To a Person With Flames Under Their Feet and the Sky in Their Heart

You deserve a thousand flowers
for the thousands of cracks in your heart. 
You deserve millions of stars to bend at your whim
to help your inner mind restart. 
You deserve a billion fish for your eyes to watch
and your infinite love to admire. 
You deserve an infinite amount of expression
to redirect the sickly flames from the fire. 
But how can a person be gifted the sky,
Sun, 
Earth, 
Galaxy?
When it is not meant to be packaged and given away?
But when you look up at the night sky
realize that 
'the world is your oyster' 
and you've made it thus far. 
It's scary, but necessary
and that doesn't make this right. 
But you've been doing so well. 
You've been struggling to fight. 
You deserve a vast amount of things
but you did not deserve this. 
And I know your heart may be shaken
and your mind may be numb, 
but look at how you've been awaken.
And when you look back, you'll see you've won.

A Nightmare

This may trigger some people, so if you are easily triggered, please don't hurt yourself and read this.  I don't want you to hurt yourself.

My legs were numb when I woke up.  It happens a lot. When ever my hands or legs fall asleep... my dreams become nightmares. I think it's because my mind is trying to make sense of why my body is suddenly not being able to feel.

This is the nightmare I had when my legs became numb. 

The house was tall and dark. Six stories. Each floor was just a small shadowed room. And my mind kept flashing to cut up legs. The legs had thousands of shallow razor cuts, and each person on each floor had cut up legs. 

The cuts were from a shaving razor. 

The girl that I was speaking to looked like the actress who played Matilda.  Dark brown hair,  bow head band.  She was not on the first,  second or third floor. 

But before I began stepping up the spiral wooden stairs,  she spoke about being cut on her legs. How the people in the house all had cuts on their legs,  but a few were the ones doing it--- even to themselves.  She seemed terrified, but in a serious way.
After she talked to me she disappeared.  And that's when I began on the first floor.

The young adult I met was blond and had a slim build.  He had dark brown eyes and I when I found him shaking in the corner of his black, shadowed room with only a queen bed in the middle, I found he only had underwear on.  It isn't that kind of dream though, so if that's what you are hoping to read, just leave.
He was curled up, leaning his head against the dark wall when I spoke to him.  I couldn't hear myself speaking, but I knew I was asking him questions like 'What's happening?'  and 'Who did this to you?' as I was referring to his red, bleeding legs.  But he looked past me, and was whimpering and crying.  He didn't speak, but he looked up.  He looked up.

The young woman I met on the second floor was brief.
In fact, I don't remember it at all.
All I know is that it was the same looking room, only one higher, and that she was sitting in her underwear (white, underwear) and she was silent.  I didn't speak to her.  But I remember her raven black navy hair.  She had black irises.

The third floor is the final floor I got to, but I knew there were a few more above me.  The woman in this floor-- same bedroom like the others-- she was laughing the crazed maniacal way that insane people laugh.  She was cutting  her legs with a shaving razor.  Cutting horizontally.  She would whisper something, cut, laugh, cut, whisper, laugh, cut, cut, cut.
I said hello.  But she was unaware of me.  And as I was speaking, I realized she was answering me without me realizing it.  I would ask her what's going on, and she would cut and say something in a verse of poetry.  When I asked her why she was cutting herself she responded like this:

Living in fear, unaware of here
cut, cut, cut.
I can see, but cannot be
cut, cut, cut.
Wouldn't you rather have control
of the fist that hit you
an hour ago
than not be able to sleep
with a content mind?
If you were the one the dragged the blade
and slept in a bed that's softly made
than not be able to sleep
due to a restless mind?
My hand
My movements
My power
Not theirs.
They can't touch me
with my own cuts
because the room is gone
they've lost their luck.

And that's when I woke up in a panic.  I was so terrified I had to turn on the light and was unable to sleep.  Because as she spoke, my vision was flooded with images and I knew that the little girl who I first met was in the very top room, and that she was the one that scared every one and cut everyone elses' legs.  And Getting that rush of information made me terrified.

But as I say,
I would rather have nightmares than not be able to remember my dreams.

In the Shadows

I was traveling somewhere.
My mother, step father and I.
And people.
About ten other people.
And we came across what seemed like a campsite.
With what seemed like a temple.
It felt very... Egyptian. 
As everyone set up to stay the night, I felt oddly cast out.
As though I was being punished.
So I stayed near this temple.
Until everyone was falling asleep.
They didn't tell me to sleep on the steps leading down to that sandstone entrance.
But I did.
Because I was being punished.
They didn't tell me that if I woke up, and the dark, damp entrance enticed me; not to go in.
But I did.
Because I was being curious.
I hazed out of sleep, the slick ebony doorway lurching in my thoughts.
But I only took a few steps in.
Because a sudden tear of horror ripped through my body.
Ripped through my sight.
Because I thought I saw a woman.
I thought I saw her eyes.
But I didn't think anything of it, other than I had to get out.
So I did.
Two steps.
Then I fell back asleep.
Now, I woke up again.
Hazy and tired. 
Wondering,
'Now, why isn't it day yet?  It's pitch as the sea on a cloudy eve, oh why isn't it day?'
And that doorway called for me.
Screamed for me.
So I went back in.
And this time, oh this time I saw more of a shadow.
More of a figure.
More of her eyes.
I only saw her for a moment, but I saw her.
Her willowy, sickly figure.
Her black thin, sticky hair over her face.
And her ivory eyes staring hollowly at me.
And I had to get out.
Panic swept over me as I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't breathe.
Oh, I couldn't breathe.
I stumbled backwards, out of the doorway.
Why?
Why did I go back in?
I knew something was wrong?
Why?
Why?
WHY.
As I was out, catching my breath, my mother came over.
And she didn't ask what was wrong.
Somehow, she knew.
She knew everything.
But she wasn't there, so how could she know?
And then her face grew terrified.
Her eyes as wide as saucers.
Staring at me with such an intense fear that I grew scared of her.
And then I spoke with choked speech.
"I saw her, and I don't want to see her anymore.  Not ever again."
I was crying.
I heard myself sobbing.
But her eyes stayed open as she shook.
She shook.
And she talked in a hushed voice.
"She told me that that isn't the last time you will see her.  You will see her again."
And then her name rang through my head.
Solid and clear.
Roberta Koskov.
That woman was Roberta Koskov.

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Hey guys, so this is partially a story, partially poetry and mostly from my dream (or nightmare I should say) from last night.  I woke up so scared that I couldn't move for a few minutes.  I was afraid if I rolled over I would see this woman that I dreamed of.
This entire concept was odd to me, mostly because my mother spoke to her, and I didn't.
But to be fair I was running from it.
But I have had many recent nightmares about ghosts where my mother can talk to them and I can't.  And that she can see them and I can't.  It's getting disturbing as it keeps progressing.
Another very disturbing concept in this dream was that I was told her entire name. Which I have never had.  I've only had one other name spoken to me in a dream, and that was only their first name.
Anyways, this dream definitely shook me up, and I was hoping writing it down would help get it out of my mind.
So, *poof* be gone, nightmare.

-E