I loved soaking in your light.

I’d bask in it’s yellow glow.

But then I turned; my ears at attention and eyes no longer fawn-hearted

the light became a prelude-

Screeching; rubber on pavement.

I could only watch

My shadow illuminated on the tarmac not by a sun but captured stone-still by headlights.

August comes, and the wound passes.

Slow.

Thick and bitter, I choke it back.

I choke, I choke, I choke.

It suffocates; I watch it settle.

Mesmerized, I watch you leave.

Tire tracks in the driveway your coat still hangs on my door.

Ink on pages, I stain my fingers.

Scarlet on my hands a book, discarded.

Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, Canis Minor.

Constellations the only witness of my decay.

I am my father’s best soldier and my mother’s most rotten daughter

Or;

I am my mother’s most righteous rage and my father’s worst fear

A woman raised in carnage to bring ruin

This house is not noble and I will make it crumble anyway.

I am no saint.

I am no martyr.

I am afraid.

I am my father’s best soldier

And I am my mother’s most righteous rage

I was not born for this;

And I will do it anyway.

I’m sitting in this car burning eyes tracking

The skinny girls with their shiny legs and shinier smiles

I stare with eyebrows messier than the blood pooling beneath the skin of my knees purple, yellow, green

hanging onto their conversations by the skin of my teeth

They let me in a door cracked open

Just far enough that my form misshapen and awkward can get through

They let me talk; Trotting a zoo animal around a room and i’ll trot i’ll trot for them

So long as they keep on ignoring the knobby mess of my hands and the wrongness of my smile

But we’ll both know it somewhere

They’ll know it in the cadence of my speech and i’ll know it in the perfect red hearts

Still beating in their chests.

I found a dog skull in the woods

It was the skull of a dog not some coyote or wolf or fox— this i’m certain of.

It had man’s touch pressed into it’s shortened snout and loyalty smoothed into it’s rounder shape

I wondered about the dog it was before it was just a skull in the woods before teeth marks made their jagged tattoos in the crest of eye sockets

I stared at it’s moss-covered form centered in a clearing almost slightly on its side

and I thanked the forest for giving it a funeral and the moss for making it feel not so alone and the pine needles for giving it a soft bed and the birds for singing to it day after day

and I thanked the sun for kissing the bone

for no dog dead or alive

should feel cold.

So I lifted him from the ground gentle

and I promised the forest I’d take good care of him

and I brought him home and picked the vines off and shooed the bugs away and took great care to scrub the dirt soft and slow

‘You’ve done a great job,’ I tell the vines and bugs and dirt ‘But I’ve got him now. You’ve done a great job, but it’s my turn to watch him now.’

And I promised to love him; a pinky swear to the sun a gentle kiss from the vines and bugs and dirt to continue that sacred vow to care for him sweet and soft until it’s the forest’s turn again.

It is easy to get lost in the underworld.

These words

inscribed on the gates the entrance to a garden that wants me to stay

a labrynth

i’ve heard it called

the people I pass look stranger and stranger

don’t turn back. don’t turn back.

the underworld is not so underworldy it feels like—

don’t turn back. don’t turn back.

she calls for me i need to find her

they told me to go they told me not to—

don’t turn back. don’t turn back.

don’t look back.

she’s behind me.

is she?

do i keep going?

am i assured she’s there?

Eurydice?

are you there?