on, loud guffaw. 

"There's no way I actually kissed Cecilia." He spoke, wrapping his arms around me while swinging back and forth. Pretending to act the same way as he did, I giggled myself. I tried brushing it off, but as soon as he placed his lips on my head, I realized that I was in deep shit. 

But I think the scariest part was the fact that I never saw it coming. No. No. That was nothing. 

The scariest part is how my best friend is still in control of my life, and despite everything, I wouldn't want anyone else to be in control of it. 

"There's not a lot of time," Hua grunted.

"There never is," Prim responded as she hauled on the rope, lean muscles rippling under a dirty tank-top.

"This sort of thing ever work?" Hua's olive countenance had been battered by wind and rain and sun and salt, and was now as close to leather as human skin could get. And that leather, to Prim's eye, looked worried.

"Not really, no. But what other choice do we have?"

Hua shrugged. "I don't suppose we can just go back to the bar?"

"Hey," Prim said as she turned to eye him, "you do what you want. You wanna go back to the bar, do it. But I'm not gonna just sit there in a glass cage slinging drinks and watching the world wind down and die."

"And this is somehow a better idea?" Hua snorted a derisive laugh.

Prim looked back at the battered trimaran. Looked down the duneslope to the line where the wine-dark sea caressed and flogged the shore. Looked back at Hua. "No," she sighed. And her face hardened. "But it is necessary. Somebody has to do it, and like it or not, that person is me."

Her calloused hands gripped the rope and began to pull.

It was the kind of day that made you want to lie around and wait for a belly rub. A breeze was slinking about the neighborhood, and the welcoming scent of McAlister's Pet Friendly Kitty Chow was wafting through the window. But I had to be on my paws. Trouble could come scratching my door at any minute.

So I sat at my desk, playing with the blinds, waiting for my nine lives to run out. On my desk were a few toy mice and a ball of yarn I'd bought at a flea market to relieve stress. Whatever effect the yarn was supposed to have was being negated by the fleas. I used to have a pot of catnip, too, but I gave that stuff up.

That's when she sauntered in. A domestic long-hair, although tame is the last word I'd use. She was a tall bowl of milk, white and fluffy with cream on her shoulders like she was wearing a second fur coat. Soft blue eyes. The type of dame you wish hadn't been declawed.

"You stalking anybody?" she asked.

"No," I purred. "You got something for me, or are you just looking for the litter box?"

"I might have something," she said, cool as a calico. "See, there's this fancy cat I've been nuzzling. And he's gone missing."

"You check the pound? Maybe he rubbed someone the wrong way?"

"Mittens always keeps his address on his collar. See, he's forgetful sometimes. I'm afraid something's happened to him, Sam." Her whiskers twitched pathetically and I was string in her paws. She went on to describe her plaything. A Himalayan long-hair, blue-gray, googly eyes. Not the sharpest claw on the paw. More like the type who'd run out of an open door and drown in the pool.

"You armed?" she asked. "This might get fuzzy."

I opened a drawer and pulled out my Ktaxon 5mm laser pointer.

"So you'll do it?" she said luxuriously. "I should warn you, I can only pay in Purina."

"Salmon?" I said. "Or Chicken and Liver?"

She looked sheepish: "Chicken Gravy."

"Hmm." I thought about it. To be honest, I would have hissed my mother out a window for a spoonful of Meow Mix. "All right, I'll be your puss-in-boots."

She rubbed against me in appreciation. “Thank you, Sam," she said. "Now, please, find my Mittens."

"Why is Jimmy running around naked outside?" Anne asked.

Her mother gave her a tight-lipped look. "You've done it too."

"What?" Anne gasped. "When?"

Her mother wiped her forehead with a floury hand, leaving a streak of white on her skin. "We all do it sometimes. But most people who see it and do it don't remember." 

I met Janine (not her real name) during the winter of 2010, before meeting my wife. She was my eighth, sixteenth, or hundredth online date. I wasn't keeping score. I told myself it wasn't desperation, but I hadn't been intimate with another woman for over two years.

We had drinks after work. She was a casual at Swarovski in the city, and I wasn't far up the terrace. Prior to our meet up, I had only been offered glimpses of Janine's hot, girl-next-door face. So, you could imagine my face when I discovered the rest of her. I'm not a model gentleman, not even when channeling James T. Kirk with a scantily-clad Orion girl. But, there was a lot to love! I said hello, at which point, my greatest ever challenge was realized—being put on trial as a human being.

We talked. I had no problem engaging in conversation or reciprocating flirts. I could tell she was enthralled because she touched my forearm.

What transpired next was plain wrong, and I knew right away. But, I was parched like a teetotaler at a pub during Oktoberfest. I rested my palm on her hand. My brain didn't care that Janine was not my type. I wasn't even aware that the dormant neurons in both hemispheres of my skull were buzzing. It felt good. Like a two-year itch on your lower back, that one annoying spot where neither arm could reach. Ever.

Damn. Her hands were so Goddamned soft!

There was a good chance my eyes were complicit in perpetrating the next shameful crime—no doubt taking direct orders from my other brain—but Janine was ravishing and delicious. I shifted to face her, eliminating any hints of disinterest. I scanned every inch of her ample body, and you know what? She ain't half bad on the eyes. Sure, the woman had curves, but I decided that curvy was better than being a sticky (I know you know what I mean).

So, what was impossible before was now possible, one of my brains was telling me that, I'm not sure which one. It wouldn't be the best sex, or it could be the worst, but I had no fucks left to give.

We had a few more drinks. By we, I meant me, and by a few, I meant half a dozen. I finally understood the reference "beer goggles".

I couldn't resolve the tightness in my pants any longer after that. We took the train home because neither of us had a car (another thing we had in common). We were in bed undressing each other an hour later.

Fuck. Sobriety was rearing its ugly head. I became more conscious of her body. No matter what I did—switching the lights off, closing my eyes, being rough—I couldn't get it up. So, I did the only thing I could: played the stress card.

I knew she knew. But Janine was a champion. If she was upset or embarrassed, it never showed. She didn't even ask to spoon. I slept little that night, and I guessed neither did she.

I called her a taxi the next morning, and we embraced each other before she embarked. That scene which devolved before the world to witness was textbook-classic awkward. Although I can't describe it, I still remember the look on her face as the taxi rolled down the road.

I never saw her again.

Water, water

Everywhere and not

A drop to drink

The hung-over busboy

Thinks

As he clears

Each untouched glass

Away