How have you broken me? Let me count the ways.
You punctured my skin and drew a line through my veins;
Sucked the blood from my arteries, spat it into my mouth;
Squeezed lemons into the lashes on my back and stole my spirit when you choked me;
Unhinged the pieces of my spine, one by one, and cut the cord when you were done.
Lit my fingernails on fire and sold the ashes;
Drained the acid from my stomach;
Disemboweled me, and bound me with each rope.
You plucked the hairs from my head and tightened my limbs
To numb me when you sawed away my feet;
Extracted the pigment from my lips;
Ripped the skin from my hands and wore it to cover the blood on your own;
Stabbed out my eyes so I couldn't see the guilt on your face;
Filled my ears with poison and honey, as if they hadn't had enough;
Severed my lungs and sucked every last breath from them;
Took hold of my heart and squeezed from it the life, the soul,
Crushed it, with one simple fist, until it lay still on the floor with the rest of me:
Limp. Alone. Unwanted. Discarded.
You told me to rest in peace when peace was gone;
Fashioned a coffin of floorboards;
Bathed me in my tears before embalming me in sweat and a love
That once made me tremble, gasp, hold onto you for dear life,
But now does nothing for me.
I am the remains of a body riddled with splinters;
A twig snapped in two, four, eight, sixteen pieces;
A clay pot cracked down the middle, which the owner decided
Needed to be shattered and torched to throw away.
No use trying to fix what you've already broken when you know the glue won't stick.
So I float down the river, seeing and knowing nothing but this barren, wooden chamber.
Nothing but a question that bites at what's left of me:
"Why?"
YOU ARE READING
Aphrodite
Poetry"There's a blaze of light in every word, it doesn't matter which you heard: the holy or the broken, 'Hallelujah.'"- Leonard Cohen The poems in this series center on two characters: I, the speaker, and You, the speaker's subject. I is not a specific...
