The wordle poem is below the story, the poem was written from the perspective of the character, by the character if you will.
Some days it seems
The farther I fall
The deeper my roots
My sixteenth birthday came and went without mention. Gone were the frivolities of youth (not that my youth had ever been inclined to frivolity). My mother had died the previous year (on this very day) for reasons I am not at liberty to mention. I can only say that she went kicking and screaming. Whatever she glimpsed in passing frightened her more than the horrors to which she was accustomed. My father kept the body but removed the flesh. My mother had always wanted to be a skeleton and my father loved bones. We staged her burial with a cadaver (method of attainment unknown but a respectable match).
My father became a recluse or I should say that he remained much the same. Without anyone to reign him in he stopped posturing. My mother had always arranged social events on his behalf but never at his behest. Without her the house was empty. Indeed I almost never saw my father because he spent most of his time in the basement eclipsed entirely by his obsession.
He was no longer discreet in the carrying of cadavers to and from his work space, though he was never forthcoming in matters of acquisition. Most of the cadavers were females but whether this was a matter of preference or portability I could not say. The house was as clean as it ever was my father had hired a housekeeper (an elderly matron with an uncompromising disposition).
We spoke sparingly. We dined separately. We labored together only of necessity. I was studious but not entirely dismissive of biological inclinations. I had a girlfriend. We’d been dating six months. We were sexually active. Her name was Thyme.
“Can’t we stay at my place?” Thyme didn’t know as much as she thought about my past although she claimed to be sensitive. She wasn’t. She couldn’t see the other world. A world I’ve come to refer to as Level X. The name is a superficial one. It refers to the X in the closet of my bedroom, that’s where the spirits enter. Half the people I know are already dead.
“Is your dad going to be around…” I didn’t get on with her old man too well. I couldn’t assimilate.
“He doesn’t hate you…if he did he would’ve intervened…” Thyme’s words were partially reassuring but they didn’t sway me.
“I can’t leave the house….” Thyme looked at me sympathetically. My father’s mental health was questionable at best and to the outside world he seemed a man destroyed by grief. She assumed this was my reason for being reluctant and maybe it was but it felt much more complicated than that.
“No ghost stories though…just sex…” She teased. I was quick to agree.
—–
“What’s that X in your closet?” Thyme asked legs dangling over the side of my bed.
“Don’t know…an act of rebellion maybe?” I offered not wanting her to pursue the subject lest I break our agreement.
“Why don’t you paint over it?” She asked oblivious to my tactics. I couldn’t tell her that I’d tried countless times but that the black always bled to the surface. I’d never dared to paint it black because the black seemed to act as a conduit. It was only partially accessible this way, if I painted the whole wall I feared what might come through.
“I like it this way…” I offered stupidly.
“Close the door and get over here…” Thyme had finally caught up and she wasn’t about to press me further.
Thyme wasn’t a pretty girl but an ineffable beauty. Her eyes were nearly too big for her face and of a shade of green so surreal that they contrasted reality itself. Her black hair was thick and chiseled into an unalterable wave. Her skin was porcelain and flawless, without expression she appeared vacant and doll-like. I loved her disciplined breasts and the swan-like curve of her neck. I loved her thighs, which were muscular from dancing, and the subtle accent of her ribs. I was a decent-looking guy by societies’ standards but by my own I was completely unworthy of her.
Your insipid tongue
Filters my persuasion
I evaporate in the captivity
Of your colossal ego
Who am I without you as my shield?
Who am I without the spit of exhausted adrenalin?
I have raged mutely all the days
Of my entitled existence
What does advantage suggest?
From this vantage
I am without filial affection
An unsought propagation
For a future pitilessly stitched
Do not straiten my collar a second time
I cannot be made to present,
Do not predicate your sense of worth
On my infallibility
I fail more acutely than most
mindlovemisery 