Tag: poetry

(i) aphrodite spends her nights stumbling out of bars the hands of unfamiliar men wrapped around her waist. she smells like hard liquor and cigarette smoke. when dusk turns to dawn she’s always the first to leave. always running. It’s better this way, safer this way she reasons.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             (ii) artemis traded in her bow and arrow for a gun. she still hunts she just hunts a different kind of prey now. she goes out at dusk and comes back home at dawn. bruised and bloody. a few bullets missing from her gun. somewhere buried deep in the body of a man who wore cruelty as if it were a second skin. who did not take no for an answer.
  
(iii) persephone first saw hades in a club. He was the kind of boy her mother had warned her about. Boys like that her mother had said are nothing but trouble. but persephone had never minded trouble very much. she walked up to him her lips painting a shade of pomegranate and asked if she could buy him a drink.

You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and God damn it, you refuse to let it get to you. You fight. You cry. You curse. Then you go about the business of living. That’s how I’ve done it. There’s no other way.

Start by pulling him out of the fire and
hoping that he will forget the smell.
He was supposed to be an angel but they took him
from that light and turned him into something hungry,
something that forgets what his hands are for when they
aren’t shaking.
He will lose so much, and you will watch it all happen
because you had him first, and you would let the world
break its own neck if it means keeping him.
Start by wiping the blood off of his chin and
pretending to understand.
Repeat to yourself
“I won’t leave you, I won’t leave you”
until you fall asleep and dream of the place
where nothing is red.
When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it.
Oh, when you used to sing it to sleep.
Here are your upturned hands.
Give them to him and watch how he prays
like he is learning his first words.
Start by pulling him out of another fire,
and putting him back together with the pieces
you find on the floor.
There is so much to forgive, but you do not
know how to forget.
When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you are the reason it has become so mangled.
Here is your humble offering,
obliterated and broken in the mouth
of this abandoned church.
He has come back to stop the world
from turning itself inside out, and you love him, you do,
so you won’t let him.
Tell him that you will never know any better.
Pretend to understand why that isn’t good enough.

Oh, Apollo, this is how you love a mortal.
You trace his neck with the tip of your fingers, all the way to his chest – then you grab his heart, and never let go. When the palm of your hand meets the beating of his flesh you understand, he will do everything. He will go up in your flames. He won’t survive.
This is how you love a mortal – you don’t.

it isn’t a question of 
    how much you love him or
         how much he loves you or
              how much you need each other.

it isn’t a question of 
    how strong your fingers are or
          how bright his smiles are or 
              how crumbled both your bones are.

it’s just a question of 
    how much the gods want him and
         how much the devil wants you and
              how much the earth wants you together. 

it’s just a question of
     how much the gravity of his sun pulls at the stars in your chest
         how much stress the cord between you can stand before it snaps
              how much time your gravestone can weather alone

some people are stars.

you know, the kind of people
who shine brightest in the dark,
who keep their place even as the skies change
who can always guide us back home
     no matter how far we’ve strayed
     or how lost we are.

they burn and they shine and they twinkle,
so that we might look up in your bleakest nights
     and find something bright to look at. 

but you–
my god, you are a sun.

you don’t just shine in the dark–
     you drive it away like an angel banishing stray demons
you don’t just keep your place as the skies change–
     you make the skies change around you
you didn’t just guide me home–
     you gave me a place to call home when I had none
     you made yourself a home for me

you burned and you shined and you flared,
so that I would never have to face the shadows of the night
     for as long as I had you to blaze for me.

They say that when you die, 
your soul goes back to the sea.
Do you hear the rushing in your ears?
Those are the waves, calling you into the dark.
But the ocean’s grip cannot match mine,
and I will drag you back to the shore – 
To me

I am made of bullets; shrapnel.
You are solar flares
and soft lips –

better creatures could love you, I know.
But now they’ll have to
get through
me.