I Am Tired Of Hiding. Of Being Embarrassed. Unsure. Reluctant. Ashamed. I Am Tired Now, More Than All

I fear looking into my adult eyes and not recognizing myself.

Time keeps passing, I fight hard for change. It does not yield to me, wind against a mountain. I carry on, I carry on, still. There is nothing left for me to do but die.

What poems do you keep close to your chest like a weak deck of cards? Terrified anyone should know your mind in all its weaknesses and honest throws of emotion. Let me read them, let me know you. I promise not to ruin you. I promise to be kind.

I belong to my animals as much as they belong to me. I am no owner, and they are no beasts.

More hours in the day ought to do it. Just four or five more, and my dreams don’t seem so far away.

Polymaths are rarer than single subject experts; lofty does not begin to describe my future. But who ever aimed low and went high? Better to do the opposite I say, and maybe I’ll warm up to medium.

Shadows cast under noses, in sullen cheeks and eye sockets galore.

Highlights on the rims of sharp roses, with thorns that grow ceiling to floor.

Nothing quite so soft and unforgiving, as the woman that waits at your door.

Smaller hearts beat faster, ever faster. Run rabbit run ever faster, ever faster. I’ll cut your finger cut your thumb, wear a plaster, wear a plaster. I’ll tell your secrets to the room, such disaster, such disaster.

Forgive me gentle heart, I didn’t mean to be a bastard.

Out of fear of being exposed, I crawl and grovel and claw at the shell of my old self, desperate for a morsel of comfort, of old. I find I’ve done nothing but destroy it’s memory and starve my newest iteration, in a form of betrayal only one as indecisive and stagnancy-drawn as I could pull off.

How on earth did you find me?

Oh sweet siren, every inch of water you touch tastes of sugar. I couldn’t lose you if I tried.

Well you ought to at least try.

Bite your tongue lass.

Or what?

Or I’ll do it for you.

Rotten sailor. I’ve no desire to play with you anymore. Leave me be.

How can you lure me off my ship and not even finish me? What am I to do now, drown?

You’d better not. I’d snap your neck myself and let the ocean have you but she retches at the taste of pork.

I’m no pig you finned whore!

Then why’s your nose look like that? Go to shore and dry off before your wife finds you wet, piglet.

—Diary of a Siren

What use is death to a creature like me?

Well, I’ll tell you:

Death is an old bedfellow, a partner, a wife;

Is there anything so sweet as a union born in blood?

A promise to always be at each other’s finger tips?

Tool the marble into statue, we sculpt the world,

To improve it, cull those unfit for life by scythe point.

A silly question to ask me, what use is death to a

Creature? Without it, I would not have a life at all.

Like a mutant calf, my village shunned and cast

Me out to meet her, Lady Death.