Also, a new one written about my dream last night (warning: it's very long):

Drawn Out

There were orcs and wargs
and elves with looks of terror
as they were slaughtered.

And two orcs
haggled over how to split
a head off of shoulders,
but while they argued
one of the wargs
bit the head clean off
and neither orc was looking...

And I laughed.


There were axes,
and dwarfs with threats
that didn't match
the way they looked.

And a dwarf
leaned on his axe
and told the orc
that he'd kill every
orc woman and child
and leave them in the tent
for the orc to see
when he came home from battle.


And I didn't know
if I was an orc, or a dwarf, or an elf...

And no one fought me
because I was watching,
and they don't attack
if you're only watching.


And something
about the whole thing
was wrong.


Mom couldn't find a table
to fit the whole family,
and something was happeneing
to the kids by the water,
and suddenly
we were all at home.


Then he came over
and I wasn't sure what to do.

I let him sit in the office
but it looked like the living room
and he was on the couch.

I sat on the arm of the couch.
And I read something he wrote
about how we never talked
but that there was
so much communication
in all our silence...


And he liked it.


And he wanted to be here.


I left to put my pajamas on,
and mom was calling,
so I went upstairs again
but he wasn't there.
But he was still there.

And I looked outside.


There was a llama with a harness
where his car should be.


And I remember
thinking at first
that he had ridden the llama
but the part of me -
which couldn't accept that -
insisted his car
was somewhere else nearby,
and the llama
was just a decoy.


And I shut the door.


I never talked to mom directly.
She was on the phone,
in the kitchen.


I went back down to my room,
and he was standing in the middle of the floor
looking confused,

looking torn.

And before I could talk
he said he didn't know
how he felt

about a girl who could draw
seals like that out of her head.


And I turned to see
what he was looking at.


I had a Wall of Make-Believe
(it was labelled as such...)
and it was full of my drawings -
all the drawings I had done
without a reference picture.

One-hundred percent imagination.


And I remember thinking, "Seals?!"

And I looked agian -
and there were pictures
of seals on books,
and doors,
and gates,
and boxes,
and that made sense to me.


But he wasn't looking at those.


There was another seal picture -
small,
in pencil.

A family of seals
on an ice floe,
floating in the middle
of a vast, frozen sea.
A mama seal,
a daddy seal,
and baby seals -
all so close together.
And they were happy.


I liked the picture.
I liked that it had come out of my head.


And it made sense to me, too.


Then mom was calling down
that he and I could play downstairs,
and that he didn't have to go home yet.


As I looked at my pictures -
and my room so familiar, but
not at all like the room I have
when I'm awake -

He sat at my computer,
and listened to my music.
But the songs kept skipping,
and he soon gave up.

He wandered over to my art table
and found my stack
of unfinished self-portraits.


And something in me was anxious.

He looked at each of them,
and picked out his favorites.


I stood next to him.


He looked back up at my wall,
and told me I should draw some sagebrush,
and to look at the pictures from another angle.

And then he turned back
to my portraits in his hands -
and he said
none of them looked right.


And I thought it was because
none of them were finished.


But suddenly he took some paper,
and sat down beside me,

and said, "Please let me spoon
this out of you."


I shifted nervously
as he began to draw.

And he stared at me persistent,
and sincerely,
and he drew.


And he was getting it right
the way I could never get it right,


and something was lifted
that hung between us
and I was quiet,


and I was scared.


He was capturing me,
closer, closer,
and I was

more nervous,
more scared,
than I had ever been.

And I had to open my eyes
before he was finished.
Before my heart was broken,


because surely, surely
it was going to break
for how right he was getting me.


I woke up,
and sat up in bed.

It was only four o' clock,
and I couldn't sleep.

So I had to write this all down.