I need a break.
OK, we're on the homestretch.
This is "Scatterings Three."
"I tell you about the retaliation,
the slapping ourselves into submission.
The razors, their rust blood, how
we would listen over and over to the same pathetic songs.
One woman leaned on a kitchen counter in the dark,
watching her disembodied arm slam
into crooked slivers of light.
I have finally learned the value of pain
depends solely on the ability to withstand
the trembling seed of desire.
Go try on normal people our boring stories
of self destruction, how we turn our vengeance
into chopping blocks with our own heads on them.
The jeweled swords fueled by the innate strength for which
we know no other purpose.
Another woman darted room to room behind closed blinds,
convinced they waited for her outside to steal
her last wrong move, her last gram of sanity.
She was a ceramic doll holding every empty protest she'd
sucked up her nose on that island called self hate,
her fear conjured by her own ragged breathing.
But tell them please of the girl who
wanted to kneel down with all her weapons
cradled in her arms, who finally knew that dying to it
is what is all to it all is what takes to survive.
The knives she'd used to persuade
herself too dull for the task.
Tell them about the way stars in a desert dusk sky
often become nothing more than ice picks stabbing
an already gasping heart."