ashen lamb running
୨୧ poetry i entered this year for another contest. (no winning dice roll, but i still wrote it). prompt was hurt and healing. i definitely struggled with the "healing" aspects of the poem, but attempted my best. i felt out of my depth in that aspect, and the poem quality suffered by my inexperience, or perhaps my naivety at thinking i had enough experience or depth in that particular aspect. enjoy.


୨୧
1
sacred heart colossus
built into my body,
sunken into the breast,
when they stitched you back up on the operating table, you could tell it wasn't the same inside, they pulled out all your IVs, hollowed out the insides to save you, this body’s surgical sacrament
so it made sense, home from the sutures, put upon the altar of your blue prayer quilt,
that this was just to fill you back up.
vision drifting to the ceiling chandelier, you count the muscular systems again inside you
viscera painted against muscle like plastering lace, layering over and over
it's slow and countless, time dilating,
filled too far, flushed out of your body, you escape through your eyes, clawing through your eyelashes, your taciturn face hiding in the comforter, soiled curtains drawn over the bedroom window,
it's all mummified in here, you think to yourself, under the attic sheets, disintegrating as they stretch with your bodies
and you're stretching inside
disintegrating.
you count again, every muscle group that seizes and cinches, your fingers together, your stomach apart.
every night you go missing,
gurgling in the starlight,
the coat he lays across your body, too heavy to walk in, so you're crawling and sweating big fat droplets down your chin and clavicle. crawling around in the grey backseat of the car, crying for the warmth of his familiar white hot pain.
you thought you were buried in the rain, but you wake up back in your bed.
you thought the snow covered your nose and face, veiled and cold, pure and unyielding to heaven, but you wake up back in your bed.
your legs don't reach the ground, when you’re begging to be laid across the lap
of the colossus of suffering, constructed of hot wet dirt, and ten thousand cherished memories forgotten.
you tell yourself it's just like the pieta. backwards and upside down, stomach heaving into the knees, your palms don't touch the floor, you can only hold tight to his ankles,
the burning need to feel the thorns dig into your hips, your inflamed atonement,
bleeding heart doves for hands purr and coo, but you can't hear their cries from the cross on the wall staring down.
desecrated, your body convulses with compulsive need for that full sickness, crawling out of the dirt
desiring the mausoleum of your body to be anointed with that touch
and when it hurts too much
they unbury the body, your ribcage collapses, blooming as you're resurrected, but it's in pieces, like shards of plaster slivering deep into each shallow breath
the rest of your sacral flesh turned to spidery irregular tunnels. it all hardens and dries back in the ground.
in the haunting maw of morning,
the blood dapples under your skin,
the deep blue of subdued midnight, miry and velvety, draping over the room
lamplight distended from each window, darkness sheathing the ruptured body you're snuffed out in.
you let yourself be carried away with the angels,
i lay in the dark, and grow around the stain of you in the blankets.


2
swollen with inoculation,
it only hurts just for a second,
writhing on the spiraling muscles of my stomach, choking on the mattress,
sleeping with my body contorting into itself, a ballerina stretching through the pain,
doll joint elastic pulled tight
the familiar pressure of ten thousand bodies toppling down like Jericho.
mold blossoming through my back, in my dreams
a monument of bone spurs push through my skin, crumbling into stone wings, unbearably heavy, unmovable.
possessed by your hands then sterilized by my own,
skin erupting like the colors of wild corn, lilac, glace, blush, orchid, dappled and dark under my legs,
wrapping around my calves,
my fingers attempting to consecrate my self flagellation,
my body that could never bear myrrh,
my sacral nerves swell with lightning
totus tuus.
but i pray that you’re not real
you watch me from afar, big black eyes, your hair like trees against the moon in October, the pale gold grass bends backwards under your nightgown, your legs pigeon toed.
all your rage; thunder unfurling in the sky, plum and pooling,
senselessly grasping your bloated body in the night,
your soft eyes staring through your nightgown,
my homunculus angel, incubated in the dead tissue rendered from me,
my pound of flesh,
in your back they incised and slammed.
and I,
am surgical wire Frankenstein, that's what you think of me? pieced and rebuilt in the theatre without you, i try to pretend that we're the same,
but you're made up of organs left out in metal trays, surgical tools you carve into a breastplate, gauntlets for your small hands, your armor a mausoleum for you
in between my body and someone else's, you let your head loll against my legs, clinging to me, pulling me open, so you can crawl inside.
i'd rather die than anoint you
you’d festered and hardened inside of me, a reflection in the window, the silhouette against the wallpaper, of you upon the stairs,
the shape of your small form sitting on every decaying windowsill.
but you want no milk to your lips, no oil poured to your head,
you turn from the sensation of my gaze, you push away the psalms i press into your palms
there’s nothing left to keep alive in you,
yet you want to be apart of me,
in my dreams you're buried in stars of Bethlehem, their petals clutching your face,
your overgrown body barely fitting, legs twisted together, hands limp and useless,
i wish you'd stay beneath the dirt, but when i shovel soil in your mouth and in your eyes, you're still just staring right into me.
and in the morning i’m penetrated by your fixation, sitting by the sink, eyes like jasmine
floating far away upon the ocean’s surface, lost and delicate.
inconsolable expression, the veil of your hatred frayed away
I can smell the powder of dirt on your skin, the heat of pleading in your hands, when you reach for me.


3
all i can hear is the playback of my sempiternal answering machine
ceaseless and incessant,
the rocking of his open mouth searching over my face,
cool breath of night steeps the bed,
his heart like torrential rain against his sternum, like it's trying to flood my body with him,
he's touching my face, whispering to me, pushing his nose and lips against my throat, but all i can hear is
the answering machine playback droning,
embedded in the tones is the vision of early morning sun on carpet,
the smell of angelica and skin velvet,
the singing of the answering machine chimes,
viscous and solid and aching
hair pulled back to throw up over the arm of the couch and im sputtering,
i'm slipping through his lips back into the doorway of my baby bedroom,
she's there, thumbing through the messages, her hair sprawled out, clinging upon the walls and ceiling,
her face lachrymose in the dark,
she turns to look at me in the thin darkness
the thundering of her existence stings my eyes
she holds the monstrance of our pain in her hands, too heavy,
prayer beads dangling from her body dragging on the floor to the light of the hallway, my tethered angel.
i'm counting the beads, like she's counting the messages on the answering machine,
many of the tapes so replayed, they're disintegrating into flashes of sound and touch, incomprehensible.
i count the beads, going up under her nightgown, and pull the rest out of her barren body.
how long had they sat there, uncounted, held only by the strength of her own desire to be confessed?
to be cradled, and expressed, every unheard prayer for sanctum
now understood.
her soft body breathing rhythmically against mine,
i press her face to my chest, let her feel that i was still alive, her fingers searching on my breast,
for a way in.
i brush her hair, humming to her the sound of the answering machine,
her empty throat sings along, painless and serene,
just a remembrance, no need to pick up the receiver, no need to call back.
and in the sheets i'm being shaken awake,
his soothing humming reverberates along my spine as he pushes himself up
to hold the space between my breast and the back of my ribs, to cradle me, calling my name,
like two animals, our foreheads meet, as he tries to rouse me.
his skin smells of blue rain, rippling like a wild horse,
he asks me if
she's here with us
i nod,
my heart opening like a night blooming flower,
its petals embracing her
and the answering machine’s tones are distant and low
he sits me up, runs his fingers through my hair,
his presence now lurid and real
the midnight mass bells swing and cry
as his hands seem to engrave her body back into mine
no need for a vigil by my bedside.