What use an angel
Whose wings have been clipped?
Flight an impossibility
Salvation nothing but a fever-dream.
What use is there for a heart
Too fractured and fragmented
To beat in a steady cadence?
How can it be expected to love?
How crippling it is to find
That my heart stutters
My eyes dim and my wings are broken.
Loss and betrayal
Eat away at me
Degrading, damaging, ruining.
Always lessening the whole of me.
I am human, or perhaps a changling.
Encased in iron, cut off from magic,
Both my own and that which inhabits the world.
Flawed, scarred, damaged goods.
I am no angel.
I am nothing you could call good.
A flawed design that does not fit,
I am of no use.
For who keeps a broken toy?

I'm the skeleton in the closet no one wants to claim,
Blank stare and empty smile etched into my face
By a distracted artist.
The air is thrumming with the crackle of madness.
The life-blood of cruelty flows out of the mouths of those who refuse to claim me, refusing to meet my eyes.
Such disdain!
It must be the burden I'll shoulder,
Outcast is my name.

Having never been possessed by a demon of my own,
I am different.
Beaten down and battered by demons that reside,
In souls other than my own,
Created for those not me.
No demon has claimed me as their own, though many have drawn my blood by the hands of their hosts.
Twin mirrors shimmer in dark, liquid pools they call my eyes,
Reflecting back onto everyone the ever-growing spiderweb of sins that cover their suffocating souls.

I can trace the faultlines on their skin,
As their sorrows seeps through the core of them,
And they shudder at my whisper-soft touch,
So like the brush of wings.
I am the problem for which there is no solution.
Lock me behind closed doors and whisper behind my back,
Let me fade away from time and memory until there is nothing left;

Not an echo of my stuttering heart beat, nor an imprint of my shattering soul.
I shall disengage entirely from the whole of the world.
Floating in the darkness, alone in the absolute silence,
Until the light flares to life and summons me home once more,
To the core of the universe.

Softly, the whisper of memories
Flutter against my skin like silk.
The angels of my soul tread across
The fragile, broken ground of my heart.
Pain, like a cold blade against
Tender skin, blossoms under my *******.
A void that cannot be filled
Like a vortex of sorrow.
The maelstrom of your passion
Consumed me so fully
That even breathing brought on the vertigo of agony.

The arch of the foot bends
A graceful negative space is outlined in a delicate blush of pink.
A breath, a pause.
Exhale.
And move!
The swell of the music rises around you like a thousand shimmering drops of light.
Arms raise in graceful fluidity
Muscles extend, tendons tighten.
Joints roll and lock
The mind empties, the soul calms.
I become an avatar for beauty and music.
The neck elongates,
Pulse quickens.
My feet are sure,
My body is steady.
A story is told through movement,
The shapes well learned,
The negative space charged.
My eyes find purchase as my body spins.
Head whipping, precision is key.
I prepare.
I trust my footing, the strength of my ankles as I leap.
Leg extends, arms like wings, streaching for my mark.
I bend.
And sway.
I contract
And lengthen.
I dance.
To the music, to life, to the sound of my soul.
I create, I paint a world for you with the shape of my body,
The curve of my body, the line of my neck, the arch body.
I dance.