Thursday, January 7, 2016

new ritual

I was birthed into this year
screaming into the wind,
drowned out by the storm of myself,
hurtling through the hours

and there, for seven days, 
I've stayed.

I'm still lying in the grass
next to the rickety fence
that knows to stand the gale

the tears in my cheeks haven't healed
in fact, they're
splitting wider

I wish they were smiles.

there's something awful in me
and I don't know what it is
there's some terrible
self-loathing
that manifests staccato 
bursts of breath
open-mouthed speech that
doesn't bear words
a foreign language announced by 
caustic 
silence

I hate it.

I hate mostly
that it makes me 
hate myself.

There's something awful in me
and I don't know what it is
I can't imagine where it came from
except, 
that 
it's riding on my back
escaped from another
a parasite transversing 
not only
bodies
but 
time

it's leapt 
from the year I couldn't
into the present
(so)where things are different, but 
still
the same.

I want it off. 
I want it out.
I've told it to go.
It's still clutching and leaving scratches
I saw them on his back
I knew it was it
when he said, "you did this",
pointing at the claw marks and
me, without recollection
"No," I said,
"it was the other way around -
you were the one
taking the back of your hand to my face
while it dangled off the bed -
I never marked you."

But he insisted I did
and I knew
it was her
that creeping little parasite
that sits inside my throat 
and glides between
my forehead and my belly
when she is bored
- and she always is

we gave her a name,
after he
and those colours
woke her up

Her name is 
Vanessa

She's got to go.

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