Other
barely past the walls it all collapses:
humanity. reason. the boundaries that keep chaos
from the door and the wolf from the world.
these fine clothes are a better prison and a worse defence
than anything they might build, knots and laces
snagging and snarling at skin like traps in the forest,
impossible to untie with fingers becoming claws
and hands –don’t take my hands don’t take my hands –
lost and sharpened and made new.
ever the change comes like prophecy, unwelcome,
abrupt –I thought I would have longer– truer
than truth and more hated for it –this is what I get
for believing I could be a knight.
stripped back and twisted open, the lies
are a poor armour, unable to guard against the bite
of the self. some hungers are never satisfied.
some emptiness is never filled –
I thought this had stopped–
and lies are wood-bitter, poison-sharp, nothing
compared to a hunt and hunger.
a few weeks of humanity and wholeness
is that so much to ask for?
hope’s a lie too, a pretty one, if knives
can be pretty. but in the end a wolf is hungry
and hunger must be fed.
soft thoughts, safe hearth, yearning for a voice
like sunlight and hands like dancers
but that’s a trust built on lies and means as much
as a dream –she saw the truth she saw me
