Do you remember the keening that
stalked out of a hunched shadow?
Lithe from beneath the basement stairs,
each slow blink calculated like a minute passing...
The furnace offered it's guttural groan, sent
the sweep of dead webs spinning. I took your
hand. I watched you change. And you crushed my tiny
fingers in your callused paw like matchsticks.
The drying petals on the sills flitted to the stone
floor and crackled between my dirty toes.
I loved you like candy hearts.
You were god, before I killed him.
Your sickness roared like flame over my body,
eating my down in spicy licks, stunk acrid with
mortality, like the vomit on your chest.
I scooped the passage clean, prolonging living death.
I saw your flesh shrink away, your gut eating
the tissue to sustain function while the treat,
enthralled, entertained, devoured the snapping mind.
And I watched your back getting smaller.
I handed you the last pink sweetness from the
bottom of the bag hung at my throat.
Sank back when you snapped the sugar like water,
until a hot rush could sear through your broken.
Stood frozen in the wasteland we built; like children
blasting sand castles on screaming beaches. I am
hollow, like the logs we jumped in Taunton. I don't know
what it sounds like, to hear easy, to let go, to trust...
And still, dead petals twist down, scatter through my chilled
fingers in a winter field. I can see my breath puff out in tiny
pale cloud. Draining my eloquence, with each sail. I hear you,
I see him, and I miss you both...all I have are words.
![Devour[d]](/images/d/devourd.gif)
i took a full breath.
failed to feel the slink
of time press through
the pink of my wet cheeks.
instead I gnawed over the
thoughts I had hidden beneath
the meat of my quiet tongue.
in some other time there is
a blind man with a sickle slicing
circles in an atmosphere.
the one that I wade through
in darkened corridors between dying stars.
he's wrenching ancient innards
from my harvest moon;
they lay fetal at my feet.
i reached for the sparkle
that hung soft in silver'd breeze,
sent through a window from
miles beyond distance.
the chords on my toes curling,
the heat of my mouth twisting.
and there between barren minutes,
the blade glistens bright.
i coiled emotive strings writ
under my sore bones.
tucked them there to build marrow
to feed the voyeurs crawling inward.
and the click of teeth clatter loudest
when I flay bare fields of skin;
invite havoc of primal carnage
to chew me clean again...
Links may falter,
weaken where
the friction settles
the most
with the pull
of silence thick.
Somewhere there
is a rocking island
fraught with promises
kicking back
from the innards
of rotted hulls.
Wrecked merciless,
years back before
we could swim
before we could
recognize sameness
in sad tones.
In this shade
this glory, nodding fade
of your voice
that settles,
the uneasy tread
of cannibals thump.
Fed fat on solace
rounded in frenzy
the quickening,
the rake of want
the feed brutal
till the mind peters.
We are just this
worldly unholy but honest
in skin, song, naked
beneath shine of
planets pulse
out(in) here in solitude
I tore a hole
deep enough
to sink snowy coffins
But just for sleeping;
for refuge from the
relentless screech of men.
When we talk
under indigo water
The sound dulls,
winds gentle into
siren songs twisted;
we hear what we choose.
Bubbled float of
stream of concious gift
lands steady
in your ear
to move into rooms
growing in bounds.
Before you break
surface and shake the
quiet, loosen the
solitude of wonder,
know the letters stick;
and I hear you.
Sarah Blakely lives in Ontario. Canada, just outside Toronto. Check out her MySpace page at myspace.com/lettersfromnella.
Comments (closed)
Frankie Metro
2010-10-08 21:53:06
amazing work here sarah. after the 1st one i have to sit a minute and really take a step back from myself. you paint what it is to be a woman and longing so well. i respect yr ability to transcend the limitations of gender in reference to the reader's perspective. it's a rare gem of a writer who can do such. awesome sarah!