There you are, on your knees.
Asking.

You ask for my permission, and a
promise of starlit-smiles
perfumed sunsets and doe-eyes
ever looking up at you.

But I won’t.

I won’t give you my stars
instead,
you can wonder at the darkness
beyond and between.

I won’t give you my sweet-smelling
end of days
instead,
you may see my beginnings, and when
my light is dimmed and the only sight
is that of life,
through veiled eyes.

I won’t give you my intent gaze
instead,
you may see how my eyes burn
as rage roils beneath.
See how they glow in my own happiness
and darken with my desires.

You ask for tradition, but all I
can offer is the broken parts
that make a whole "me".

I won’t bow and kneel and scrape.

I rise with the sound of prayer on my lips.

I rise to the equality that is my height.

Undiminished.
Untouched.
Unbowed.
Unbent.
Unbroken.

A viper ascending.

And this gown? Woven by one-thousand hands for one purpose?

This tomb for my virtue…

I will wear it like armour.
I will have my blood bleach the white.
I will burn the lace.

My enemies will take scraps of it as trophies
and will fly them in the wind.

A sick declaration of my love for you.

I will give you war.
I will bring the depths of the seas to the heavens
and
I will make you taste the iron that has forged me.

The power that has burned me alive.
*
I won’t give you peace.
You want peace? Go get your battle-hardened, weary dress upon my tower.

You want gentle love and a fully belly?
I will break the gates of passion
as I raise hell,
and I will gut your hunger from your very being with nails that have carved trenches for my dead…

In your back.

I will search eternity if I lost you.
I will fall madly and irrevocably
in love with you.

But only if you fall first.