Bee was humming to herself in the garden
Aching for the sweetness
Of the most brilliant bloom
When she spotted Rose
Who sat red and waiting and wonderful,
A single drop of blood
In a firmament of white
Landing lightly on Rose’s crimson body,
just as it was Rose’s nature to give
So it was Bee’s nature to take
But no sweetness could tempt Bee
To steal a kiss from Rose’s lips

The months grappled with each other
Spring yielding to summer’s glare
With bee and rose beneath them
Delighting in each other’s beauty
And made alive with buzzing conversation
And still Bee had stolen nothing
To spin to honey, though she knew
It would be a nectar to make gods jealous
Bee would not take, and Rose
Who was red as the dawn
Could not bring herself to give
If it meant Bee would move onwards
To other beacons of light in the garden

And so it went

•

Rose knew she was dying
Could feel the cold wind creeping
And killing her sisters around her
So she said to Bee
“Take all I have left to give you,
Make something decadent of me”
Bee’s small heart broke within her chest
But she could not stand before winter
And demand it pass over a single rose
And in the hush of November
Bee spun pollen into poetry
Adorned it with a single beating grief
And from the sweetest, reddest rose
Came the bitterest of tastes

There is blood in my mouth
And I can still taste his kiss
An echo of a promise on my lips
His love has always felt like violence
Like a storm that does not break
Only builds, and I sit
Enraptured in the ozone
Rabbit in wolfs hungry jaws
He spins my hair around his finger
Smiles a liar’s smile
Tells me he loves me
And I hear thunder

There are dogs barking next door, they've been at it for at least an hour and for some reason, it is making me Incredibly anxious
and all at once I am remembering every wound I ever inflicted or received
as though I were both the blade and the parting flesh, and I feel as though
I have always been this moment, this suspended breath
Slowly circling around a clenched fist until the time of my expiry
I am the snapping of a dogs jaws and the spit that hits the ground
and I am still, too, the ground that shivers in disgust at such violence,
anyway, its probably just the anxiety talking, probably just me stumbling again
over words and truth in my haste to release whatever air I keep trapped in my lungs
whatever wound inside me is currently yawning open and closed, quick as the caught birds' breast
hey, i think the dogs have stopped barking

maggots feasting on a butterfly’s corpse
    One time a boy kissed me

the ruined back post-bullet
    He spun me in his strong arms

wasp nest humming in a yellowed skull
    Said he loved me with fierceness

shrapnel lodged in a spine somewhere
    Told me he would never let me go

blood and water mixing in the sink
    But he did. He did

body on the beach, pale and bloated
    In my nightmares I see him walking away

wild dogs with intestines in their jaws
    I see glimpses of another life

the slow swing of a fist
    In those, he holds me in his strong arms

bruised blue cheek, uglier for its healing
    In those, he does not lie to me

one tear caught on a trembling eyelash*
    In those, I am survived by my softness

Into an empty field she cried it
no witnesses but wheat and wind
hand ****** at her breast
voice cracking and hoarse

"I am more than a dream"

the sky a blush above her
dawn, a distant fond memory
bathed in gold light
her lilting voice, softer now

"I am more than this hope,
this reckless want"

shushed gently by the grass
against her trembling knees
she sinks slowly into the earth
murmers kindly to her own soul

"I'm more than this. I have to be"

The sky no longer rose hued
Breeze whispering through her hair
Night falls, and with it
an ember of the sun flickers out

A boy is a loaded gun
Deadly and true
Heavy with the weight of himself
His tiny moving parts
Smelling like oil and death and blood
Trigger finger quick as the flash of his smile
The white of his teeth reflected
In the whites of her eyes
A girl is an open wound
Scar riddled and lame
From all the bullets she has been grazed by
Surely one, one day will **** her
Or the lead in her body
All poisonous trace of him
Will seep into her bloodstream
Find her heart, aquiver in fear
Rabbit under the barrel
Experienced hunter, this one
His hands do not shake
His lips do not twitch
His eyes cold and hard as the weapon
The world is a red battlefield
Silence, but for his steady breath
Her tearful pleas
Bang
The boy reloads.

The wolves stepped from the wood
Padfoot, quickstep, under ****** moon
Their mouths agape and yawning
Tongues lolling to steam the air
Eyes yellow and gold
The first wolf that had ever walked
Swallowed a portion of the sun
And they have been hoarding fire
Inside them ever since
And these wolves, from the darkening wood
With their misted fur backs
Twitching ears and slow careful steps
They lift their heads in one drawn-out moment
Speak with one voice
A voice that echoes like man
That lilts with arrogance not of wolf
To say that the world was raining blood.
The sun
The moon
They heard the wrongness of that voice
Saw the guns pointed at weeping muzzles
And they heeded
Noise shattered the ever-night
Sunlight averts her eyes
A moon crimson and shameful
The sky exploded in death
The woods grew darker