Kerry Bernatchez Poet Narrative

Red String Skeleton

Red String Skeleton
He wants my confidence,
My out-of-date inexperience,
My overused innocence.

There are not any bones, any ghosts in my closet.
No one stayed around long enough
To fade away into secret memory.
There is only the one, solitary skeleton—
Held together by red string from an old cardigan,
And dead dreams from an old childhood.

How do I exquisitely explain
Sorrow and suffering,
Loss and loneliness—
So leviathan, so towering,
Pervasive and perpetual,
That I lost grip on the real world.
I spun out of orbit
Into a void of avoidance,
Running from the nihilism and negativity
Swelling in my heart.

Only to return, redux, redo—
Transformation so intense
Onlookers need Ray-Bans to protect
Gemstone irises from the glare
Of fresh snow,
So pristine in its flow.

Aren’t I woman enough?
My hips sway.
My lips play along lines of politeness,
Drenched in the pigments of approaching lust.

I do not overthink
All the reasons men remain distant—
Derelict, defunct.
That is their division,
Dimension,
Destiny.

I grew weary of the wait,
Refusing to accept that fate.
Endless pining and desperate compromise—
It was not for me anymore.

I have my own baggage,
My reasons for remaining offset.
Outside.

Wanting to divulge my truth—
A confession given by dashboard light,
Through a tunnel of desire,
Tormented trauma of temptation.

I tell you now:
I am trouble.
A broken woman,
No goals.
No ambitions.
Will you depart the scene?
Run for the hills,
Gone without a trace?

I deserve the intrinsic value of being human.
I have a museum’s worth of art
Swimming inside my blood—
Words that rust in the mud.

If I lined up all my sins,
Would the devil take aim?
Shooting me down into my own misery,
Leaving me in the periphery,
Full of capitulation,
Wallowing in my own situation.

I needed a hero.
A Helo.
A friend in the night,
To help me move on
From the fright—
Touch upon touch,
Skin on skin.
The essence of life,
And the lingering smell
Of his day-old cologne.

But instinct told me to run.
Always to run.
Because I had to run when I was young—
From the man with a gun.

If I rolled my truth up in a joint and smoked it,
Would you stop asking me questions?
These are more than inquiries—
It is an inquisition.
The questioning transports me to the location
Where my childhood died,
In front of onlookers.

My truth runs crooked,
Like the pathways through life,
Or in my brain—

A labyrinth of doom,
A maze of ill wonders.
Curiosity that killed a cat
Left me paralysed,
Regretting all that I said.
Walked straight into the brambles,
Left with a thousand cuts—
Each one as deep as the first.

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