The last time I walked through this church, I was dead.
After the slaughter my fingers itched
for the priest's hot throat and my old life back
The twang of digital bells makes me jump,
reminds me that I'm foreign here.
My ochre icons, stained glass dappled sills
replaced by stares like swollen jewels
They've done it up since 1609
The pews are smooth cold metal now
The saviour's statue smells of paint
But the rot of rebellion's deep in the stone
I never wanted to die.
But you thought murder was kindness, you thought
the fire you lit was like a bath—
would clean our hearts but it singed them to ash
An onyx fur cat with violet eyes
is resting on the windowsill.
I've seen her before, our lives collide
Eyes half closed, in other worlds,
alone in almost every one.
A dug-up relic in a too-new place
that never knew how to belong.
Before the chill can truly set in,
I turn and leave.
She hops right off and follows me.
We are joined since they burned us together that dawn,
her eyes the colour of my aura.
Henriette hunts my darkness
over an age
then curls around it, purring soft
a black cat's magic is to be unafraid.
YOU ARE READING
Lives Collide
PoetryDo I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes). - 'Song of Myself,' Walt Whitman It's hard to know sometimes who you're meant to be. And that's kind of okay. One day I feel like a witch, another like...
