by E. Alexandra

        1. 

I violently want you.

You said it perplexed, like that feeling,

violence was some primal sea monster,

surviving in unknown caves of your being.

 

He should have died by now.  You were an evolved man.

A monster hardened and scaled over from the depths of the sea of your being, with no place

in your fortified lagoon.

 

You wanted to live in a bath tub, float, marvel at the stars, and be free

from the fear of your own strange being lurking underneath.  

 

Violence crawled inside the skin of desire.  

A trojan horse you eagerly welcomed.

He ate desire alive from the inside, smashed your dams with his reptilian tail, threatened to swallow your carefully crafted self, and open you up to the torrent and terribleness  

of the entire ocean.

 

The atoms of dead things hang in empty space, waiting like a held breath.  

Life blows a wish upon dancing dandelions, atoms separate, find a new place to rest.  

Reincarnate.

 

I recreated us in mud. I prayed to the moon.  

I was scared of her power.  

I drowned us to free us, and emerged with hair-matted into branches, skin hardened, and scaled.

 

Your dog met me at the edge of the living and froze in fear.  

I waited for you and met myself.  

A glossy haired girl with shiny skin on a bike.  

“Keep going,” she told the dog sternly.   

Her look told me not to follow.  

Where had she existed in the time before?  

When I needed you to be loved, but did not want

to do the loving?

​
 

        2.

You found me curled inside a crescent moon,

asked to tattoo my skin,

scar it with a design of your choosing.

I wanted to let you, to be marked by you,

to show the world how much I loved you.

But I hated the design, and knew,

it would be mine, and mine only, forever,

while you moved freely through life,

unmarked by anything that happened.  

​

        3.

I tried to practice non-attachment.

I drowned my heart, swallowed the river

to save the last memory of you.

I will never reach enlightenment.

I would rather be burnt alive,

by the memory of you.