All strings of royal words that bob within my brain
have slipped through my mouth and finger tips
on to the page.
I am formless as the wind
and locked in the foreboding
twister of a hurricane.
I know my scrubbed and pink-rubbed hands
like the back of a map,
yet can paint my petite pains
as sure as Da Vinci’s staple piece
on a crystal day in Paris.
You, my old plague,
are Charybdis.
And I am no Odysseus.
You may drown me as you please,
leave skin ash and sea-weed slimey
and belly turgid with salt water.
Oh, hurt,
I know you tenderly.
And you are versed in me as well-
as if you chained me to the mortuary bench
and drilled your mark through my china skull.
I let you cremate my uses
like old good-riddance school books.
And that is why I, still blind,
know each nook and hidey-hole you’ll tread
And let you curl atop my ribs in bed.
