Not Thorns
There is a creature that I know
It eats nightmares.
It eats nightmares but it’s made of shadow
and all it eats from it grows to become.
I love it.
I’ve had it living inside me since I was a little girl
Feasting on darkness and festering wounds
and craving more.
I have fed it well.
And it has repaid me
in the turn of my brow and the clench of my teeth
and the scalpel-like way that I smile
I do not smile for the looks of men
nor the looks of women
(though a part of me that is made of frosting roses dreams
of a day I could learn to be soft enough to love them)
But I am bitter now
In a way I have no right to be
No right except that which I give myself.
For I have eaten from the fruit of the land of the dead
and have tasted the tart iron tang of it
I have learned to wear thorns like my heart longs for roses
and how to treat winter like an instrument to be played
rather than wishing for the full choirs of autumn
I have learned that my garden needs not be barren
but that it’s easier to salt the earth
that to risk the soft heads of unplanted seedlings
for so few oaks grow to maturity these days.
I’ve learned that hope is a phrase that sounds like cut glass
when invoked in the cold still air
and that you need to be sharper than the season you wear
if you want your feet free of the brambles
I have learned to be a monster in the night
a spirit in white
that dreams of her frosting roses
but grins at children with bloodstained teeth and ice eyes
I have learned to collar my heart and make a cage of my chest
I have learned to thaw myself out for myself
and to shiver with all that I’ve got
but I’m cold.
so cold.
and I don’t want to be anymore.
I don’t want to be.
For at night, I still dream of pink roses.