Hekate

Thu, 01/01/2015 - 15:47 -- Shyia

I have broken my back

more times than I can count,

I am brittle,

I crumble with the quake.

My crooked spine hates me

I hate me

Stop bending’

                ‘stop bending’

I could not.

 

My mother told me

she is sickened by my frown.

It reminded her of being red-wristed sixteen,

and of how I was too selfish to do the same.

But I tried to bleed

                I tried to bleed

I could not.

 

My arms have been torn

from their sockets,

by boys with shy grins

and girls with hungry hearts.

I was doll in a preschool

shoved in the dirt,

forgotten in the gravel.

Don’t get up.

                Don’t get up.

I did not.

 

When I held my hands away from the rest,

a boy told me I was a big deal,

                  a tête-à-tête between Olympians,

                                   a child of Everest air and the vacuums of space.

But you looked at me like muddy snow—

                 the ugliest part of winter,

                                  made to freeze, made to melt.

But I am neither

I am neither

I am not.

 

I am not the visage of your wants,

Your pasts, your futures.

I am a goddess of broken promises and misplaced hope.

Touch me and I will burn off

the whorled identity of your fingertips.

I am a girl of dusty moth-wing skin.

I flutter, strewing powder across sheets,

                 across pillows,

                              across whispers.

I shall be my own undoing,

my own saboteur—

                 you will not touch me.

                               I am not yours.

 

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