The Want

*Image found HERE

The Want

In the distance, I see it,
released from the crease of a rosy cloth
gently lifted,
unto the swarm of golden moths
descending through the birches
– red and dangling,
my fingers
like cracked mosaic shards,
dismantling the lobster, unseaming
petal by petal, draining the stems
for my heart –
devouring roses like a fuel tank
of an old Chevy;
In the distance, I am it,
the echoing drum,

the music through which countless sifted, half-eaten tart.

This lover must be pleased, a Saurian Moon,
him and the core, his alone to brood
without destroying beauty;
He asks no permissions, rips the mustard wombs,
jerks until spoiled,
until the chamber is a hot spot chaos
cut as a mandolin;
legible only in departures.
I cannot climb to bite his cheek,
pale in the sunlight,
loose like a herb stuffed poppet, mouth offline,
the vocabulary a shaded ground wet with poppies
– a secret between love and when it hurts,
– simple cruelties.

Quartered, to yearn, for self
without myself,
I without I, me without meandering, me off myself,
in absentia, psychotic
in an abandoned shrine,
alone without me,
and myself, breasts wrapped in the warm night,
the tune in blissful sleep,
in the lover’s hands, but me
that does not question how it feels to be
a skirt, a blouse, the stagnant pair of hands,
the gut,
gurgling in the high tide,
hungering, always hungering
and rubbing
this furniture of flesh upon the rust;
crusts in the moonlight,
a dictionary of names, a head full of stars,
the cocktail of medulla, iodine, and tar,
my heart, a vile, crimson, unforgiving scar:
Instead, me, in the silver circle,
bare,
the battle silenced, sleeping only in my hair,
the lover sate,
on a bed of ocean foam, next to reaped chrysanthemums,

this heart free of
what if, what now,
what then.

*Inspired and conspired for 2 prompts at Mindlovemisery’s Menageries: The Wordle and the Photo prompt. Hope you enjoy reading, and join in on the prompt fun!