There is a gold crown around her head
It holds her up over stones of sorrow,
Singing in languages only she can understand
There is a tongue native only to her own soul
Loving her every curve, honoring her every movement.
She is more than parts.
Justification renders to guilt of loves lost,
Men who tore into her being as if to say,
Bow down before me and enslave your
Particles and cells to my disease. Allow me to
Caress your hope this to shall be love.
Don’t just let me be in you, allow me to become you,
To take your soul and bury it beneath your self esteem.
I will take each organ and swallow it into myself,
Allow it to become my fathers hand across my mothers mouth.
I will take each muscle and twist it around your thoughts,
And each thought will become dictated to what you will now
Begin to feel. To say. To be.
I will take all of you, turn you inside and out,
Make you think I love you, take all the love you ever had for yourself,
And cuff it to my last belt loop. The one I saved just for you.
Her pieces become lost, each one scattered behind them as
They take sips, inhale and become something other than
Themselves. Numbing reality, turning eachother into apologies.
Her taste becomes less, his embrace becoming more, it all becomes
Something other than what it is.
Isn’t this what love it supposed to feel like?
To bend over at the knee, bones becoming old newspapers,
Chakras out of order, white becoming blue, becoming purple.
Knives impale parts she never knew she had, all things disappear.
Night becomes day, mornings become midnight fights,
Drunken sex and love tangled up with foreheads against toilets,
Screaming to please stay, one more time, gutting every last
Morsel of dignity, leaving it on the bathroom floor next to the tile cleaner.
He often asks you, do you feel like you are walking on egg shells?
His seeming charm you know is just another Saturday night at the bar.
Killing time in your wine glass, smoking cigarettes like you mean it,
Living each day out like a funeral procession.
Time has begun to stand still.
Family begins to question her, saving their last prayer for her each night.
Phone calls become less, she begins to fold into her own shadow.
Her dreams of a happy ending start to become suicidal,
Trapped and alone she surrenders.
Wall colors are chosen, the plant he threw gets put neatly in the garbage,
By the side of the house, where he obsessively leaves petals
Of the rose from which she was born.
She has lost herself in his footprint. The one he kindly left upon her throat.
Stealing the very breath of her, the very last ounce of air she has, that is hers,
That keeps her breathing. He took it, that one, forever knocking the wind
Out of her. Leaving her dry heaving on the floor of her own heart.
He places her on his mantle and forgets to dust her off,
Saying, I will get to her when I can see her.
She becomes he, becomes his breath, his wish, his sorry,
His punishment, his illness, his obsession, his happily ever after. His last cigarette.
She loses strength each day to stand up, the limbs beneath her quake,
And she is left a pile of glass, like the one he broke the other day.
Kicking the voices out of her head, dreams begin to come quick and fast,
Angels carry her to places in alcohol induced sleep, she caresses them
And they speak to her, lifting her up out of the ashes.
Every day she sees them, slowly light penetrates the sorrow, and hope
Fills up the emptiness of her dying heart. A voice, whispering softly,
You can do this, you can leave him. You deserve more.
She begins to pull out each shard of glass from each vein in her body, one by one,
She plucks them out and sets them on the nightstand.
By the book she could never seem to finish.
Slowly, she puts back together all the sum of her parts, all the pieces
She regretfully allowed him to touch. The story begins to write itself,
Brushing the dust off her poetry, she finds herself again. Slowly,
Painfully, she touches each particle and heals each bruise. One by one, by one.
A door opens, an angel puts out her hand, she grabs hold,
It’s like her fingers have become brush strokes, a painting emerges,
From her life art is born. From tragedy her mouth begins to
form words again. Her tears no longer suppressed, Like first loves,
they fall hard, and they fall fast.
Right before her eyes she can see her limbs begin to fuse back together,
Her heart is in the palm of her own hand,
Each part of her a galaxy,
She has become more than parts, she has become the whole universe.
more than parts. March 28, 2011
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