Hekate
I have broken my back
more times than I can count,
I am brittle,
I crumble with the quake.
My crooked spine hates me
I hate me
‘Stop bending’
‘stop bending’
I could not.
My mother told me
she is sickened by my frown.
It reminded her of being red-wristed sixteen,
and of how I was too selfish to do the same.
But I tried to bleed
I tried to bleed
I could not.
My arms have been torn
from their sockets,
by boys with shy grins
and girls with hungry hearts.
I was doll in a preschool
shoved in the dirt,
forgotten in the gravel.
Don’t get up.
Don’t get up.
I did not.
When I held my hands away from the rest,
a boy told me I was a big deal,
a tête-à-tête between Olympians,
a child of Everest air and the vacuums of space.
But you looked at me like muddy snow—
the ugliest part of winter,
made to freeze, made to melt.
But I am neither
I am neither
I am not.
I am not the visage of your wants,
Your pasts, your futures.
I am a goddess of broken promises and misplaced hope.
Touch me and I will burn off
the whorled identity of your fingertips.
I am a girl of dusty moth-wing skin.
I flutter, strewing powder across sheets,
across pillows,
across whispers.
I shall be my own undoing,
my own saboteur—
you will not touch me.
I am not yours.