Peel
He peels the day from me like the skin of an apple;
blade rounding sharp and shallow.
Behind, all that is left is the soft white
beneath my arms, my shoulders. His lips touch
the delicate flesh and the wetness collects.
I am dismantled. Alone,
pulled from the basket.
He devours me.
That first bite – how it goes on and on.
He does not stop until only the seeds remain,
and tongues them smooth, to perfect teardrops.
One swallow; two.
The dark bruise looms. Shudder the skin,
and it drops like a circular peel. Four walls,
and darkness. How we sprout overnight –
how, upon entering, a sudden compression.
Suddenly, the universe is in me, in you,
then bursting
in bloom.
they used to call her succubus
in
dreams, they say, she loped towards him,
lips
defined by rouge, smeared at the corners
where
it spread like blood in the aftermath
of
a surgery. And they say when she walked,
it
was as though her hair had been Medusa's,
black
as an oil slick, twining itself between
his
fingers. Whole ecosystems devastated
in
the wake of her hair. And him, well,
they
say she splayed him wide:
tacked
the flesh to opposite sides,
drew
heavy fingers along each organ.
A
loving caress, she scraped away
sweetmeats,
chewed slowly,
and
licked each finger clean.
What
was it they called her, the nights
his
phone went unanswered? The days
he'd
awake with a neck blooming lesions
like
a dogwood in springtime frenzy.
What
are they, these words for women?
slithering
through linguistic undertones
like
Lilith hidden behind the bark of a tree.
