How kind any mercy would be
Instead I lived in her shadows
Ever changing moods
More tempestuous then
Any restless sea
And ten times as dangerous
Stupid to the point of cruelty
Ignorance and violence intertwined
Making bad bed fellows
I spent my childhood on the gallows
Begging for the headman’s axe
Or a naked noose to set me loose

It always happened around two am, with the illumination of the moonlight seeping through the cracks of the blinds that could seemingly cover the sunlight but never the moonlight. The feeling of wanting to stitch tears back together. Tears falling, his sleepy voice questioning motives for crying. My reply, always “I don’t know.” It was everything all at once. A flipbook exposing every possibility of problem or memory, every significant, stitch able event. It was reality staining the once blank muslin pages with black ink, seeping into the fibers. Fantasy kicking, screaming, denying, tearing pages into pieces that would take eternities to sew.

We are of the ocean
salt water green, lime and seaweed
clinging and threaded, verily suspended
in the far off edges, ebbing unseen
steeped in luminous moons, impossibly colored
a darkness, plumbing ageless depths of sea
strung with opulent pearls, swallowed by fields of sand
a light discovered in the shoal shimmering lands.

This tea, I steep
red apple, your kiss
alizarin crimson, wet
impossibly sweet
you soothe, I drink
your lingering lips
poured with honey milk
by the fire, consumed
of love infused
with herbs and leaves
this tea, I drink.