Four-fold

The Teacher spoke and you appeared. For me.

Like skin attached to muscles, connected by sinew and enlivened by nerves, you were to me. And I to you.

For it is so plain.

Let the wise among us hear.  See these truths.

*

Feed me. I hungered and you gave me food for my body and fed my heart.

Without you I am wasting away, one molecule at a time.

Slipping back to the Great Darkness where I slumbered before I was sang into the Light.

You were in the Darkness, so I was not in fear. Only unaware yet always safe.

*

Quench my thirst. I was parched, fevered and you gave me water. Your tears of concern refreshed my soul, for I knew you would split your last drop of water in half so that neither of us would have to suffer discomfort.

Yet there is no one like you, no one to hear my cries in the night and rush to me. No one to put the cool rim of the glass to my lips.

A cool loving hand to my burning brow.

*

Shelter me. I was wandering and weary, and you opened the door, lit the room. Wrapped a warm blanket around me, showered me with words and knocked the ice of fear off my mind.

Who will make sure I have a warm place to sleep? Only you would give up your bed, allowing me to take the place where your body heated the sheets.

You would watch over me until I was firmly encased in a restful, quiet sleep.

*

Visit me. When I was in a prison of confusion, you faithfully visited me. Day after day until the bars bent and the door swung open.

I have no visitors now. Chained in a dank corner, watching listlessly as the light throws the pattern of day, noon, night on the cold floor.

I wait for your footfalls but I know that I will not hear yours or any other.

No matter, for only you held the key to the doors of this cell.

*

Reach

Days turn into nights. Time is like oil on the floor, I slip across it, blind.

You were my eyes, my ears. My loving smiling metronome.

What is time, if it exists with you?

He told me that it would break your heart if I came to you, prematurely, ahead of schedule.

He is right; if you were there. But you are not.

The sweet soft eternal darkness. Not filled with honey-coated dreams nor terror, sight and sound.

If there was more, you would have come and told me.

You loved me–you would have come for me, if you were neither destroyed or transmuted.  You would have saw me crying and told me not to weep, for we were leaving together. I would not need anything, for your heart held everything for the journey.

You would not have left me cold on the floor, barely able to stand or speak  because my grief turned into physical knives and nearly broke my mind.

You would not stay away. You would not leave a sign. You would not hold back on giving me the date when I am to join you and the great mass of the departed.

You are gone. How terrifying is the thought of the last time I saw you-cold, silent-is the last time I will truly see you.

For when I close my eyes for the last time, I will not see or be seen, either.

I had you.

But I do not anymore.

Either I live with it. Or die from it.

Doppelganger

You think one thing but your mouth forms another. And your eyes betray the third thought floating.

Liar liar, soul on fire. Burning through abandonment,  caused by your duplicity.

Placing my left hand on your heart, from which all defilement flows, I quickly etch the sign on the skin on your throat.

Your smooth throat. One I used to touch. The conduit that funnels the filth from the cradle of your charred heart and holds it for just a moment, before your mind and tongue subvert it further.

Two simple incisions, blood beading in the wake of my knife. One vertical, one horizontal.

To some the cross saves. But you are not Christ.  For me, it reminds that you are more beast than brethren.

I stare at you, dare you to speak. Speaking is what got us to this point.

Do the tears from your eyes sting the mark that you will wear?

Your innocent throat. Least guilty, bears your shame.

A symbol to all that you are rotten to the core, unclean, a thing to be shunned.

In another time and place, the pure version of you gasps. Stumbling, gripping her throat, eyes blurring with tears of confusion.

hooked

Not well. I am not.

A broken lamp leaking oil. A bulb with only one filament.

I cannot cast light.

I appear as if all is on order.

Pass your hand over me and feel the lack of heat. Notice that I cannot cast your shadow.

***

Words offer no solace. Only dreams of a true past that cannot be maintained.

I wonder if these shiny little beauties, mute but screaming to my ears, can calibrate me, set my balance right.

Will it be enough? Or will I need more, so much more, to refute myself in the night?

Strong hands,  firm lips. warm sweet breath, veins standing out, lean sinew. Not enough, does not reach into me, does not reset my circuitry.

Only the lulling siren of those mute beauties that click in the palm of my hand, boat and winding stream at the same time, can reattach the parts of me and allow me to stay sane.

Stills the roaring of the grief that holds me tight in sharp wicked jaws.

***

I dreamed that a man came, attired so very fine and asked me why wasn’t I dressed to go. Did I miss his call, he asked so gently.

