honey and blood

I found myself moved this week

while doing laundry.

I came upon my white dress in my load of weekend clothes

The sight of her washed over me and I paused my work

letting the cycle run cold.

I held her out across my palm

her lace textured and soft

Wisps of my perfume loomed around the fabric

I held her and pressed my cheek to her

Hoping to find the warmth of my own body inside.

This is the dress I wore

when we went up on your roof to sit and read

out of the book you kept on your windowsill,

and your voice washed around my ears, slow and plodding,

it warmed my cheeks and hands,

it spoke more to me than the letters on the pages

endued the words with more meaning than they meant

Because they came from your mouth.

By-and-by you shut the book

Placed your arms on my shoulders

And made me smile

Like a girl in her daddy's arms.

You had told me you were cold from the wind on the roof.

I felt nothing, I told you I felt fine.

You laid your cheek on my back and closed your eyes,

stealing a bit of my warmth,

feeling the lace on my dress against your cheek.

I turned my ear towards your face, figuring you had a secret for me.

That same night, you came to me like a pilgrim to a feast.

You devoured me in your gaze, I found my eyes caught and handled by yours

You came to me but you could not lay with me,

and your bumbling response fell upon my ears with the weight of a biblical tower.

The tumbling debris killed something we both wanted to see alive.

Shell-shocked, clutching the carcass to my chest

I emerged from the rubble

I knelt and held the body in my arms

I hushed and cooed as spit bubbled up from a teething mouth.

The moment writhed and thrashed in death, soaking my dress in blood and voided fluids.

The young body, now a young corpse, fell from my hands.

I beat my breast,

I tore at my cheeks

and you gently brushed my hair to the side.

I will not evoke Samson and Delilah when I speak of what you did to me

Your hand in my hair was dripping with honey, longing and want

and it stuck to my cheek and spilled all down my front

soaked into the sleeve of my white dress

as the corpse at my feet continued to leak.

The stains set in as I left you at the disaster site

I began my tramp home in the new day dawn.

Flies swarmed the holes in my face

begging, pleading, telling me that they, too, wanted to taste the sweetness of my honey

And the salt in my blood

I shuddered and laughed, I told them there was little left of me to give.

Shattered, dazed and dripping

I came home under a sky of expired pink

I shed my clothes on the floor

I avoided my image in the mirror

I slept alone

As I pulled the dress away from my cheek, I realized she was ruined.