i am not a woman
i am a slab of pink flesh
soft and smooth under your rough hands
my heart warm and alive and beating
fast fast fast
beneath your empty chest

i am not a woman
i am your excuse
with my breath too sweet
and my skin too inviting
drawing you in against my will
as you wrap me in your sin

Fools

too distracted by what i am not to see what i have become

i am fire
burning and raging and hungry for blood
i dare you to touch me now

i am a queen
my throne carved with the clay from which you moulded me
and as you kneel before me
head bowed
begging for mercy
praying to the god whose name you have screamed to bind me
i laugh
silly boy,
don’t you know your god is afraid of me?

you told me i was gentle
a reed in a world of sharp swords
malleable and wavering
breakable

you told me i was vulnerable
a grain of sand
pulled along with the stream
unable to swim against the current
for fear of making waves

you told me i was sensitive
a petal in the clammy palm of a child
who could not resist the temptation
of pulling apart a flower
so delicate and sweet

this was my weakness
my weak-ness

i became a sword
cold and unfeeling  
wielded by an
unbreakable insecurity

i became the moon
bending the tide to my will
uprooting the silt
upon which it sits

i became a wasp
a parasite
feeding from flowers
that so naively welcomed me in

or so i supposed
i suppose

i endured them
the swords my mother warned me against
the currents that drag  
down down down
the wasps that hunt and hurt
with their poisonous sting

and with dismay
and with relief
i was gentle