venusblood

Photo by Humberto Bortolossi on Unsplash

venusblood

the air feels heavier during the day, and i watch the trees pass by my window (everchanging, a revolving door of green, yellow, red, dead); i could lay my bones to sleep in the moss of the woods behind me, or i could play hopscotch like a child in the street. my eyes are open, see, i am telling you what i am capable of. venus has cracked me open, a crabapple tree sprouting broken limbs and plump seeds rotting at my feet, she has crawled inside to ask me something. am i big? am i small, in the scope of things? it doesn’t feel Good anymore to be here, like this, gangrenous and talcum-powder’d in the bathtub with a screaming mother. i was a child, there is still a fragment of it leaking out. venus crawls inside my veins like a white spider, licking at my tendons and leaving new blood, sacs a’plenty, writhing under Her loving gaze. i feel Her love explode within my cracked and broken body, filling me with pearlescent blood of a new dawn, iridescent and forgettable until the next time history repeats. i am alone here, inside this empty carnivorous skull-system, the waterways don’t connect to the forehead like they used to – i am cold to the touch. i am breathing shards of glass, scratchy and post-pubescent, old, wriggling under skin that doesn’t fit me anymore. venus gives us new blood as we age, to replace the poison that has stained our fingertips. She feeds us with pebbles of pain and hope and egregious impulses (synonyms: atrocious, abominable, nightmarish, heinous, harrowing, unspeakable, shameful) AND I AM THANKFUL; She shows me the light within the beads of flesh that i swallow from my palms, i thank Her for the nightmares that chase me through open doorways and gnaw on my ankles like swamp-water molluscs that i cannot See. the air feels heavier during the day, and i let the trees watch me pass by their windows as i walk out into the street. my blood, a rainbow of oil in light on the concrete, i am Free. venus overwhelms and Swallows me, i am become Godlike and Pestilent. a disease that must be carried in jugs upon shoulders, heads, under toenails and between ribs. a tree will not tell you what it has seen. you must cut it down to see its rings. a mouth does not open if you force the teeth through gloss’d lips, a naked body under blankets of red and sticky proof of death. again, i am telling you what i am capable of.

~ Claire Finch

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Claire Finch is a self-taught writer, lilac prose dream weaver, & budding poet. They have not yet been published elsewhere, but aspires to find homes for all of their words in the near future. They live in Ontario, Canada with their partner, and cat familiar. You can read their daily dream logs and other rose-coloured ramblings on twitter, @ghoulfinch.