Please don’t make me an honest woman.
You will ruin my poetry.
I pin my guilt to the wall like a butterfly,
An amateur study of lepidoptery while my chemistry lies
Unfinished on the table, motivation as diminutive
As the carcass in front of me.
Despite inexpressible, insurmountable odds,
I have found my nerves slack with contentment
But it hasn’t made me stop gnawing my nails down to the bone.
Wet eyes, strong teeth, gaping maw under a shadow of crimson lipstick
On dying chapped lips, the flesh as tough as a soldier’s last stand,
Both grounds of eventual silence a no man’s land.
They whisper that I care more about being right than being happy—
My skin doesn’t fit over my bones, my self-expression sticks and stutters
Hiding itself in the prison of my throat until I drown in the unsaid.
Culture dictates that wearing your heart on your sleeve is a sort of surrender,
But my honesty is found when the muscle is bloody and pulsing and raw with exposure.
The yellow line comes, my mouth doesn’t burn, and you hold me tight like
Losing me is of real consequence, not grounds for a sigh of relief.
I thought it was just the one confession, but now I’m a churchgoer
With heresy tucked beneath her tongue, silent beside the priest
Until I erupt without anyone there, Pompeii’s long awaited daughter.
The rain struck through my body like a blade but you told me it looked nice
And the sound of your voice rang in my ears like warning bells, fear surfacing
In my gut, checking joy for its expiry date, ticking off the seconds
Like a trapped animal waiting for the hunter to pounce.
My hatred grows over my skin like mold, like a rash, like a mask.
I skate with my collarbones bare to the cold clean wind,
The rot frozen against my skin, incandescent wonder like a shield against
My boiling misery threatening to spill over in anticipation of your leaving.
And I think I’ll love theoretical physics because reality terrifies, the supposition soothes,
Atlas’s knees buckle beneath the weight of my predicted misery.
You know, I told him, I never thought I was going to live this long.
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