I pound my bloodied and torn fists against the sides of the box that I find myself trapped in, but it is a useless effort – there is no way out.  Scratching, clawing, even chewing at a tiny splinter I may have created in my mad scramblings does me no good. Bloodied and raw, I fill with a pressure that threatens to burst from my filthy being, further contaminating my raw and polluted soul.

There is no way out – there is no escape from the physically crushing, mind bending weight of this prison. I beg to be saved from this anguish in which I languor; but there is no salvation, not for me, not for one so undeserving, so uncherished, so unloved.  There is only the false glimmer of light my inner demon allows me to glimpse so that I may be tortured further.

Bloodied, scrapped, tattered and torn, a thing not palatable to any other, I slide to my scuffed and rent knees to become a pile of bleeding flesh that has been ravaged by the walls that surround me. I bend forward clutching at the only thing I have left, myself, and allow the wailing to erupt from my stricken lungs, my raw throat; I bellow the moan I’ve been containing for so long.

My demon laughs; he finds my horror of an existence a great delight. I am a toy to be played with to pass the eternal time in which he shall dwell within me.  I can not escape him, though I try – all the more to his amusement. He watches me struggle so futilely; he basks in the tightening of breath that can no longer escape my burning chest; he hears my moans of agony and licks the salty tears that streak my filth ridden face.  He is my tormentor, he is my key, he is my only chance for salvation – though he shall never grant it.

The walls of the box are by now so raw with splinters from my scrapings that no matter where I lay my broken body for comfort, I find none. There is only jagged surface to be found here, a prison so impenetrable no one but I shall ever glimpse it, nor shall I ever be released from it. I have no false hope, only a fool would hope for mercy from such a beast.  Though a fool I am, I am not that fool…

Laying weeping in a pool of my own tears, blood and shattered dreams, I can find no blame other than my own. My demon chuckles as he reminds me the box is of my own design, made impregnable by my own failings.

Yet still, I rub my ragged and blood caked palm along the wall hoping to find the smallest fissure, an mere indentation, any sign at all that can offer me even the falsest of hopes that someday I will break free – but there is none.  There never has been.

In this box I feel my deepest desires turned to dust; my most cherished dreams denied; my fate sealed.  In this box I find my demon observing my anguish, relishing its unending torture and its most exquisite pains.  Here I am me – I am this quivering thing that lies upon the floor begging for a mercy of freedom that will never come; just a small measure of what others are granted, but no – not me. I shall never have the experience of those things, for I am destined to scrape and scratch and gnaw away at this unyielding box that is both miniscule yet cavernous at the same time.

Why will it not swallow me and end this pathetic shadow I have become of my former self, I do not know … so that my demon may have a thing with which to entertain itself? Consume me I beg of it, but it will not – what use am I to the box if it has no grief to feed from; no pain to color its darkened walls with; no feather left to pluck with which to brush itself clean.

My demon wants me locked in this box of misery and pain, perhaps only because it seeks the same thing I do – a companion of equal measure. It lives a lone existence as well, though I believe it was meant to, whereas I am meant for more, I am meant to be freed from this punji ridden hell of eternal despair.

But that is yet another false hope; another path to mental depravity that I shall have to avoid for as long as I can. Just one more shattered possibility in a world filled with tightly sealed boxes. Yet without these boxes, would I not be an empty shell? Another harsh reality to be born on the back of so many other realities I wish were not mine. But the lie told children that wishes will come true is just that, a lie; and the box containing my soul is shoved just a bit farther out of reach, the desperate moaning a bit more frantic, the laughter of my demon that much stronger – with a promise that one day I will succumb to its crippling madness.

The barest of glances, a tentative touch, a shy quiet hello.  A brief but exquisite first brush of two sets of lips meeting in graceful yet restrained greeting.

The sweeter, longer gaze that tells the other of your wish to be touched, the desire to be deeply kissed, the longing to be fully embraced.  The light caress of your hand along the side of your lovers face that assures them of your need.

The shear agony of the eternity of the moment each takes to fully breathe in the other, signaling the passion that will render you both incapable of anything else without further touch.  The slight drawing back to ensure neither of you has trespassed unwarranted.  Seeing the churning desire you feel reflected in the eyes of the other.

