have fun dancing with death

Photo by Leon Liu on Unsplash

have fun dancing with death

you say, "it's adam and eve

not adam and steve."

but what if it were eve and lilith instead?

i fell in love with a woman once,

and i know you'd disapprove;

but she woke in me the dreaming when

i thought it was dead—

she reminded me that i do matter,

that my dreams are to drive me forward

not to be forgotten in some abandoned place;

she taught me that my scars make me

beautiful—

she brought forth fires in my soul when there

had only been ashes before,

a faerie singing songs into my heart i once knew

before you shut me away in that haunted dark closet;

we were childhood friends but she was my twin flame

knew me in ways i thought no one ever could—

i loved a woman once,

and i love her still;

i'm not ashamed to admit that now

won't hide in the closet you would nail me into

skeletons, spiders, and moths make poor companions

as do you—

stop seeking me

you made your choices,

and i've made mine;

have fun dancing with death!

i choose love, i choose light, i choose rainbows.

-linda m. crate

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Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has six published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), more than bone music (Clare Songbirds Publishing, March 2019), and one micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018).