Miriam Joy

When I wake from my nightmaresI__ more afraid of the breath in my lungs than whatever might be chasing me.

I am still trying and trying to exorcise youbut you cling to me like mud or bloodstains,like a battlefield fought in my imaginationevery day that I raise my pen against the swordyou used to slice my heart into small, bitter pieces.

It__ voyeuristic the way you searchfor answers in these cries for help,and how you see Death__ fingersbut always think they__e paintbrushes.

I felt happier yesterday. I do not feel happy today _ I feelabandoned and godless and brokenin a church built for the damnedwith artificial light through stained glassand warped wooden doors.

In my mind he is a demon and a godand I blame him, I blame him, I blame himfor the world I created on my ownas much as the one he built around me.

There are, in places, fallen angelswho in their iniquity and desolationlinger like a stranger on a foggy night,sustained by the misdeeds of city-dwellersand spurred on by bitter hatredfor their bright kin moving past them.

In the darkness and the snow, the street is emptyand it is just the night, the ice and me.

And then, as I got older,I left the woods and lookedat fading stars, dying stars,eternal stars in their heavens,with lips that would kiss and wordsshaped through love songs,a life of journeys to some placefar from home, unfamiliar,(a wild weird western shore)until sunset across limestoneprompts us to make these,our plagiarised prayersto broken stone.

You have constellationsgrowing under your skin.starlight in the blood spilledwhen they stole your feathers

Words do not come back to me easily,so I pull out my heart and wrap itin a thin sheet of paper, let the bloodseep across in stanzas of honestyand hand it to anyone who will take itso that the still-beating heart can tell themall my secrets, all my weaknesses,because if they are not hiddenthey cannot be taken and used against me.

I want her sinful arms wrapped around me,bloodied and angry and triumphant in shame.

But nobody writes fairy talesabout the ugly and poemsare not there for the brokenand I will never find myselfin the words of a hymnnor will any whispered prayerever say my name(which name, which meam I looking for?)because I am shoutingat a cross splintered into piecesby my angry fists, and cryingat the stained glass fallinglike killing rain around me.

Some people unfold into a thousand wordsand others never speak to me at all,never take the blame at all,never look at me at all _ I wonder whyhe never looks at me at all (perhapshe cannot bear to meet my eyes).

I cut off all my hair, cut awayat the soft curves of my clothinguntil I have edges once again,using my body like broken glassto slice at the world around me.I have to take something back,because I have nothing more to

In July I thinkabout the idea of being cursed(because it__ not strange to me;when I look in mirrors I__not there, blank walls gleamingwith bloody condensation,and my shadow behind memocking me with his persistencewhen I keep telling himto leave just to leave to let me be).

I cannot love my neighbour as myselfbecause you bid me do him no harm,and I cannot love my enemiesbecause they keep crawling inside meand tearing out all my emotions:if I am made in your image then youare not somebody I want to seebecause why believe in the broken,why depend on the weak,why seek the lost and bewilderedwhose only answer is __lease_?