A more aggressive embrace, one that consumes your essence as you allow yourself to be engulfed by passion and its maddening furry.  The exquisite delight of reassurance that the other yearns as strongly for you as you do for them.

The breathing, the suckling, the touching, the nuzzling that accompanies this longing desire to consume one another.

The submission to each others wants and desires that morphs into a frenzied pounding of two souls screaming to unite.  The willingness to be devoured by the sensuality emanating from the other.

Head thrown back, neck bared as an offering, a slight gasp as the other leans in, and the delicious surrender you feel as their mouth claims your body as their own.

The glorious freedom of delight beyond compare.  The full and complete offering of yourself to another.

This is the unrepentant desire to be wanted, to be seen, to be known – to be yours my precious one.

Hey Guys,

I had the honor this past week of being interviewed by the extremely talented and awesome Colin F. Barnes!

Here is what came of it:

Into the heart of darkness with Nina D’Arcangela

Thank you Colin for your support, and the opportunity to speak with you!  ;}

Ok guys, here my first posting to help promo our new 66 page E-Zine – it’s a comparative flash I did with Kate and Kalla on a Algonquin Dragonfly image submitted by Irene Snow.  The E-Zine is available at http://www.sirenscallpublications.com for free download in the February 2012 issue.  If you’d like to read their impressions of the image, grab the eZine (and tell everyone how much you love it!)

My Flash…..

Odonates

Beautiful creature of destruction; you are the embodiment of majesty and grandeur darting through the air; humming past in the blink of an eye, stunning your prey into a shock of paralytic fear; engaged always in aerial combat with the currents that fight you in your forward progress; rising, dropping, jerking, zipping.

Always seeking…

What is it you seek on those elegant gossamer wings? Perhaps the next meal that awaits you… What else would a voracious living thing such as yourself desire?  You, with your crushing mandibles and gnashing teeth, so willing to consume all that cross your path and thereafter, your gullet.  A beast of miniscule proportion whose lust to sate itself knows no bounds – respects no boundaries.

The patter of rain does not deter you from the hunt – your need for nourishment is all consuming; it’s all your disjointed body knows. The repeated pumping of your clasping organ seeking purchase as it curves downward to secure a hold in this new and foreign terrain. Your legs spread so delicately, laid wide ever so gently, in this most opportunistic of places. Large bead like eyes of gleaming blackness adapted for spotting the smallest of morsels passing by whilst you suckle on nature’s other offerings.

You have at last found a worthy feeding ground amongst the thin grasses of this murky bank. This piece of drift offers a perch from which you may indulge your glutinous greed. You seek a place to hide, a place of recess from which you may ambush your unsuspecting prey.

Cloaked by stealth and the hush of your own inner stillness, you await what tasty treat flicks past seeking a safety all its own whilst knowing not that you are now the monstrous dark occupant which all others must fear in this previously safe harbor.

Why must I feel so utterly shattered when smashed upon your jagged edge? Why can you not let me fall into the beautifully delicious pain that exists inside you – pain that has been waiting for me to find it for so very long? You hide such a exquisitely luring anguish from me, thinking I can not see it – but I see it with my very essence – my entire being; I see it in the blink of your depth-less eyes even when not at your side; I feel it in every breath you draw whether that breath be taken roughly in my ear or drawn in a spat of anger at all the world has made of you.  I long so desperately to be near you, to revel in your darkest pangs, your deepest wounds, your most hidden crevasses where your shadows stretch the longest.

My soul is no longer in my own keeping as it has already been fully engulfed by you – it is given with utter bliss and unhindered submission, bowing to your every whim and fancy.  My pain is yours to have, my pleasure yours to give or withhold. I beg of you to open your shadowed darkness and let me submerge myself, gulping it in as though it were my own life’s breath; for it is, as I can not be with out you any longer.

Give to me all that I would allow you to take from one so undeserving as I.  I offer you a glimpse of the salvation you have sought at only the cost of my own damnation. Why must you hide in a darkness you feel is precious only to you? My darkness is equal to that of yours and calls out in pain to touch, to merge, to become one with that mournful depth which dwells within you.

