O how the days were long and ever-present,
Wherein I ridiculed myself wanting to die
Seemingly every time my father's clock ticked.
I envy profound contentment with the hospitality
Of idealizing suicides. I do it as the guiltless, brutish fact
Of uncomprehending where their roots linger,
Like a lonely garden fairy to whom is tortured
By its giant, ghostly workers occupying its pixie rings,
Watering it and its mushrooms and bluebells and purple clovers,
Maintaining it and its cabbage whites and mantises and dragonflies.
I, too, have been surrounded by these men-almost forevermore.
Of an old-timey fashion, they whip me with links of lightning,
And I rock to and fro, frightened and bolted shut
As an ancient jewelry box of precious heirlooms
That belong to my Slavic mother.
Death, death is what their charged voltage rings,
Singing as the wings of cicadas rattle.
And soon enough, they will stomp that ground of mine,
My own pixie ring, and destroy it until it is of no use anymore.
Now that disheveled sod of drowned trefoils and mashed florets,
Bloodied with their dye like a human's disemboweled innards,
Crimson and clover, is my bed, my home.
But is my stay in the dirt permanent,
Or is it just to make myself feel less pretty,
As if the landscapers knew I was that sad?
And upon asking this question, I would love to be brought home-
And I was, the men tending to me and that circle of stones aided me,
But they stay in my bedroom, each cracking open
Like an Easter egg into every person I have ever met before and will meet.
My mother. My father. My brothers. My sister. My friends.
My boyfriends. My girlfriends. My husbands. My wives. Me.
And they smell of corroding sulfur, the rot, the rot.
Poisonous lilies, they release the other odors of theirs:
Unbecoming misunderstandings and judgements
Against mine own oppression.
They judge my words. My style of dress, my thoughts
And desires of needing to die.
I did not call them here, I never called them,
And I do not want them at all!
I do not want them to tell me all there is I already know.
They beg me not go, annoying me judgingly,
Buzzing lies, and telling me I am far too selfish
Thinking which way is the best way die-
When all I wanted was to be like the dragonfly.
