My sisters and I jest That men never get over us. We have been named Muses, angels, succubi, leanan sidhe But we are les belles dames avec merci And that is their undoing. Our breath has left them gasping With unfilled lungs We never meant to be their oxygen But they drink us in like drowning men.
We didn’t ask for this, But disarming, we are soft enough For them to float in Belly up, eyes to distant stars Singing the sirens song that stirs in our veins.
Behind our teeth rests the love The world has failed to give them till now There are holds in the knowledge that our fingertips find the hollowed spaces, mother wounds, clefts where trust was carved out, And they clutch our palms to staunch the bleeding.
We never asked for this, They cherish the brittle changelings of us until they are crushed in the coals of our eyes Eggshell ideals, fragile as egos. Blown by the sea wind in the strands of our hair they are scattered, undone.
The distance drifts between, inevitable And full they turn away to starve We cut the mooring line After one too many storms, And search For safer Harbor.