Ahhh, tears burn my eyes to think of the ecstasy that awaits the lost such as we. Am I never to attain such glorious freedom while you exist in your own self-imposed exile? Be all to me that your inner demon demands I be to you, suffocate me with your needs; for I need not the air I breath so much as I need the nearness of the beast that rages within you. Your touch, your embrace, your longing – your anger, your angst, and your pain; these things are my gleaming gems, my most sacred desires – the currency of an aching soul unearthed from the roughest of stone I did not know existed before you.

Drag me into an eternity of damnation where I will languish in your exquisite tenderness… a tenderness that rends my heart to pieces and releases the overwhelming restraint I have kept in check for what seems all of time.  Strip away my mask and bare my most inner desires that I am not able to unleash with any other than you. Take me farther into the reaches of madness that will consume what is left of my sanity for I need not think when you are near, I must only be.

This is my treasured wish; this is my undisguised want; this is what you have made of me. Be for me, as I am only for you…

I sit here listening to the rain tinkling off the darkened glass of my window. Like so many nights before, I peer into an eternity of nothingness that shows only my blurred face in its shadows. Shadows that dance around in the ambient light as the wind whips and sways the tree limbs, keeping pace with the rain as it shifts from a patter to a pounding, to a more gentle touch on the pane.

I begin to turn away and see just the merest suggestion of movement from the corner of my eye, I turn back… But nothing has changed, nothing is different, no one is out there. My blurred view is as it was before. Rivulets of rain running down the glass; impressions of shapes I know so well that exist out there beyond the safety of my window; my face looking back at me lost in the dreary visage of the existence I suffer within. A face distorted by the passage of the rain running over the glass… a face twisted in pain.

I wander to the door, drawn by a force from both within me and outside these protective walls. What an exquisitely beautiful night to breath in the smell of the wet grass, the saturated earth, the dampness all around me.  What a sumptuous night to twirl circles in my tattered gown, soaked and clinging to my body like a lover that has been released but wishes not to go. What a glorious night to stroll under the rows of the ever reaching Maple Trees, listening as their limbs sing a song of agony as they rub against one another.  I let the rain wash me clean under the hidden moon before wandering farther into the shadows of this night.

The beast has awoken; I can feel him watching, waiting, growing from the pangs within me. Will he come to me, this creature of anguish? The rain is slowing to a mere drizzle, barely even falling now – floating on the breeze like his warm breath upon my bare neck.  Will he stalk me in the lingering mist?  I live knowing that he terrifies me, even as I long for his touch; the touch of a soul as dark and tortured as my own.

The moon tries to protect me with its light, but I am still hidden in shadow as is he – this monster of beauty and destruction; this primal creature that will destroy me; this half-man half-beast that will ultimately consume me.  How long can I resist his not so gentle pull into the darker reaches of the woods that now surround me? Do I even wish to try? Or would I willingly rush to him if only he’d beckon and not demand of me?

I stand on the brink of the deeper shadows trembling from fear; fear of the need to take that final step. I feel his want calling out to me – yes, he wants me to enter his world, but he does not guarantee that my journey there will be a sane one. I move out of the shadows and  fall to my knees weeping, begging him to emerge from the dim recesses and enter my world of now glowing moonlight. But he fears the light, no – not fear – hate. He hates the light. This light that shines upon my upturned face and tangled hair has been his undoing. He was not always this beast, he was once a creature so different and so full of life that he has no choice but to loathe the fact that I have not become what he is. His presence demands that I enter his domain; his mind delves into mine attempting to force his want upon me – but I know his lust is insatiable, and once he has touched  my darkness, will I ever be able to return to the light again?

I’m frightened, I can not move, and he is enraged by this – so angered that he nearly allows himself to reach out and grab hold of me, dragging me to him. I will not fight him; I will let him take what he will, but I can not willingly submit even under his heated gaze.  With a snarl of anger and disgust, he leaves me yet again to weep at the edges of the darkness, screaming silently to be where he’d have me go…

But no, he will not take me, I must come to him; my damaged companion, my kindred tortured soul who seeks nothing more than I – a release from this distant embrace of hellish pain we are destined to exist in.

I hear him howl into the night; he screams his rage while crying out his longing for that which may someday leave what  meager light the moon sheds to walk in the dark at his side – owned by him for all eternity.