Why do that to yourself? Play around with perfection, even if it was only skin deep, and the smoothness of these curves turned your stomach at night, when dusk settles its hands either side of your hips, presses into the grooves where his tools worked you into beauty. Mounted you his sculpture for all men to see. Do you not appreciate how his love made you into a woman worth seeing?
Last night I dreamed you real. Felt you within the softness of my belly. Loved you an existence. Broke my heart open, when this dream came loose. Woke to pre-dawn, a sleeping husband, a house just the same, and an ache too close to grief for someone not quite here yet.
Each man’s home is his castle, so I made mine a fortress, my sitting room a keep, and a battlement of books to stand watch for invaders wielding words like realistic, while I was carving hope into a portcullis, certain these walls could hold.
How even when we whispered it there was someone shushing our small mouths with calloused fingers. Pressing the words back inside as if they were Ouranos horror struck but what we birthed in those terrible, unspeakable words. Filling our bellies with ideas we were not allowed to give life to. Until we burst from the ineffable and held it screaming before their faces. Made them look at what we’d made.
If I spoke with hysterical authority, held firm with fragile voice, shattered the glass of your skull screeching banshee screams despite nothing really being dead, would you change. Could my voice be enough to show you the fragmented reflection your kind has made me.
Found fuel in my anger and burnt like a star. Bright but bitter. Still, it was beautiful, to be cloaked in fire. A phoenix for you to pluck over and over until ash, then flame, over and over again, and again. Until I ran out, grew volatile, beyond control. Singed you, a little. Realised fear, on your face when I broke past your expectations. Learnt burning eats you, from the inside out. Word of the Day: Fire
Keep your balance and your wits grasped tight. Knot them between your fingers like purse straps when the street empties to darkness and even the lamplight does little to chase away shadows. There’s no rescuing dignity if you spill, heels caught in the rickets of this ladder we’ve built from the bones of those who wept behind closed doors. Emotion would prove them woman and that was weakness, still is in the eyes of some. So the weak gift their spines and prayers, hollow themselves into armour for the next generation, and the one after that, in a desperation that they will be the drop that tips the scales to even.
I gathered the stones myself, stacked them before you like a temple offering, my skin the sacrifice as I bared it inch by inch and asked for a blessing you denied me until the pile was fragments and my flesh peppered with your approval.
One sip to poison a prince, his teeth sunk into forbidden fruit, while one-true-love stands waiting, patient, the perfect good girl all fairy-tales and smiles, alone. Drinks her own potion, steps free of skin crafted from paperbound volumes brittle with age. Breathes. Finally. Screams.
I pretended not to hate you last night, knees pressed into your pelvis like stone fists, your cold, clever lips there against my wrist with promises you would make things alright once the morning at last brought home some light and you could show me why we must persist, how without you, I would barely exist, and why it was pointless for me to fight. But I kept count of those lies and those kisses. every feathered touch up, along my ire, and each time I should have taken your tongue when your arrogance stoked up this fire and told me I did not have strength to rise when you were the one crawling all along. Bjorn is hosting the first Poetry Form night of at the DVerse Poets Pub and he’s picked an old fling to throw up as the first challenge. While I played with sonnets years ago, I went off them in the same way I went off most fixed form poetry. However, anyone who’s been around this blog for the last …
