Other Writing

They plucked us from turbulent waters,
and took us to their homes on pristine shores,
where the sun sets bloody,
and their hands even bloodier.

They stripped us of our tails and gave us wings instead.
They forced us in to the sky,
so they could curse us from the ground.

And how a crowd gathers under the death of a star to watch it glitter across the black night,
they watch us fall.

But comets are comets,
and the destruction of a person is never as beautiful.

Our feathers burn,
one by one,
and our corpses...

Sometimes I feel as if I was created in a lab.
I feel as if my bones were perfectly splintered into place,
grinding into my tender flesh,
cracking and breaking with every breath I try to take.

Sometimes I feel as if my heart was purposely made too big,
too wide,
too open.
They sewed it to my sleeve,
exposed it to the world,
instead of tucking it safely away beneath an ivory cage.

Sometimes I feel like I was made only to be broken,
over and over and over again.

And other times...

other times I feel as if I...

I have to remind myself that I was not born angry,
that I was not born with fangs or claws or sandpaper skin.

No.

My teeth and nails were sharpened by the stones you threw at me,
my skin shred apart by the serrated edge of your words,
your knives and swords.

I have to remind myself that I wasn't born into anger,
but rather I was forged into it.

And I have to scream how dare you!

How dare you rob me of my softness!
How dare you make me cruel!
How dare you turn me into a monster and then blame me for the...

I wish I could make you feel the salt of my tears on your skin,
how it drags across the flesh like gritted sand and leaves it burning.

I wish I could make you feel how swollen my throat gets,
when I choke back my screams in favor of keeping peace,
swallowing them down instead,
like knives against my esophagus.

I wish I could make you understand how terrifying the darkness can be,
when it covers you at night with the unknown,
when the potential it's weighted with suffocates you against the sheets and...

I wish to decorate myself in frills and lace,
polish my hair with pearls instead of the cold hard steel
of a well hidden dagger.

I wish to feel the warm hands of a downy coat
without the cold glint of silver that must be sheathed underneath.

I wish to welcome the hands of a lover
without it feeling like a snare around my neck,
without wanting to gnash my teeth and unfurl my claws,
like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a bear.

I wish to bare my soul,
my heart,
without the protection of barbed wire and...

I am more righteous than any god you may worship
and I am more frightening than any devil you may fear

I am the crimson water that splashes at your feet, never clearing.
I am the screams that echo in your ears at night, never ceasing.
I am the pain scorched across a land you left weeping.

I am all the souls you've forsaken,
the lives you have taken,
the secrets you don't wish others to know.

A banshee in the night,
I am all your sins come creeping,
ready to reward you with what you have sewn.

How do you mourn someone who isn't dead?
Whose flesh is still supple,
whose blood is just as red,
but beats in a rhythm now unknown to you?

How do you mourn who you used to be,
when she is everything you hate?
A stranger whose smile carves so ignorantly across her face.
Her innocence.
Oh ow you wish you could breathe again.

How do you mourn someone you never got to be?
Someone murdered before she had a chance.
A sparrow's wings ripped apart within the very nest it called home,
not dead, but unable to...

My body is a temple
made of blood and bones and guts and viscera
Its heart beats despite,
in spite.
An act of defiance.

My body is a temple.
It has been hallowed by the ghosts of all the women I was before.
A martyr.
A victim.
The Patron Saint of Survival carries not a cross or a shield,
but the hands of yet another little girl who had to learn how to fight too early.

My body is a temple.
Her walls are made of broken promises.
Her foundation is built upon the graves of her fallen sisters,
the gravel of...

They will try to drown you
unknowing that it was you who formed the very ocean
of which they pour over your screaming mouth.

They will try to silence you
stuff your mouth with salt
as if you hadn't long been immune to the taste of your own tears.

They will try to hide you away
but the darkness of great depths has always been your friend
has been your safe space.

A falling star, they say, surely doesn't know how to swim
unknowing that the sky was never your home in the first place.