I have shed this carcass a thousand times
When I dig my nails into my skin
It is thicker than before
I tear away at her
Until I am raw
Open me up
So that I may pour out
It is the only way

Lay next to me
While I go
To the bottom of my mind
Breathe in helium, oxygen, moonlight
Consciousness, floating to the ceiling
I am dreaming, lucid
I am watching the world
In third person, in black and gray
Small matters of the mind
Busy bodies following patterns
Mouths reciting scripts
It is mundane
When I looking through, glass
Panel of my own mind
First person
That is when I see, horrors
Technicolor
I bare it badly as it were gospel
These nightmares an unholy conquest
Against my consciousness

I am living in this body still
I do not remember what she was like
Before the bombs
When she was a beautiful city
All I know now is the ash in the soil
The stumps of the trees
The basements exposed
There is beauty in it to be sure
She will never be
What she was before

I cannot say I am sorry for her
Because I do not know her
She is only a distant memory
Like the sun on the fading horizon

We have been rebuilding
I did not know
It would be so difficult
To build new buildings
On an old foundation
So raw, so vulnerable, so exposed
I am not the one at war
I am the village after the raid
I am the city after the bombs
I am the one who prayed
That I would see the lighthouse
Before my stern kissed the shoals

Perhaps the bombs will come again
There is no warning

I am a house
That has been broken into
A hundred times

My windows smashed
Doors ripped from there hinges
Gutted
Ransacked

But I am not a house
I am human

Still paying the mortgage
For a property
That others strip of its value
Any chance they can get

Close your eyes
It is okay to go
It has been a long life

Close your eyes
I will sing to you
Humming gentle melodies

Close your eyes
The music will go with you
Where I cannot follow

Close your eyes
It is time
The angel’s will carry on the harmony

Darling
Do you feel
Naked, vulnerable
I will dress you
In my love
Clothe you
There is no need
To be ashamed

Tell me I look like my mother
I carry her emptiness
Her grief
Pours into me
Until I am full
Tonight it spills
Onto the tiles in the kitchen
No worries, it is a woman’s work