Thin, white wrists.
Bone white
Like china
And just as brittle.
They make that coarse, scraping sound when they touch one another.
The kind of sound that delicate, expensive teacups make when stacked
The wrong way.
It makes me cringe.

Little blue veins kiss the surface of them,
Hissing and sizzling when the air gets
Too close
Like tiny snakes.

These wrists
Have made promises.
They have
Borne loads.
These wrists have snapped like twigs
Under the weight of a heavy,
Punishing love.
But, pressed back together the way they'd been,
They hardened oncemore
Like stone
And the cracks and fissures
Sank inside again
And smooth, unmarred, delicate white skin emerged
To begin the process over.

At night the snakes whisper and murmur against my cheek in their sleep
And sometimes, quite suddenly,
They sink in their fangs
And I awaken with a start,
A sharp pain radiating out to my fingertips
Like a shock.

Last night I felt their strikes by the hour
One,
Two,
Three, more.
And this morning a strange... fullness
Began in my wrists
And seeped out
Up along my arms
Through my collarbones and down
Into my heart.

Perhaps it was the venom
Working
But where it spread I
Settled
Like an old stone wall.
Like the halls of a castle
That has seen too much death
And too many kings.

I sank into myself
For the first time
And the ground felt heavily solid
And I felt
Only the hollow hiss
Of little blue and green serpents
Dreaming inside me
And that
Was something like certainty,
Although of what
I still don't
Know.