Blemishes
Blemishes
My body’s mistakes
My wounds of disgrace
Injected by faith
In science and progress
Flogging myself with second-guesses
I have given myself away.
to uncaring men, pressed jackets
white jackets, packets of sympathy
baskets of fruit set upon the writing desk
in solitary confinement, padded walls.
haunted halls, bathroom stalls with locked doors.
Linoleum floors
Poor, poor pitiful me
Cherry pick my favourite reasons,
depending on the season
Why do the patterns keep repeating?
serve them up on a platter!
for delicate devouring
and just desserts
some things are generational.
inherited
bestowed
I cradle my worth.
In my own wretched hands
Once delicate
Here I stand.
Not stolid
Nor stoic
I am not put together.
Not sorted
I am apart.
Electrical currents running through the pieces,
stringing them together
Making a woman out of angst and energy
The sheer will of being.
I have nothing to live for
Only these words
Hospital gown flowing in my rage.
Windswept, like a mage
In the middle of casting a spell
A sorceress in distress, in peril
Fighting to remain
In the moment, present and tame
But wild fear presents itself at my feet.
The wolf is ready to eat.
I stay indoors to hide from the chase.
But at the end of the day
When night falls to the ground
I heard the call.
I wish to respond.
To howl back at the crack of dawn
Rolling in the sun with my wild baying, panting, praying
But I stay put.
I hold it back.
Inside my skin that cannot contain
My ancestral blood
This is the flood.
The flood
I drowned in the flood.
The wolf is not only animal.
But avatar
for gods too abstract to see
with the naked eye
It growls it snarls.
It bites my legs.
It promises peace.
as it gnaws on my pride
the alure of freedom,
teasing me to leave my comfort zones
knowing it will crunch my bones.
the first chance it gets.
when I trip over my intentions
into mud
face first
ruining my escape
I do not outrun the wolf.
I do not outsmart the gods.
I do not escape the flood.
I fall—
not like a heroine,
but like a relic dropped mid-ritual
mud in my mouth,
bones in the wolf’s grin
the spell unfinished
The door still locked.
the howl still inside me
rotting sweetly
like fruit on the desk
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