ENTRY #????

I do not think they will sing to me.

But I will sing, tinnily, like a ringing in the ears, a wind-up bird to fill the dusk belonging to a prestigious man who will never be satisfied. He owns the blind dusk. And in my own mind, I begin to cry. For the silvery notes turn base, my fog stripped away, and I realize what I am. Why the mermaids will not sing to me.

I am a harpy, screeching horribly, ruined. Plucking eyes out with my vile talons, laughing and harsh, all the lines of my face deepened in the stark light. I have wasted my time. The sea-maids, I horrify them. They drown men with honey and offers of pearls, and yet I horrify them.

---

ENTRY #????

If I take your eyes away, you cannot complain they are blind. You cannot complain of others’ lack of vision or understanding. It will eliminate your prejudicial claims. I will beat you over the head until you swear that nothing I say is true.

You will not know up from down, or truth from nightmares. Eclipsed in a perpetual twilight of spliced-together seconds, you will believe in the construct of the present time. And I will own you.

---

ENTRY #????

She will be more real than art itself. Art has no purpose—but she has something of the tiger, breath burning like a furnace. So bright, like a star lost in the blackness. Eyes through the bamboo like twin coals, the heart undoused in fury. A startling symmetry. And her claws will scream for the necessity of blood to keep herself alive.

---

ENTRY #????

I choose not to write today beyond what I have already written.

---

ENTRY #????

In my fantasies I destroy you.

I am victorious at the very moment you attempt disembowelment from curiosity itself.

With laughing eyes I invite you to death. A kind of brittle lesson will blow away after you are consumed, like ash. Come and play my game. You have taught me well.

I only feel like this on the grandiose days. The others I doubt it is raining at all.

---

ENTRY #????

I will die like rats have from time immemorial, in my shift. We come into this world with nothing, and we go out with as much ceremony as possible, taking nothing. Except the obol, and presumably, for the benefit of our richly attired executioners, the poor stark underwear on our backs. Stripped bare of any dignity at the moment of death, so the entertained can fool themselves that they hold the power over life, immortal in their vain finery. They will cram their tombs with everything they have done in this life, finally to die of suffocation when the poor come pressing in again, demanding fare across the black void. Pressing and clawing like the throng at mine, roaring for blood.

Tie the maiden to her tree, and set fire to the roots. If she screams and calls for a unicorn, stay. You will see something unimaginable. Then you will take his horn (unicorns are traditionally male, like all beasts) and grind it up into powder, sprinkle it in your wine, unreminded of blood—you have never seen it. Enjoy a sip of immortality—every day you are alive it shows its effects. Only when you die will you realize you have been poisoned. And I will be far across the starless sea, unable to laugh. For the unicorn kills his intended also. And she dies a pure death. There is no knight alive who would slay the unicorn. They would rather take the maiden.

---