mama, i was born to dance.
stumbling into the sun each sunday, rubbing coherency into my eyes, the salt into old wounds.
please don't shed tears, share fears at confession. heaven found me once, remember? he will find me again.
this isn't grief, mama. the truth is, i made a stage out of this world years ago; let me make a life out of this constant need to perform.
and i know you do not believe me, but there is life here—in the silver sheen across foreheads, in the bottom of glasses, in the hazy, perfumed heat. there's art in humanity's need to be vulnerable with strangers. sometimes, when shoulders brush against shoulders, skin against skin, i swear that he is alive here too, dancing somewhere still in reach.
i'm saturn in those crowded places, mama. spinning in my gold hoops, singing to something more than silent stars. i'm making a home in the space between their eyelids when the sun sets, when the music stops. i'm finding myself in the blurry bathroom mirror, in the bloodshot eyes of the girls i meet, eyes vacant, smiles true, when they call me beautiful.
mama, please, don't come looking for me. it's different now, mama, but it's something like amnesty. i dug myself out and found a neon haven at the surface; ignore the blood under my nails, the bruises under my eyes. the truth is, normalcy feels like the grave, mama. don't ask me to bury my soul next to dad's. don't ask me to remember heaven from an empty bed.
mama, please don't worry. i was born to perform! i learned from the best, you know. don't you know you're performing, still?
eve's note: it was, in fact, about grief.
YOU ARE READING
HEAVENLY CORRUPTION
PoezjaThe ramblings of a woman who spent too much time in confession and too little time trying to figure out what exactly she was apologizing for.
