A blank page invites opportunity;
searches for a voice.
You fear her words,
so you sculpt her before she finds them.
She does not ease like clay, moulded
with warm, purposeful hands, but
bends; stiff and rigid.

You fold her into something pretty
or delicate or curious.
Only then can you gaze upon each deliberate
crease and see your work is done;
when a paper crane sits upon a dusty
shelf. Pleasant, polite,
quiet – yours.

I am an ocean:
unyielding, unending

Unknown. Still like broken
glass and just as threatening.

But no man calling himself
messiah can tame me

beneath his foot, nor
cleave me in two

for his convenience;
calling it providence.

May my shadows swallow
him whole.

You were just a breath I held and never let go,
but rather bled out as they severed

my jugular and let you spill;
warm, beautiful, visceral.

Endless. Everywhere.
Stains on the carpet they hid

with some dull rug, and in the air
that smells like death but

better than your cheap cologne
they doused me in to burn the body.

They threw the ashes to the wind
and they watched me

get torn apart
one last time.

She presses flowers
into a leather book:

lavender and lily,
a rose from an ex lover,

a carnation she tore from the ground
roots and all.

Delicate in their death,
she harvests them –

the gentle and the vivid –
to watch them wilt.

The fun is in the dying
as they shrink into

themselves and hide
their colours. She'll keep

them forever, a memoir
written with their carcasses.