story

eventually
they took all i had to give

my body was a timebomb
ticking
in hasty hands and
fetishistic high heels
they say it is the
church of the soul
mine was a mausoleum
all cold hard marble,
shards of glass
with hipbones like carved statues
and wrists like altars
but they used it to get to me
i was foolish enough to allow them
that's part of my story

because one summer
my heart grew
much too big
and it broke my rib cage
the ribs splintering
but they healed to accomodate the
engorged rose quartz chambers
just as i learned to
(after all, my pancreas had done the same thing once)
and they came for it eagerly
with promises of
treasures and flesh never few
i believed them
and when i let them into my bed
they broke inside me
shattered it
and took fragments
one boy
managed to take the only remaining chamber
while i was asleep
i never learned quite how to forgive him
but no one ever told me that it's okay
to hold grudges and i never
stopped worshiping him
and although he promised
he never returned to place it back inside me

that wasn't enough
i lay there lifeless and broken
they began to pick
at my remains

once
i had had hair like a lion mane or
strawberries and champagne
but they yanked it all out
strand by strand
and wove it into their
drama
like a loom of hesaidshesaid
it ceased to shine
and instead broke
as easy as the sunrise it was named for

my lips
had been those of a prophet
one who kisses when drunk, of course
chanting spells,
poems,
and truths--
they drained me my advice
thirsty for the answers
that i was both known and hated for,
and when i began to shout protest
instead of prose
my lips were torn off
they stitched the gaping hole
shut
with their ignorance
and sat me in the corner
to think about what i had done
but i couldn't
my process had always been to speak
until i figured myself out
my thoughts confused me
so i was a dark corner
completely lost in myself

there was a portion of the sky
(but only in winter)
the same shade
as my eyes
shaman eyes, the gypsy told me
with eyelashes like thorns or
hypodermic needles
(depending on who saw me
and what they wanted
to see in me)
and with them i could see
all that was or was to come
they came for my tarot cards
but soon learned
that the real power remained in my irises
so they gouged out my
crystal ball eyes
with their grandmother's antique spoons
and split the portion
into pieces to share between themselves
then ate them
hoping to absorb my sight

with my hands
i both created and destroyed
i was kali
in my fingers
were wads of dictionary pages
and pieces of spiral notebook paper
and since i could not speak
i began to write
they found the words
like the cracks find sunlight
in broken glass
the syllables puzzled them
and also scared them
my poems were raw,
the words still dripping blood and tears
i stole their idea of the world
they cut off my hands
it was fair punishment once, i heard
with my stumps i couldn't even find myself
much less the way out
i bled to death

when they ran out of
big usable chunks of me
they picked away at my corpse
like crows
taking little bits of nothing,
the bottoms of my feet and
my toes, which had gripped exotic lands
my nose,
which had inhaled expensive pollens
as well as the fragrances
of many skins
even my womanhood
which they cooked into their soups
so that they might become fertile
i was a skeleton
until my bones were crushed
into a smooth white powder
which they snorted through cut-off straws
and dried-out white-out pens
they left nothing
and nothing grew out of my death
except a story
through which i was reborn