FoxofEbony

-I had never wished to know the moon, or the burning gaze of her lover. I am merely a forest of silences, old dogwoods & untamed hair. -But, I made a promise to a bone collector once. He could have my spine, my kneecaps, & one flowered rib, wrapped & bowed-up like a present -if he could fall in love with things that slip through his fingers: Me, the sea, shooting stars. -“It would be a sin to love you, my dear sweet wolf; you will always cry for the moon.” -dp

Other boys tell me I’d look best disheveled, firmly pressed against their skin. & they know I am girl- from the curve of my hips, to this jutting collarbone, lonely of love bites & bruises. But, your hands shape falsities out of my limbs with a tongue speaking of me in riddles; Isabella, Christine. Why do I allow your body to find rest against these bones when you don’t even recognize the taste of my moon skin between your teeth?

i have a buildup of black holes suffocating my arteries, having swallowed down the bitter taste of too many girls with galaxies traveling the length of their spines. i ate them in mouthfuls, gaping & sad like a binge reaching for the skies- unable to hold them all in. i don’t think the universe is as vast & wondrous as it used to be, thriving between the intercostal spaces of my ribs; i am hungry. & with a collection of moon sighs as a reminder in my pockets, i will just have to learn how to calm this swollen indigo pulse                     while eating.

my veins are blue with restless wanting; your ghost fingers tugging at this untamed hair. stop loving me like that, darling, in nightmares- kissing the stars from my throat. if i can’t have the sky, i will howl my laughter to the earth, planting a home in the dirt beneath my claws.

& I have forgotten how to write in poetics- tongue kissed & gaping like a siren missing from her sea. I have been coughing up black for days.  Unable to clean the taste from my mouth, these broken typewriter keys sewn into my fingertips scream something fierce. They ache with longing to tell of a story that left them for a better high years ago a story that never deserved to make a home under the skin, to crawl breech through an unsuspecting womb. -& out through the wrists of young girls much too ripe to fall from their beds. I am so damn tired of looking over railings & wondering what it would feel like to fall.

Winter is still clinging to my skin, with Autumn sleeping within the tangles of my night witch hair. 65 days to learn how to fall, & Icarus, with his sun kissed fingers wrapped around my throat, giggles knowingly in my ear. I have misplaced my reckless disaster of a heart so many times, I’m not even sure it ever existed at all. But knuckles, they never lie- pressed flowers, lipstick stained against my uprooted spine. Covered in frost & silence I am a magenta February- the imprint of teeth that bruised centuries between me & bed sheets.

She devoured my heart in one slow, satisfying gulp. I heard it plunge into the gaping emptiness of her. She drank the sun from my fingertips, licked me from her lips, & said "Rose petals look better dead, plucked from your November pores." I cringed. "They go down smoothest with Writers Tears."

I have told my secrets through loves ink - painted them to my skin with watercolor defiance. & writers, we sometimes write about our scars in riddles, layers upon layers of thought, - care for them like flowers growing on the warlands of our bodies. Worthy, we give them faces, we give them names, we give them gravestones. We kill them off in our stories, make them villains, make them heroes. I have wrists that roar, & I will be damned if I don’t let them tell their stories.

You have cataloged your scars like your body is a library- to be read through & learned from. You think of all the little boys whose greedy fingers graced your pages. You are angry- none cared for you properly: folding creasing & breaking your spine. They left you on a shelf to gather dust. & why should you ever forget that?