The Sun and Her Flowers. Белые стихи, от которых распускаются цветы

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home

it began as a typical thursday from what i recall

sunlight kissed my eyelids good morning

i remember it exactly

climbing out of bed

making coffee to the sound of children playing outside

putting music on

loading the dishwasher

i remember placing flowers in a vase

in the middle of the kitchen table

only when my apartment was spotless

did i step into the bathtub

wash yesterday out of my hair

i decorated myself

like the walls of my home were decorated

with frames bookshelves photos

i hung a necklace around my neck

hooked earrings in

applied lipstick like paint

swept my hair back – just your typical thursday

we ended up at a get-together with friends

at the end you asked if i needed a ride home and

i said yes cause our dads worked at the same company

and you’d been to my place for dinner many times

but i should have known

when you began to confuse

kind conversation with flirtation

when you told me to let my hair down

when instead of driving me home

toward the bright intersection

of lights and life – you took a left

to the road that led nowhere

i asked where we were going

you asked if i was afraid

my voice threw itself over the edge of my throat

landed at the bottom of my belly and hid for months

all the different parts in me

turned the lights off

shut the blinds

locked the doors

while i hid at the back of some

upstairs closet of my mind as

someone broke the windows – you

kicked the front door in – you

took everything

and then someone took me

– it was you.

who dove into me with a fork and a knife

eyes glinting with starvation

like you hadn’t eaten in weeks

i was a hundred and ten pounds of fresh meat

you skinned and gutted with your fingers

like you were scraping the inside of a cantaloupe clean

as i screamed for my mother

you nailed my wrists to the ground

turned my breasts into bruised fruit

this home is empty now

no gas

no electricity

no running water

the food is rotten

from head to foot i am layered in dust

fruit flies.