There is something living inside of me.
It blooms out
from between my lips
like a bouquet of
diseased flowers
I have kept pressed beneath
my tongue for so long
that my mouth has
memorized the taste
of death,
it spills from my fingertips
in curls of smoke
as if there is something
smouldering inside my fist,
it decays in the twisted
riddle maze of my iris –
this thing has made
a house out my body,
claiming heart chamber bedrooms
and chandelier ribcages,
spiral staircase spines
and floorboard bones –
this thing is my monster.
He festers within
the lining of my scars,
looking out through
the windows of my eyes,
trying to lure strangers
down the minefield corridors
of my pupils,
a creature of barbed wire
smiles with teeth of flint,
child of the knives cast
into his back,
my monster has grown
in the darkness
just as the darkness
has grown in him.
collecting pieces of pain
like they’re pennies,
planting them in the soil of my skin
and watching them grow
into pretty little poison flowers.
I know he is darkness
but he is also
seduction,
stoking my neck with
fingers made of gravel and silk,
whispering to me with a voice
like whiskey and honey:
don’t you want to hurt them back?
After all, it would be terribly easy
to lace my lips with contempt
and learn to balance a pistol
on my tongue.
It would be easy,
so easy
to let him put matches
to the flower petals in my hair,
to let him kiss sparks
into my vocal cords
so I can speak in explosions,
to let him use my lungs
like a fireplace
and my windpipe
like a chimney;
I would forget what it is
not to swallow smoke
and choke on ashes.
Perhaps I already have forgotten.
Let’s not pretend
it doesn’t feel good sometimes
to give into the darkness,
because those demons
I have spent so long trying to
press beneath my tongue
or suffocate inside my fist
or drown within my eyes –
they are just dying to be set
free.
