she stands bare skinned in the bathroom
stretch marks sketched along her hip bones
cracks begin to settle in the depths of her skin
and still you mirror every part of her she has come to despise
like a tattoo inked on the forearm of a lover
now a distant memory
etched in the crevasses of her palm
you once held her hand,
and the heavens trembled beneath her feet
her pulsating heart
still bleeding blue
in clenched fists
unbecoming of her worth
you begged to touch the sun in her face
only for her to shrink herself into bite-sized pieces
small enough for you to digest the brilliance of her beauty
yet too magnanimous in its magnitude for you to absorb and nourish
your insatiable hunger
to prove her love,
she cascades desire at the mouth of the river bank
whispers mysterious into the wind
hallucinates dreams into the fullest crescent moon
and manifests light at the tapered bottom of a blackened sky
still you recoil under the weight of your own smallness
as she patiently waits
to taste sweet with you
light ablaze the tear soaked love notes folded between
the nape of her neck
and your front teeth
a message your carrier pigeon heart
didn’t know how
to deliver
when her halo broke,
she carved the two halves into horns
and the cosmos,
in all its expansive infinity aligned
so that she could breathe life back
into the hellish abode of her very existence
but beloved finally learned to read the signs
no longer believed in the illusion of a world conspiring against her
for every dark and lifeless night,
she marveled in awe-filled wonder
as the moon and her stars colluded in brilliance
to radiate her genius
and in her lonely,
absent of the leering, unsettled, critical gaze of an outsider within
she comforted the parts of herself
no one else dared or knew how to touch
asked questions which bled her into a corpse
of past lovers
and into the looming shadows
of the ghosts of yesteryears
and one by one
strawberry coloured birthmarks formed
along the dips and fractures
of her tired bones
between her navel
and the roundness of
her breast
tracing,
with her fingers,
the goosebumped, blue-veined constellations
along her torso
connecting the dots
as seamless and natural
as the sun and her flowers in spring
building a home within
still haunted by the torment of
a 100 years of solitude
she learned to master the stillness
of which bore the faint whispers of
her murmuring heart
reminding her to breathe softly
at once surrendering the thoughts
that weighed heavily on her crown
as they fell one after another
into
her
lap
like a spilled glass of white wine
dousing the burning blaze in her eyes
the raging forest fires in her belly
a quiet sigh washes over her
inhale
filling her intoxicated paper bag lungs
exhale
the smoke dancing all around her
rising,
rising,
rising,
gone.
lh
mar 2020
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