body work

v: self-portrait as cassandra

**tw's: death, sui implied, r*pe explicitly mentioned**

all these things that go wrong,
i find myself going with them — i
wash myself clean but am not cleansed, i call the bed a grave & spend
half of each year playing dead.

this year, i don't dig myself up at all. imprisoned, i write eulogies
for each month in my head. january goes on for 3 summers. this has

lasted too long. all the the echoes
of rejected prophecies
resonating in the heart chambers of disbelief —

you know how often i wanted to leave a note? how often would i have looked the fool? i should have
written them like threats, if only but
for myself. i warned the enemy instead — how

fitting it is that i was born all wrong. i came out too small & upside down. back then, i could heal people —
heathens, i could

say things & they would happen, i could hear the call to prayer with nobody there. i was dismissed

naïve, then a liar.
then hexed, my sister said.
i hated her then. there was no angered lover, just a widowed mother
instead

& then nothing else. simply i shall die
& i will be cursed

no more. i live for this only,
i live for all that is still to be mocked —
how disillusioned i have become that
no-one should hear my voice for years?

called to madness, i find i have no part in this ordinary kind of magic — i have never seen the moon, just its

dispersed self in the water & i see myself there. beautiful, in a hideous way, like how poisedon kills the
rapist but not for his crime.

as a child, i burnt a hole
in the holy book from
the brook of my eyes,
panicked as ink bled out
like shadows. & then lied —

i could not bear to say
i'd heard owlets spitting
down olives from the sky. & then borne from the forehead,
athena arrived,

gifting her wisdom, sliced unevenly
by the spear between her lips, the one in the hand wielded too little &
too late. i saw

the pretty clothing that was easily ripped, the
place between the legs, the
injection on the floor, the
raised voices of the phone call.

called to madness, i cut out
these flashing eyes
disfigured from birth, i want to
envision no more but still

there is more to witness &
none to believe. there is the
stench of smoke seeping from the walls, i collapse

into blood gushing out of a head wound.
the red welts that were kissed, the
fire the fire the fire — all deadwood.
i prophesied the betrayal of
sisterhood. her waiting, wanting

to be the trojan horse itself — all dead wood,
to be victorious just by being. how weak to want to be praised for
just being

a prophetess, a seer
bewitched. i have seen too much
for someone blinded & damned blind
to all. i find soil underneath
the fingernails, i tried. i tire now.
it hurts. i tire now
i see nothing
& no-one, no more.