Scarlet Stripes
You flutter up,
wings grazing the night sky,
feel the tingle of the frigid winter breeze.
You wear pale blue, dark hues,
a bear whose coat is stained with
blueberries and blackberries fresh off the bush,
You see through this portal
my curious eyes, watching you buzz
honey, you are and you give.
Your tongue twitches,
darting out, wrapping around the
mango hi-chew and retreating in full sprint,
You feel the vibrations
but your cochlea never falters,
still hearing, still, yet hearing.
Your fingers press down
on the backs of corpses, each
incision marked by your craft,
Your hands feel the tug
of a small guppy, caught on the
point of your mother’s words,
You gaze, peering so intently
into my eyes; a blink, and the speckles
of mocha are ripped away in the current,
You tug at hair roots, grasping
and holding on tight: you ground, you anchor
yourself, pressed flat against the earth,
You sigh, and in a self-induced
coma you reach out, stretch for that one rock
in an avalanche of gravel and concrete and dust.
You slam the front door hoping
never to be found but open the
basement window in the corner wishing for a way out,
You keep your chin tucked
against your chest, one foot on a winding glass-bottom road,
the other treading in the hot sulfur springs in Thermopylae.
You give and you give,
extracting parts of you, implanting them, scattering
horcruxes between your lines, between your lips.
You touch the encasing
containing your organs, your blood,
your bile, and you untie the sacred seal,
Your surgically precise hands
fail you, convulsing from the veiled black
widow, scarlet stripe on a beach of ash and charcoal.
You wonder, imagined filaments
and lived screenplays crystallizing into
an intricate snowflake, falling and falling,
You join the settled snowbank,
a soldier in the mass trenches pulling the pin
of his own grenade, no longer wanting to throw,
You create an inferno,
a dazzling show of fireworks and singed
human flesh, carving pockets high into the atmosphere.
You dig deep into the mantle,
burying cracked boxes with your brass shovel,
patting the ground firm, untraceable… yet—
Sometimes, you let them peek out
through the slits enclosed by your words,
weaving your fabric, creased in beauty.
By Alex Dong.