Stepping away from him, I stood where you bed once was, where you used to drop in sleep and screamed that I loved you. Shouted your name once, then once more.

Upon jolting awake, the lack of you settled back upon my chest. But my dry heart only sighed, releasing a puff of dust.

I do not cry in wet. I leak out dry.

Others offer my things, try to distract me, soothe me.

But I am an addict, a true junkie, only for you.

Because of every and all things, I loved.

You.

Defense against the Dark Art

“…Amazement seized the mortal men and gods

To see the hopeless trap, deadly to men.

From her comes all the race of womankind

The deadly female race and tribe of wives

Who live with mortal men and bring them harm.”

Hesiod-Theogony/Works

~

They called her the beautiful evil. Pandora-’kalon kakon‘.

You think I am she, reincarnated as the device to hold your hate.

But I was not curious of you. It was you, that attempted to pry me open, against my clear admonition that I was more wisdom than your fragile mind could hold.

You-when you paint me in the sick hard colors of your desire, when you kneel before me and command me to fulfill your fantasies-are what that should be shut away, until you become sane.

There is a slumbering beast which threatens too pen its yellow eyes, that keeps you leashed away from kindness. Halts you from seeing my strength as only mine, not a threat to you.

Messalina. Gorgo. Sempronia. Eryxo.

Despite your efforts,  we persist. In spite of the mineral that follows out of the cauldron of your soul.

+++

“Do not let a woman practice reasoned argument,  that is frightful.”

-Democritus of Abdera, Fragment 110

~

It delights you, gives you a startling thrill, to think that I am not aware of the plans you have, the knots you tie while I am sleeping.

Under the cover of night, you concoct the details of your dominion.

By the flash of the noon Sun, I dismantle you. Piece by piece. As was the Parthenon, to be carted off and wondered about.

Do not offer me the lash, with the sour syrup of false praise on your lips. Cover your bared back, your flexing haunches. Cover your erect shame with the truth.

Which is:

you want to whip, not be whipped. You think I am too dim to see into it. Yet and always,  I burn softly, the source of my own light.

Theano. Damo. Hypatia. Leontion.

The more you push, the better we become. Push and push again until the force of our minds washes you away, as sand goes back into the sea at high tide

+++

“We have hetaerae for pleasure, pallakae to care for our daily body’s needs and gynaekes to bear us legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our households.”

-Demosthenes, On Wives and Heitarai , Speeches 59.122

~

Every and all things are categories for you. Neat rigid boxes into which you force spheres, pyramids, heptagons, handfuls of stars.

The nature of my gender furls into your mind. It/I/Us/Them must be contained.

You have labeled me evil, prone to fantasy and superstition.  Weak and easily held by dreams and unreality.

I go to my mothers, aunts, sisters and call, for they deliver to me tools to defeat you. The magic mirror in my hand shows me what you are.

It removes the glamour you cast, unsheathes your false humility.

Maiden, Mother. Crone. Call us what you will but our ears are closed.

Thargelia, Aspasia. Phryne, Archeanassa,Thaïs.

How can anyone harness the beauty of a molecule, so artfully arranged in the terms,  sp¹ sp² sp³, for such a perverted sense of self?

Not selflessness. That is a  solid state utterly foreign to you.

+++

You.

I am wary, on guard.

You.

Since we crawled out of the Mind of God, you have been my unwanted adversary.

Using my love, my kindness, my physical weakness as weapons to skewer me.

Causing my heart to shrivel with neglect, for my desire to take shelter elsewhere.

You put me in a lonely cold place and denied me even the rudiments of heat.

Doesn’t even the dog get scraps at the Master’s table? Not in your house.

I have wiped my tears, bound my sorrow in my hair.

This time, the Hammer for the Witch is in my hands.

Our hands.

We watch you scream but we proceed on.

Ever on.

Jarring

You called me, angry.

Someone needed to bear your rage; I was closest to you in both space and time.

I was quiet, my lips burning, as you words scraped across my face.

Away you went.

I stared at the wall, seing nothingness.

Each second before you called was a deeper slide into the abysss.

Areyougone?Whathashappened?DidIdosomethingwaitwaitWAITWAIT!!!

You called back, to say you were sorry.

Urgently, you apologized and repeated your dismay at your reaction. I forgive you.

You have not yet discovered I am not strong enough to bear your rage. I do not know how to take it.

As I go to my bed tonight, I am accompanied by the fear that I will show you such a thing.

You won’t understand it at all.