and i am sorry, oh
god i am so sorry that
i cannot apologize for the
things that have made my love
hard. i cannot take blame for
the way other fingertips have burned
my skin, i cannot atone for the bite-marks
on my wrists, or the start and
finish lines, the races that have been run
down my thighs and to my ankles.
i cannot pardon the graveyard of past
love that vandalizes my body like an oil portrait,
i have always looked like a museum exhibit
for the art of leaving. i am carved out by
the stained glass of all of my goodbyes
and it has taken my love by the throat,
it has rubbed my mouth raw, it has made
gasps of air between the breaks of kisses
hurt my teeth. i am sorry that i cannot
excuse the people that have
made me flinch, made me distrust, made me
carry myself gentler when it rains. all i can do is
give you a paintbrush and tell you that
i will still be art when you are finished with me.

Everyone always told him life was beautiful
No one said why, though. Nonetheless he knew it.
They, all of them, all of you, were preaching to the choir.
He could tell you a million and one reasons why life, the earth, everything
Was beautiful.
He knew them now by heart.
He'd start with the sunshine hitting his skin in the summers, and somehow move onto the rain in June on his windshield.
Then to the way the cold flirted with him in December...
Nibbling on his ears and kissing his cheeks whenever and wherever he went.
He'd talk about smiles from strangers on the tram, at the market,
And, his personal favorite, in the library.
There he'd read words from rebellious souls who, like him, understand that life was more beautiful than anything or anyone that came out of Italy, Brazil, or Spain.
They'd say, and he'd read, about how life was beautiful in the way that a child with a gap between her teeth is beautiful.
In the most perfectly flawed way.
Life is beautiful because of the way a clock chimes every 15 minutes, and the way everyone depends on it.
It's beautiful because of the sound a pencil makes as it vandalizes a blank page of a journal.
It's because of the way everyone knows it, and falls madly in love with it.
He knew it, but they didn't. And they never would.
They just told him that life was beautiful.
Over and over and over again until he was sure he didn't deserve to live in that light.
And he ran away from it into the arms of tragedy.
Still beautiful, but all the more flawless and terrifying.
And there he went, and there he stayed.

People come and go,
Some vicious and monstrous,
Some convivial and angelic,

I've met people with split personalities,
People who empower their envious nature by destroying others lives,
People who's abhor over-rules them and vandalizes their humanity,

I've met people with a generous spirit,
People with an engaging smile and a heart of gold,
People with a captivating soul that seeks others and plunges them forward in helping,

Seven billion people in this world, mixed;
Some ghastly, some delightful,
And you came in and took my breath away.

I never met him.

That did not give me the free reign to judge him, but I did.

I compared him to the countless flawed heroes that fail to hold up to the damsel's doe-eyed trust.

I wronged him by comparing him to the villain that steals into the secret wishes of maiden's lustful desires and vandalizes the sanctuary of their imagination.

I flirted with him in abandon not counting the risk of falling in love with every dimpled smile or deep-throated laughter.

I lusted after him and panted after him hoping that he would be doing the same for indeed lust must be stronger than love.

Ultimately I collapsed in exhaustion and dust sought dust to be united with it, once for all, defiled with it.

It was him who stepped forward and picked me up, dusted me altogether and set me up on a mantlepiece, a prized possession ready to be loved.

(c) Anavah 2018

The genome tilts on its axis, spilling memes of shame,
mutation and death, tattooed on plasma walls.

Coronavirus latches onto a lowly cell, clamps down,
spews pellets of bubonic plague as fleas flee disaster.

1666. Eyam Village barricades its boundaries: No going in.
No going out. The population dies like convulsing rats,

bodies stacked high in the street: cords of firewood. No one dares
light the flame. Pestilence obeys the border's blockade, contained

behind thick, golden stones. Tiny cottages mutate to infirmaries.
Judgment seeps through window panes. Mercy aligns with death.

We build no blockades, boundaries shift in the wind. Virus obeys
no one's laws, vandalizes the body, sets fire to the human touch.

Eyam beams prettiness now. Neat, manicured lawns, well-swept streets,
no trace of plague save on the village entry sign. Tourists flock like fleas,

soaking up history's survival, sobering on its showcase of blight.
Who deserves to die from nature's aberrations? *Who goes in, who out?

You hide your tears
beneath the sheets
of your bed. For fear....
I know that feeling.
I have felt that way too.

Your anguish surges
like a tsunami.
Your agony
vandalizes faster than
a tornado. I know that feeling.

You frown
in suprise at my utterance.
A stranger cannot have an inkling
to my hell.  I am no stranger baby.
I have been there. I know that feeling.

I see a beaming star called you.
You.nique,
in all your deeds. Is the whole world skies enough for you to shine?
For the moon is also at your service.

This blood of rejection
once ran through my veins.
Why shall I not call you family?
For I realized that all in all, we are
stars enough for the skies!!!