mouths to eat your sorrows
lace for catching feet
cracks with but a light now
sometimes life is sweet
it's time now for another page,
to set aside the dusty cage
and let you rest now, gone and free
and worlds of worlds away from me.
no eyes now, no ears, and no thought
to look on these words I have caught
and butterfly-pinned, frail and tearing
to the frayed understanding I'm wearing.
I speak to a cold endless waste
in circles I've traced and retraced.
I've thought too long on other lives
and candles, brief, and what survives.
could wax be made to burn again?
rekindled, gently, by my pen—
but you've earned what myself I dread
so it shall be flowers instead.
it's what an artist is, you see;
they make pain into poetry
or sorrow to soliloquy.
starveling, crawl now on the floor
and bleed yourself to ink, and more,
hollow out your bones. we'll wait.
gorge yourself on yellow paint.
it is enough to say "this is my heart
and these its pieces
and this the glitter it was ground to
and true I have bled from my fingers
and true I am not what I was
but if I must be broken,
I'd rather be something that shines."
"and all the lost and broken,
with no one left to cry,
who left no mark worth making,
who will mourn them?" "I."
"and you will tend the flowers,
and you will stay close by,
and let no stone be worn away,
and tend each memory?" "Aye."
"such a task would break you, then,
bent low by sob and sigh.
who will mourn the lonely deaths
and light the candles?" "I."
harsh, rising waters
the striking waves of seas
fingers cupped to catch but nothing stays.
so many years of adjustments. so many years
to still believe in peace without defeat.
to turn aside; to bend as the reeds to the wind,
with no illusions of being the oak. no desire to be the oak.
or the wind itself, ripping away hats, roots,
some anger blown up from the dust. the sea.
the strange moment, the forgetting of the reeds.
I remember being happy now,
the sense of fitting, of clarity.
peace. like a ghost it shook me off,
pushed up its sleeves,
and knew me.
I used to blame the pain on wings, on writhing just beneath the skin
of some cruel gift that when exposed would turn me outside-in.
I used to dream the pain would end, at last, spread out in flight
in the calm unscreaming fleeing to the forest, to the night.
but I have no such feathers, merely weights upon my chest
that exhaust me while all strangers call me female by my breast.
and now I dream of knives digging their sharp into my shape
to free me still in blood as I once dreamed I would escape.
and i'll seal the hole with fire, and for once I will stand tall
and despite the ground beneath me I will feel no pain at all.
some days I sing; other days
I cannot make a sound.
I don't think I'm still falling
but I haven't hit the ground.
I hover close to crying
but no tears come to my eyes.
my head is full of nonsense
and it tangles and it ties.
I search for doors and doors again
to seek what I have lost
and make keys of the whispers that warn
wary of the cost.
never a hand to carry out the pretty
little violations showing in the eyes.
needlepins growing in the skin.
the preparation to flinch.
so small are we, in all this world,
to have such raging heat within,
or kindly looks on causing harm,
smiles cut wide. the land cut wider
and the endless crawling wrath beneath
is smiles, is grins, it laughing as it eats.
smile-tired in among the purring
I'm happy now. I'm safe.
I'm moving slow but moving.
just give me a day or two.
just let the tears sort themselves out,
let the exhaustion sleep away,
let the fear face itself.
just give me a week or two.
I'm ready to not be afraid.
I'm ready to stop dreaming myself back into danger.
I'm ready to be now.
Take this eyelash-wish and grant me now.
what if I just stopped? it's been eight months and change and I'm tired. I want my midnights back, my days of not worrying words onto a page.
I'm ready to stop. I'm going to stop.
I'm not going to stop.
a day two days a week I don't know when I am
spinning without motion, speaking without sound
I look up and again the sun is going down.
wake whimpering with the sun,
stunned silent by the close
cold confines of fear
following fear, dreaming
of death in the deceitful world.
I define the space I inhabit, paint the lines sharp,
keep myself in line. but my edges blue,
my colors change, I furl into myself
and the lines seem larger, larger still
and I am safe, or know of safety.
it's fine enough work, twisting worlds
and waving through each branching braid
and laying out the thread
and marking maps and maps of signs
and shearing off sore thumbs