A baseline that you feel in your chest,
Humming thick in your ears,
And your mouth,
You just want to live in their blur of impactful words,
That you don’t understand,
Because it’s just a baseline to you,
But have you ever felt so proud of someone?
That what they’re saying, or what they’re playing or who they’re being,
Becomes the only thing that’s keeping off the rain,
And you can see every tooth in the room,
Every heart that becomes unbroken and
        every heart that breaks,
Well it’s a shooting star,
Baby it’s gold dust,
Because his gaze is tattooed on your body,
Under your sweater,
Under your skirt,
Yours is a crime scene littered with his fingerprints,
But you’re no ****** victim,
Jackie,
       Jane,
             Joan,
Wife,
     Mother,
             Daughter,
Survivor,
          Protector,
                     Warrior,
Woman,
Know when it’s dark,
And subtle shadows are all that remains of your bodies,
Finding all the bones in your shoulder,
The piano strings that move your fingers,
And each indentation of your spine,
Is a bible,
But God won’t give him strength,
It’s your skeleton that is fortitude,
You’re the dragon protecting the castle,
You’re Rosie the Riveter,
You can hold up the world with perfectly manicured hands,
You will listen,
And you will care,
Let him breathe in the fractions of your soul that you exhale,
That way,
Every standing ovation and
     every wound that heals,
Is saturated with the influence of you,
Though you don’t understand,
That baseline you can feel in your chest,
It is your to be proud of too.

he still holds your name in his
mouth like his first
communion, his hands would still fit the mold of your
hips if only you'd
let him try. you can remember the light of
after, the gleam of the scissors as you tried to make him
pretty, his strength littering the floor sort of like the plates in your
kitchen now, that kind of
damage. it must've took a whole lot of
something for that to
happen, they say to you. the
aftermath is not
pretty. without his flower petal
ponytail he is no longer
pretty.

it's not a coincidence that his name sounds like falling
cities, how you never bothered to learn to sleep
alone.

The first time that Delilah saw Samson
she said to herself,
“That man will be mine.”
she said,
“Yes.”

He laughed when she first begged to bind him,
“I cannot be bound.” He declared,
“I have brought one thousand men to their knees.”
She replied, “So have I.”
and on her knees
she showed him how.

Their favorite game to play was Pagan,
he would act as sacrifice and she, the priest,
teaching him to worship
at her temple,
teaching him the best death
was deathless.

Long before she cut his hair,
she made him weak.
Long before they gouged his eyes,
he was blinded.