You reach for me but I am a void, I am a hellish collision of dying worlds inside. These cruel words hang me on the wall and leave me there, exposed, afraid, unraveling, alone. And I’ve been writing, baby love, writing, writing, awful, awful, terrible writing, it ought to be a crime these unforgivable lines slashed in defiance against borrowed time, wretched incoherent manic overflow like bleeding an animal of poison, I’ve written one hundred journals in a mouthful of days, page after page, one more useless than the one before, stacking them, digging them, dragging them through the mud and the rage with me. Please don’t touch me anywhere, I am fever. My eyes finally adjusted to the darkness of this strange religion, where wings are clipped and spread at will.
Still as a cradle robbed of death, but for the smooth motion of the weapon in my hand, and the raking in my brain, and the slamming in my chest to the beat of city after city dropping to their weakened knees, I’ve kept on like the possessed searching for something. Moon rise, moon set, I have not aged since birth and I have never been so sure I’ve died too many times, I am only a pale reflection of myself, the blue fade of a forgotten lust for beautiful sins. The days have been rusted white cages, feathered ink, lace candy legs, something is dark and tethered inside me, darting its many faces in and out of the brush. Something nameless in me that I can’t seem to clutch, needs a love beyond anything the world can produce; a flower opens itself to an empty room.
And I am trying and I am failing, and this thing, this need that swallows itself into me – it is still waiting. All the world is wasted panting breath and me on the wall, and these words like ears on such abysmal pages, we are all waiting.
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Allison Marie Conway 