MUSINGS ON AN EVENING

 

Mother,

Let me hang my small pink mouth to your left breast, foolishly hungry.

Let me stay unmoved in your fondles, hollow lap of magnificent disappointment.

Let me have a place a place in the empty cave of your gut, mother,

So that I can hide because its too loud here.

 

Crowded by the memories my brain is sweating

All my fears dance under the pale kitchen light,

An infamous yet grotesque opera.

Verses pregnant with naked passion drawing

Hypothesis in the crossroads, red and blue.

The clammy sunshine henna on doorsteps,

The soul of a dead sparrow seeping into my veins.

I put my anger in refrigerator, careful,

And my teeth in the washing machine

“whiter, whiter” I chant.

The sorrows are the tail of a lizard,

Shed only to be grown, stronger and darker again.

And happiness a crossword puzzle in neon letters,

A sweet spoon of crystal sugar at the bottom of bleak coffee.

In silence my tongue rolls into memorized prayers,

I stand, a mannequin, stabbing her own raw nerves.

My buttercream dress with pockets bathed in detergent

To get rid of the seared salmon breath,

My hands hidden in green sweater,

My skin feverish in memory of that touch.

I have so much inside me to tell, to yell, to scream but

If I do, I will be a guilty woman not a nice girl.

If I say they will ask me that why did I flash a smile,

What was I wearing and will dissect my last cell.

If I do, they will sigh and hold my hands just to tell

That how lucky I am not to be found strangled in a road side pit,

With dirt under my nails, grass in my mouth and my intestines tangled.

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