The Letter - a poem
Is the cut on my cheek really a jagged stripe of red;
or did I somehow find a way to press glass down the length of your windpipe, facing away from the sour rasp as tears streamed down your cheeks? Was the coffee you brewed somehow a black tar pit; one strewn with mottled blackberries, ones that squirmed along the mattress of your maw? Your skin is a roadmap detailing every smooth surface; every stop sign; every speed bump I ran over without realising that the words you recited was really poison that climbed the cracks between your teeth; or blood you let drip down the curve of your elbow Peel of the mask of flesh and bone and you will see Not candy stripes of red – nor a dead , soggy napkin Rather a snake pit – or charms inside that mark organs like a scrape of old bone or cloth The lacerated heart and fractured bones; something you could not repair with words alone Instead you turned my palms up Just to press thorns into my wrists You, finally returning my kaleidoscope – red to green to blue Is this what it was like, when you held me so briefly? Does the outline of my ribs still poke and shriek? you, the vampire that sucked my veins dry all these years I knew there was a reason I never liked you
