She's gone, and you are on your way.

         You would think true events were an instant inspiration, creepy events like 6 children dying at 6 years old creating great poems meant for the dark on rainy nights. But really you just sit in your pjs adding stains to them with coffee and skip over the headline in the paper. No one really needed the news reporters in Collingwood. News travels so fast by natives they only ordered the Sunday headlines out of courtesy. I had heard about the dead girl's gruesome circumstances from Jeremy when I ordered pizza last night. He heard about it at school from a kid who knew the older brother of the girl, they had all been in the same grade for a year, of course then the brother died. Really I just nodded and shared a shiver with Jeremy, I didn't really care to continue the topic.
         I had been a couple years ahead of Jeremy in school and we had known each other a friend of a friend, but nothing more. At least I wasn't alone with a personal pizza that night or he would have insisted on walking me home after his shift and trying to stay for dinner. But I had a hot date. A mostly bare baby with practically no nose. At least his color had filled in a bit and he was starting to look a little more textured with down. Not nearly as attractive as Jeremy's craggy oily teenage face, but I would have to survive.
         I was nowhere near alone. Someone else ate the toppings I picked off my pizza and cared what time I woke up in the morning. So I set aside the depressing paper and threw another slice of left over pizza toppings to the Rosy nose on the other kitchen seat. It was the first time I had taken the time for breakfast in ages and it was fun. I opened my laptop and drafted.

Speaking comes in little nudges
smiles are less to ask for
so grin and grimace
pinch your cheeks
and your chin
Contort the feeling back into your skin

         No rhyme scheme or meter, and a great pattern to look at. Poems should be for the eyes as well, feeling as even or not as the words themselves. It prohibited some poems, waiting for the right number of letters or words to paint a picture, but really I needed to go back and revise things and compile then. I would buy real dog food, but I can't, not yet anyway.
         With a start the pup jumped straight up managing to tip his entire chair to the ground and still manage to slide to the door yapping all the way. He made a wide birth around my mother's couch and fell silent for a note before getting right back on the chugging to crazy down. He leaped repeatedly up towards the handle yelling as he went. Spent a moment watching before deciding to take a peak. No one would see me through the lens in my door. I slid my feet under me and lifted upright setting the mug on the equally stained table and left it standing praying it wouldn't go cold. Even a cup of instant was better than none. I stepped over the lip between kitchen and living room, but was still caught on one of the boards that peaked up looking for victims. My nail was forcefully pushed back into itself until the point it was left behind when I slid forward on my other foot realizing each of the dog's Rosy mouth madness punctuated a knock on my door.
          So I presented myself, browned jammies, reddened toe, and pink dog, a rainbow to the caller. A woman stood before me, and I realized I had forgotten to look through the peep hole before I opened the door inward, like an invite to the stranger into my home. "You don't look scary" I decided I would have open the door anyway for the average looking. She wasn't memorable until she drew her eyebrows together tensing in preparation and shot herself down the corridor only leaving a trail of water droplets in her wake.
         She mist have swum in from outside and was still toting around the ever present gray behind her. The whole world was slurred with the weather drenching its self in tear from big puffy eyes in the sky. It would be pretty typical for Collingwood dodging around the cold water pellets, but we now swam next to ducks trying to get up the street. Metaphors aside Ducks were running around as crazy as the other inhabitants. I was sure though their strange gathering would ends soon, just as the canary convention and bluebird convention had dissipated before it. Slowly I retreated closing the door and made sure it didn't slam so as not to wakeup my neighbors at the dim hour. Rosy squeaked and barked once at the door. He seemed as speechless about the visitor as I had been but he hand't been a resident long enough to not let it phase him.
         But we weren't alone anymore. In the window above my mother a bright green tinged in curling letters. She's gone, and you are on your way. The letters flashed against the dark and gray water colors tinged by a blurry highlight of glow paint. And I was left against the door with Rosy to stare at my mother wishing the visitor would come back. The author of my windows new decoration was right. I hadn't seen in a long time, and I didn't have the courage to drag my lids up and wipe away the sleepies. Rosy licked me a final time leaving a trail of drool and I followed him into my bedroom.