snake

you snake!

I meditated, I left the door open

My eyes followed your comet as it passed through space

Over jagged caverns and inverted chasms

Past the chomping teeth of lions and warthogs

I trusted you!

That under your cloak of pure black was something good

A balm, a gentle soul, a warm wish

I tracked your every movement, expecting a diversion or transformation but finding only a bewildering consistency.

You first.

Down,

down into my core where you settled and spread your seed

You filled every limb with your blackness,

a grim erasure of the beautiful light I’d collected in my greenhouse.

My storehouses are left without power, and all I can do is exhale

I breathe out,

blowing you out, away from me, I exhale,

exhausting myself to clean the pillars I stand on

I see spatters and wisps of you in front of me, so I continue

It’s slow work, but I continue

to exhale, ex ale

You snake,

let me use you now

To clean myself out,

I will clean my pipes with your bristles,

Sweep my insides with you and expel it all with borrowed passivity

I am not yours anymore.

I am breathing you  out.

reck·​less

Right now I want to be promiscuous - reckless? I want to trust, but also to revel, in its shallowness. I want to make bad decisions, because is there such a thing? To call, to rooftop. To sink my teeth into my own night, to hide by twilight and booze the feelings I carry by day and to feel no shame, but rather peace - the abominative, ployful reverence of a life pierced and strung by the needle of generations. Back arched in pain, I wince and ask for it again. I am my ancestors, whether or not they are mine. I am darkness and sunsets by day and by night.

To see an animal and deem its actions innocent is to remember that their consequences are personal. If my impacts are limited to those in my conversation, well-communicated and consensual, only the zookeeper can rightfully intervene. And the keeper I see is a forest, not a warden, their hands a caressing, lavender meringue, wisping around us as we wind ourselves together. No gauntlets claim access to the tracing of my fingers on a lover’s chest, the curiosity of my tongue as it slowly paints its way up, and within, their leg. Forests such as these are home to animals such as me, and in this very year I am alive still.

un·​in·​vit·​ed

In another life, we met briefly at a concert.

I watched you walk away then returned to my conversation.

In another, I saw you on a train.

Mischievous blue eyes playing tag until they found a playful connection.

In yet another, we were two eggs in a basket,

Our fragile shells Carefully placed side by side on a cloth.

And now I see we missed our window.

I saw the way you laughed.

I heard of your abandon,

the sidewalks you danced on.

We walk on the same sidewalks now,

but I'm the only one dancing.

Who taught you to receive stories silently,

to mistrust input, even your own?

Who made the hair on your arms stand up

so sharply that they now cut the hands that try to hold you?

Who let you keep your perfect smile

but told you not to use it?

Who pulled the laughter from your throat

and the bounce from your step?

And where did they store it?

Who made you supply all of your own affection

to the point where other's affirmation is redundant?

Who told you that getting old is bleak and unaffectionate,

that hope is naïve?

Who tied their love so tightly around you

that flowing braids now look like knotted ropes?