Breadcrumb #303

MEENA ROLDAN

                                  These hands are less
                                  than the sum of my hands.
                                  These words are less
                                  than the sum of my mouths.
                                  For my body has been occupied
                                  by a marauding colony of silkworms.
                                  Don’t be misled. I am tumbling
                                  somersaults through this exfoliating high
                                  with my vacant eyes and fingers, revelling
                                  in this great hibernation, but
                                  my mind took the last train hours ago.
                                  I might never have known. How
                                  the wires crossed and gave a dead man
                                  breath. So let me be grateful. Let me
                                  thank the gods. Not for luck,
                                  but for true friends with real spines,
                                  and quick tongues that proved a
                                  lifeline I wouldn’t have known I needed.
                                  We might never have known. How
                                  we carried ourselves home. Up stairs.
                                  Through halls. Like crazed puppet
                                  dolls. The neighbors suspicious of our
                                  good times. One just rolled her
                                  eyes under the sheltered logic of
                                  ‘who would drug you without
                                  raping you?’ So, let’s be grateful
                                  for a job half done. It could be anyone.
                                  We might never have known. How
                                  we lost the day in a cup and our lives
                                  in a balance as thin as morning,
                                  as fragile as these flashes of his
                                  sinister smile as we sunk into the worst
                                  and worst that lasted for days.
                                  Charcoal eyes and cold sweats.
                                  Where all is the same. Repetitious
                                  horseflies replaying circles above a flame.
                                  The worst isn’t that I can’t breathe,
                                  that I can’t hold food in my teeth,
                                  that days later my skin is still green
                                  and I still can’t sleep. It’s not the
                                  I-told-you-sos or shoulda-knowns.
                                  It’s not the bruises and tears in my jeans
                                  and gaping hole in my memory. No.
                                  It’s this animal unleashed. This feral
                                  body inside my body that came out
                                  to play when he put us to sleep. This
                                  carnivorous corpse. This lone wolf
                                  risen from slumbering sheep. This
                                  Venus trap around my neck and stones
                                  ready to throw. Now tell me, where
                                  is there room for this creature to grow?

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