Bark
Paper spiders everywhere
Crawling through pinholes in my brain
Cutting the corners of my mouth
Tartaric taste curls my tongue
Forming words I would never say
An inferno of verbs
Flying through gutted roots
It’s warm butter to a blade
Until the right ones land and spread
That's when they begin to ricochet
You’re only hurting yourself.
That’s what they tell me anyway
I’m a dirt digging plant
Living in the embers of memories
That took decades to slowly fade
Put out in tiny doses
On a slow drip of acid rain
It’s the smell of melting gospel
Revealing monstrosities
Awoken from pits of smothered rage
It’s inhumane
To mistreat animals like this
Yet they do nothing
As innocence is stripped away
Some of us still live in cages
Gnashing teeth
Snapping necks at the end of chains
Some of us still live in the embers
Feeling a burn that never fades
I’m recording scars in tree rings
As bark covers wounds with age
Building cages for the demons
Nesting in my conjured rage
Copyright © Andreanna Escamilla | Year Posted 2021
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