Not Thorns

Tue, 02/17/2015 - 02:56 -- DaLaRi

There is a creature that I know

It eats nightmares.

It eats nightmares but it’s made of shadow

and all it eats from it grows to become.

I love it.

 

I’ve had it living inside me since I was a little girl

Feasting on darkness and festering wounds

and craving more.

I have fed it well.

 

And it has repaid me

in the turn of my brow and the clench of my teeth

and the scalpel-like way that I smile

I do not smile for the looks of men

nor the looks of women

 

(though a part of me that is made of frosting roses dreams

of a day I could learn to be soft enough to love them)

 

But I am bitter now

In a way I have no right to be

No right except that which I give myself.

 

For I have eaten from the fruit of the land of the dead

and have tasted the tart iron tang of it

I have learned to wear thorns like my heart longs for roses

and how to treat winter like an instrument to be played

rather than wishing for the full choirs of autumn

 

I have learned that my garden needs not be barren

but that it’s easier to salt the earth

that to risk the soft heads of unplanted seedlings

for so few oaks grow to maturity these days.

 

I’ve learned that hope is a phrase that sounds like cut glass

when invoked in the cold still air

and that you need to be sharper than the season you wear

if you want your feet free of the brambles

 

I have learned to be a monster in the night

a spirit in white

that dreams of her frosting roses

but grins at children with bloodstained teeth and ice eyes

 

I have learned to collar my heart and make a cage of my chest

 

I have learned to thaw myself out for myself

and to shiver with all that I’ve got

but I’m cold.

so cold.

and I don’t want to be anymore.

I don’t want to be.

For at night, I still dream of pink roses.

This poem is about: 
Me
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