stained glass.

i quickly devolve back into that tiny girl, bony and awkward, kneeling with elbows propped up on the pew in front of me, praying my little growing heart out that one day ... i won't have to be alone.

banging my head against this door to our house, it shakes with the weight of my frustration and my anger and my sadness as i call and call but no one answers. no one's going to be home any time soon ... if i break now, it's going to be on my own.

and i don't blame you, but tonight, i'm breaking. i'm following ghosts, and i can't tell my feet from the ground.

i'm ugly and sore. talking to myself and shaking my head, trying, for no real reason, to hold the sobs in clenched fists, to keep them from covering me with their blanket of stories and blood.

we've been alone from the start. but when the slippery moment arrives, when it breaks through the social canopy and verbose self-help gel, you painfully realize that you live alone, dream alone, die alone.

tears, my rosary. empty air, my altar. i'm kneeling once again on those skinned, knobby knees and glaring at the space above me, praying my dishevelled aching heart out that alone will not break me, not on my own.