Alter

Alter
 
Do you taste elements, minerals,
that rest on greedy, anaemic lips,
sting your fingers with improper thoughts,
harvest seed in your heartlands
and grow pleasure entirely
for nostalgic eyes?
 
Do you contemplate demise
between coming, crochet bindweed
around those pale wrists, ensure
you don't fly on pistons,
hide a key to no door?  
 
Do you melt into a bank of things
we won't talk about?
 
Do you gamble your time?  
 
When I was a child, before the calm,
I turned myself inside out
imagined the arrival
of ninety-nine Delilahs
from my freckled thighs,
who'd unwind the fine threads of me,
run to the  hill,
fall off monotony,  
rest west of this city.  
 
Instead, somehow,
I am Delilah
on my back,  
fit for taking
but resigned
trapped inside,
pushing down a silver centre
under watery surface,
flitting inside a glass bowl,
imagining living
 
and somedays,  
when I am afraid,
I take the cover off,
stare into the heart of her,
the girl who never made it,
the her I could have been.  
I clean algae off the glass
with a soft, sham rag,
ring it out,  
design a life she'd run wild on,
banshee-screams,
vulnerability leaking
pure and wild
from every
vessel,
lifting toward the sky,  
going beyond my eyeline,  
my masochist's ego.