You said my mind was a beautiful place.
I let you plant around my medulla, flowers you never

returned to prune.

 

And now a new season approaches, all I have are

dead stems.
No thoughts to bloom,

And you wonder why my mother warned me against men of your kind.

 

I didn’t have to carry — the burdens of your past,
as you sucked dry my pricking ducts.

 

It was not my time, yet you kept your glaze at eagles eye focus with my uterus when you said,

“Just this once,”

confessing a love not only foreign to your tongue but your mother too, who left you to die in the shores.

 

And maybe, maybe that is why you come seeking —

storms later; for a home between my legs.

 

Perfectly crafted for just after dark, neatly wrapped for the lonely nights and my ribbon tied to perfection, a being of pulchritude —

the rules remain simple, only unwrap after dark.

 

And my skin, buttered as I wait to be kneaded on, a knuckle for pores.

Loosely mistaken for pastry for you would mutter how great I tasted.

Only, I am human and my insides have been pickled in brine.

My throat, cloaked with an overwhelming pressure of emotions.

Let this be the last time.

 

The last time you peel the petals of my womb
for I have no space anymore in my garden
for the seedlings of your Cuscuta

 

that spreads around my lobes like a tumor —
hugging every thought,

surviving on all — my wounds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Trésor Kande on Unsplash