#poetsownmuse

[poetsownmuse]

[poetsownmuse]

[poetsownmuse]

[poetsownmuse]

[poetsownmuse]

I feel your hands wrap around my ribs, hanging on, but only for preservation: there is no love in your grasp—no desire for closeness—only an ache to keep me down. Each crack from your grasp sends pain through me, thistles embedded in my skin for years to come. 

You suffocate me. Pulling the eyes from my head and embedding them in your palms.

Vines snake up and throughout my body. Their tongues have your fingerprints.

Tilted head, burning throat, something obstructing; please provide a tracheotomy.

Clammy body, trembling hands, something intruding; I’ll never go outside again.

The only warmth are my hands I wrap myself in. Nothing else provides solace—my own is dubious.

[poetsownmuse]

A computer is in a field of grass, weeds poking around and rustling in the wind. A brave root takes hold, asking the screen; “What are you?

You have no bottom stem, but no flower birthed you, so you’re not a fruit or a gourd.

I’ve looked all over and I can’t find your bloom, is it seasonal?

You feel different from me, hard, but you’re definitely not a tree. You’re much too short for that!”

The computer was silent. Of course, it couldn’t make a sound without an outlet it plug its cord into. The root pondered, spending all day and all night trying to understand something it wasn’t.

In the end, it gave up. There was no point in measuring the immeasurable, defining something you’d never seen before. The computer would never boot on, never become a plant, and never be natural. Does it have to be?

“Root,” the weed spoke. “Leave it be. You’ll find applicable understanding here, with us. Don’t define yourself through your failure to define this.”

[poetsownmuse]

Old.

[poetsownmuse]