Madonna

You were red and I could see it crawling across your skin.
In my dreams you were lying on a white bed in a grey room. There were no windows, and the door was barred. No way to showcase the decision you’d chosen.
They knew though.
The shaming would be done later with the washing of the sheets at the banks of the river. The company would crow over them, with the hissing and clacking of their tongues in anger.
In regret for what you could have done.
In shame for they believed they had failed. For you hadn’t learned to follow the rules.
It wasn’t the right stain smeared across your body, formed from your flesh breaking apart by some opposite force for the first time. It was the one of many in a cycle, buried by the possibilities beating within your body.
Your thighs and stomach were sticky with red as it slid down and mixed together with the earth beneath your feet. The tick tock echoed as time moved slowly forward and beat her head against the walls all around you.
It was inevitable.
It’s impossible to be the two halves of a broken whole.

We would sit on the bed together and listen to the outside world. From outside the grey walls they screamed and called the stench of death upon you. They said you were unclean, waving their books and raping the Earth with their signs.
You were carrying life though.
They didn’t realize it.

I love your smile; in the way it completes your face. You were singing songs and whispering in my ears, drowning out the voices of rage.
You were refusing to listen.
This Earth is a circle.
This Earth is a tide.
This Earth is inevitable.
And they don’t see that.
They see a murderer as they rage against the preciousness of life.
“It was your baby!”
“God made you pregnant for a reason!”
You laughed and replied that you would have remembered sleeping with God. You knew who had been responsible.
You knew your decision.

Those are the memories I replay within my head. Of the days when the wind blew and flowers bloomed along the walls surrounding us. We sang, we danced and slept.
I understood.
I understood the reasoning behind you, the logic and the hope you carried within your body, pregnant with visions of the future.

You were red and I was born from it. The smells of eternity as they crowded out from within the body and spilled onto the skin danced around us, binding us together in a ritual older than everything.

It was the beginning.
It was the end.
It was our curse.
It was our gift that no other understood, blinded by their sick vision of humanity.

I understood though.
You never killed me, for we had made that decision together.

Monday's Lover

Monday is forever coloured in the shade
of somebody else's kisses,
painted blue along the white bones of the cheeks,
the budding flush running along the ears,
marking the face of a child caught
in the trappings of first love.
I only remember the soft whisper
of your hand, velvet in the ever tightening grip
of my fingers,
bubbling purple in our embarrassment,
broken light scattered within the strands
of your hair, alight with a fire
neither of us really understood.
For it was Monday morning,
cobalt upon the wire edge of summer's pale wings
as they beat against the mesh
of your bedroom window,
hands clutched together, eyes closed,
door locked with the damp air
soaking through my anxiety,
both of us laid back upon
the rotting frame your bed consisted of, trapped
in the embrace of Monday's lover's
kiss.

crossfire of these days

I carry this body in pieces,
the creak of my joints
as rhythm,
the collapse of my lungs
as weight,
the snap of my neck
as finality,
my heart black ashes
in the crossfire
of these long days just waiting
to be over.

tracing these moments

trace my fingers
over the bank of your ribs,
body carved open
along the green of the grass,
teeth smiling white
against the blue of the sky.
i need to swallow you down
this summer, your breath
hot in my ear, your hands
trailing down the length of my back
as i let myself fall open
into you, eyes wild,
skin burning
as we trace these moments
around the lake.

Because I cannot find the words right now

When I recall that nevermore, alas!
That lady shall I see
On whose account I mourn with such dismay,
My grieving thoughts about my heart amass
Such sorrow that I say:
"My soul, why dost thou not depart from me...?"

-Danté Alighieri

Rise

I am free of you
as my flesh folds and knits
together over my bones,
red blood pounding,
a soft, shaky laugh escaping
as I slowly unfurl myself
and rise.

I am finally finished.

unfortunately

07/19/12

unfortunately,
this is not how i would have it.
i want your hands
on my body, teeth snapping,
ribs creaking as you pry
me open in a form
of benediction
against my sins.
i want no whispers of love,
only your arms open
to catch me, to punish me,
to mold me into someone different
from who i really am.
remake me.
for i cannot handle myself
this way any longer.