Ode to Glass

(This is an awful poem but it helped... With what, I don't know, it just helped).

I.

Terrible, sinuous bottles. Terrible, vibrant
colors. Such shimmering, pretty lies.
Each one signifying something that will never be.
The only beauty, the sound of your name,
which would shatter and die.

II.

My sculptured, silver throat.
Or at least, crystalline gate when flooded,
threaded shards pressed inward,
hungry, their sweet, delicate teeth.
My body under blankets, Venetian,
red and purple like a baby, fevered and heaving.

They always associated you with cold.
I wanted to make you warm but it was
breathing life into the dead. Still didn’t we always,
deep inside, want to be one with that purity,
frozen in sinlessness to nothing that will answer,
bodies grown acclimated to the most beautiful cruelties.

Inside a transparent coffin, the princess sleeps.

III.

I forgot I died once before and I discovered
there was nothing to look forward to,
the road diverged but two paths led straight back
to Hades, the pain of slow afternoon light
and a frilly womb scented by lavender and stillness.

Or rather, a stopping and a starting
with no memory in between.

On the way I had grown lost, haunted by
slippers and fairies and the faintest traces of dust.
When he pressed me to the door,
a reflection exquisite, forced me to look him
in the eyes the whole way through.

IV.

If I looked into you I would see what I know,
the blotched skin, mismatched eyes,
face of an ogress.
Her heavy body that was also my body, the dancing hernia,
the word shock repeated over and over, another lovely word,
soft staccato rolling from my tongue.

I huddle in a house deplete of the world.
She has won in the end, even after the end,
fearful tyrant, beloved foe, I yearned
for her love like dew on apples.
Now fading, losing volume. Not quite a pinprick, no.
I know the treachery of the living,
I writhe with it. Loved ones unrecognizable now.
My feet cold and numb and clear as hers.

There is no love. There is only need.
There is no safety.
There is no point. There is only pointlessness.