"Metamorphosis"

#0034. You saw him in another life, different and more aloof. This version begins to desiccate under the sun of an older world. Gaudy baubles adorn him and he no longer is the ruler or the conquering magistrate. He is gentler now, but with a frightening gaze, hollowed out by years of memory and loss. He would give you his memories if he could. His mouth is gaping and gasping for air. Goodbye, he will say. All of it will expire.

"Unforgivable"

#0035. Each morning it changes a little more and I am afraid of what it will become. Those blurry lines around its maw. I try to capture it. To bring it to life with chalk and with my blood. But I cannot do it justice. I cannot make life. Alice does that. She parades out her puppets. But I cannot.

"This Thing Lives Alone and in Lush Isolation"

#0036. Puppets, is what I said. She is that puppet master. Puppet mistress? She rules over these things with such a heavy hand. She is there, threaded through each world. And each thread... did it just move of its own accord? It startled me. It should be silent. Be still, now. She is there, I repeat now, threaded through each world. And each thread is tied to one limb or another. But he is cut from her. That's what she thinks hell is: isolation. But she doesn't know how envious we can all be.

"Oh, How Fitting it All Becomes"

#0037. I fall in love with the dark undercurrents. Was she sitting next to me on the train that day? My hat in my hands, like a gentleman. The rows of field corn ready to be harvested. I had tears in my eyes. She stared out the window and if I remember right, it was drizzling. She watched the rain drops slide down the glass window pane as the train rocked quietly. Quietly to us, at least. She was next to me and I was in love with her dark undercurrents. She doesn't remember me. She didn't see what I saw later in Wonderland.

"Alive in a Place That Does Not Welcome the Living"

#0038. The littlest things crush me. Under the weight of it, I surrender. Little fragility, that's what does it. I see things innocent and pure and their inevitable torture at the hands of Life just crushes me. Fragility. Little wings. Little eyes. The thing chirps out a beautiful song. Something larger, soon, will cripple it, slit its tiny throat. I want to hold it and provide it some sort of armor from Life. But there's too much of it and I am as helpless as they are.

"Clocks"

#0039. Time is my only real obsession. Time is at the root of all of my fears. The order of it intrigues me and gives me comfort, but I hate the inevitability of it. I hate that it gets to impose its order on me. I hate the idea of a bedtime, or a time to rise. Out in the darkness, I take great comfort in lit windows and all night diners. They are not my kin, I loathe the night owls as much as I do anyone else. But I appreciate that they are there, as unbound by clocks as I want to be.

"New Year's Day"

#0040. It is the promise of a new beginning, but don't misunderstand me: I hate beginnings. I hate them because they gnaw on the bones of endings. And endings? Oh, dear Alice. Oh, dear Alice. Oh, dear Alice, it's the endings that hurt me the most. The twilight comes and I can feel all of time's black tendrils recoil. I began this year, like so many, in my prison cell. In his prison cell. The new tendrils overtake the old and cuff me. I am under their spell. Happy New Year,