A chill
A tremor
A glance toward the floor
A slicing through the air
With words
Sharp and
Heavy—
Atmosphere gluttonous
And fat
With globules of
All the hate he had eaten
Before
Now digested and
Fueling the
Fight.
He vomits lies
One and then
One more
Oh—
And then one more—
And wipes it off the floor
To fashion
With his hands
The garments
He flings
Toward her,
“Put this on,”
As though she were
His mannequin.
She bends her knee
To his lies
And slathers
What dripped
From his mouth
Onto her face—
Masking what is true
And wearing
What he has construed,
She misconstrues
What is false
For what must be
And in his eyes
She sees
His power
Grow.
Shrinking hues of
Human blue
Shrivel into black—
He lowers his head
Like a dog
Unleashed and standing
Before
His prey
“Away,”
She thinks but
Does not say
Instead
She braces,
Her heart races
As she maps his face
For traces
Of who she assumed
Him to be.
The sound of a
Rapier and dagger
A shot fired
The kicking away of the stand
Under a noose
Two Broadswords clash
In the night
A fight
With no enemy
But brutal in its
Casualty
To the sanctity of
Two lives becoming one
Death.
She opens her mouth
To let the fear
Fall out—
It repels down her
Cheeks
Jumps off her chin and
Runs into the
Shadows
Where it found safety
Once
Before—
She watches it run
And dreams of being
Small
So she too could
Skitter away
Like a fearful mouse
Hiding in this home,
Or
Instead
This house.
Purple begins to sprawl
Across her face and
Down her arm—
Once more her
Skin
His canvas
Drying in colors
Darker than
He intended
And that—
What he intended—
Is unclear as the fog
Of war
Flies around his head
Like a flock of
Birds flapping in formation
And leaving the cold
For the
Sun.
He lowers his hand
A gesture
A gift
An invitation
From his guilt to
Her confusion—
She accepts as she
Has accepted
Before
And stands.
A chill
A tremor
A look to the floor—
“It began with a lie,”
She thinks
But does not say and
She wonders why
The dusty lenses in his frames
Project her in this way—
And why so many times
Before
She wore the vomit-sewn
Coat shaking at her feet
Like a prisoner of
War.
“No more,”
she thinks and then
she says—
A sentence that
Shoots
Like an arrow through
His armor of
Pride—
“You want to roar
You want me to squeak,
You want to be called Control
You want my name to be Weak.”
Then one more string of words,
“No more.”
A tremor
A doubt
A glimmer of
Courage
Reflected off the moon to
Light her way
To blind his eyes
From seeing her
Walk away—
Into the night
She limped
Like a rabbit
Whose foot had been
Cut off and given
To him for luck
But
She walked
And the walking
Was building her strength.
She was tempted to
Look back
To see her
Before
But instead her
Momentum
Drove forward—
She thought to herself
But did not say,
“No more before,
Only today.”
—copyright Jill Szoo Wilson
(Photo Credit: This poem was inspired by German artist Conny Stark)
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