Author’s Note:
I know my poems of late have been streams of consciousness more than anything. I have considered keeping them to myself, and many of them I do. But I feel moved to put something out into the world before I enter the next phase of my existence.
I have cognitive impairment from a condition that causes brain stem compression, for which I hope to have major surgery soon. I wrote this poem ten days ago when contemplating what may come to pass as my beloved left the house to run some errands.
It may seem morbid, but these are the things one does when one is close to having neurosurgery in their skull.
If you can track any of this, I am thankful.
If I go before you, please know it wasn’t your fault. It was only that I couldn’t endure beyond the threshold of the expanse carved out of me.
The beckoning void was not enough to soothe. For Nothingness is no comfort to Ambition, and Dreams can’t cope with Oblivion.
Desire throws a fit under my skin in the riot of my bones, and hope has her heyday in my sleep in the agony of a curse.
Is this what I get for standing up to men who would defile me in the shadow of their power? For refusing their attempts to define me in the aftermath?
Or is my will elusive, like wind, lost on the rocks or at sea when water catches a drift?
When the mist is only a kiss before the storm, the sailors lament what they cannot see coming. In the night, on the horizon, a dark red moon looms with the memory of blood. What I gave to stay alive.
But my veins are dry and my relics are slight and all I have now are tears.
You wouldn’t want me to drown the world because I couldn’t stop weeping, and the gravity of Justice kept the water out of the rains but still heavy upon the earth, drying out the land while beckoning man into the deep for the reaping of what he sowed.
And I wouldn’t want anyone else to pay what I did to live: innocence upon the altar of the most wicked imagination so fewer children have to grow up so fast their bodies can’t keep up.
There is something to be said for fitting into your own skeleton, something I will never understand.
And I pray you will never understand the pain of falling apart with every step I take because flawed designs tend to break down.
And I feel everything that dies. Nerves rotting at the root, screaming for mercy on their way to the dark.
I may as well abandon my sheathe for the Grand Poisoning so you can keep yours. Every great battle is won with many swords and warriors who fall so others may stand.
And when my fight has ended at last, I will give my soul over to existence so my soul can live on in the light that always comes to call others to rise up out of the earth after the war is over.
Copyright © 2022, S.Naify
Creature Speak 