man with an axe
poetry
I do not wish to write, for then I shall write about you. The Sun shines brighter without you here draping me in your bitter blues, though somehow the Moon seems sadder too. You don’t exist, yet here I am in my solitude, intermittently awaiting you. Which road will you take? The one made of stars we humans call fate? Perhaps the one born from ego, draped in battle wounds and self-hate? Perfection is clarity, and here I see the perfection in me, in you, in us, the totality no longer eclipsed by forces we call trauma-bonding and lust. You were my man with an axe, here to chop me down, wood harvested all so you could find something to write upon. Limb by limb you tried to steal the most precious pieces of me. The roots, the trunk, the cascading tendrils of leaves. But my roots anchored deeper into the belly of the earth, my grip sharper now as I lean on the others who see in me pearlescent treasures and worth. Lightning flashes before my eyes. Sometimes I pray it shatters your fragile male ego to initiate your inevitable demise out of my own selfish spite. You conquered me, though only temporarily, for I am willow, and now you've taken a fancy to that ash tree. Love was never what I thought it was. This season has run its course, so now I know love, I wonder if I can even call what we exchanged love at all? I am stronger than you - this I know to be true. I feel where you run. I soften where you harden. I rise where you fall. I tend where you fuck. I love thy self where you go and use another's heart. I am whole now, holier than the woman who once chose you. I am stronger than you, stronger than that me, strong enough to see behind the Sun all the ways in which you suffocated the Siren in me. In the belly of the beast I see I feel I become. In the belly of the beast I accept that the beast was not a beast at all, but really a whale, blue, large, a safe haven, a place where I can rest as I withdraw from beneath your thumb. I descended to the waters of my chaos. I drank my grief as I prayed over the aching soul in me. I burnt my flesh to the bone and I arrived home, more tender, more open, exposed, sadder, yet happier all at once. Man with an axe refuses to face me. He cannot stand my ardent heat. I see now I could never be the one to cure his misery. He shall harvest from the trees until he see's who he was born to be. For now, I remain here, slightly broken, always whole. For now, I sing a song, an ode to the woman who was swept in his disorder, who did not know there would ever be a world in which she would belong.
