Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash
She is cool and precise,
a vision of emptiness
swaying gently behind the eyes.
I have seen the whole of her
inside and out.
We are not the same species
so there is nothing to compare.
We each have our someones,
the same someone split in half.
She is a damp, halting apathy,
a pretense, the antithesis to intimacy.
I pity her because she starves.
I pity myself as well.
–
I am too many things to be exact.
My creatures are all at war.
I am too much. I am all nerve endings.
The funny thing
is that she isn’t even here.
All I ever was, was my devotion
but he kept on dragging her up
from her little coffin
and forcing me to kiss her mouth.
That’s why I ran away with the Devil.
–
It was only me and the Devil
in that room, on that occasion.
We exchanged hands over tea.
I let him undress me.
My panties were wet.
My lips were red with hunger.
There were three windows and one door.
All closed.
All leading inside.
–
The Devil took me down to the cellar
and filled me with angel tears
and blasphemous psalms.
He pressed his monstrosity
at the mouth of my abandoned womb
and I forgot all about
the little, half-boy
that sings in a choir.
–
Is it wrong to say that I love
the tongue that feeds me
more than the smiling mouths
of good people?
Is it wrong to trade my false lover
for a light-extruding myth?
All operas have lost there meaning,
only poetry speaks to me these days.
–
I may be a pariah
but I don’t want to be alone.
The Devil occupies my thoughts.
He could just as well eat me
but instead he breaks open my bones
with his sinister, seductive laugh.
I am happy
when it is just the two of us.
I am happy to be the bride
of a willing groom.
–
The Devil doesn’t love her
and that consoles me.
She is too clear for him,
too wrath-like, too fastened.
He loves her
but he doesn’t understand women at all
and he can’t sustain
his own heart for more than a beat.
–
The Devil doesn’t have
horns or cloven hooves.
He wears a loin cloth,
or a top hat,
or peacock feathers sewn into a dress.
He is not the subject
of any particular book
but his presence regularly
sparks debate.
–
The Devil is mine and mine alone.
We invented each other.
Sometimes he carries me in his arms
and speaks to me in verbs.
I know what he is capable of
and what he isn’t.
For us there is freedom in union.
For us addiction is a kind of paradise.
I don’t need to excuse myself
for being rotten or ordinary.
I don’t need to apologize
for my vagina.
The Devil gets it.
mindlovemisery 