the ocean always dreamed blue dreams

her sleek
and her white teddy shimmering
even under the dim scrutiny of the naked bulb

as she vainly flees the madman
turning on lights in a darkened room,
only to find, not an exit,
but a body,
limbs askew
as if thrown there by a particularly
petulant child,
or an employee at a Halloween haunted house

enjoying the idea of the creative fear
he is about to engender in someone,
humming to himself as he strolls out the door,
turns out the light

but the girl,
running into another room, tripping over
yet another body,
is captivated by the idea,
skittering through
it's own darkened passages,

that surely,
as her feet, swift as a gods,
make their way down the stairs,

surely it isn't supposed
to be this way,
all the moments her eyes looked upon a world
which she believed, with all her heart,
had been created for her alone,
gone,

and in its' place a hideous fear,
ill-fitting,
lodging in her chest,
where it even now
threatens to balloon and swell
and swallow her like some
literary monster
not unlike the one
who waits, who finds in her
the surcease of his own sorrow,
who's path she had unwittingly crossed,
who holds her innocence in his omnipotent paw

O Buddha O God O Krishna,
surely you did not intend for me,
she prays,
this mad hurling flight
down and down and down
the stairwell