poetry for the poetic: 5

CXLII

last week saw me jealous of a girl who had hands like bleeding ink
because every filthy, devastated thing she got her hands on
turned to aching diamond, weeping sun and bleeding earth
in the form of rolling poetry so violently soft
i felt loud in comparison just reading it.

her poetry read like a symphony
and my mother's laughter
and had the cadence of an angel's undoing;
peaking,
cresting,
down and down—

i felt filthy just reading it because no form of self-hate

i had sampled tasted quite as sharp as her words

scraping at the roof of my mouth with the fervent softness of a nesting bird
urgent, insistent, and bitterly not my own.

if her hands drip verses as if aroused by life itself mine are dry
and peeling and are nowhere near as soft
not the hands of an artist
or a scribe
or the poet i call myself to be.
envy so green no garden had a hope of growing vines
so strong to strangle my jealousy had me scorning my pens
how a flame shuns water.

she may secrete moonlight every time her palms touch but
i've been struggling to find the beauty in this fragile ability of my own
hands chapped against scrappy paper
fingers wringing blood from stone.