I sleep on red sheets…they hide the blood.
Dreams cost me death, stripping away my mem-brains, leaving me a savage dual{el} of myself, but somewhere deep I know, I {the merciful self}, home elsewhere; cranial architecture: a garret socket intricately laced with lash buttresses, collecting motes of dust atop arachnid thin linens.
/Lilacs forlorn with rain, rest their heads against a stone wall: honeysuckle echoes through a quarry of twilight striae shelves: root chains through graying tunnels\
I painted a wall red, shade after shade {deeper…deepest…death}, my hands smearing the wall, splattering and dripping along my arms, my face, my clothes. I stripped myself bare and stood before the mass -illuminated- I watched my shadow awaken, stretch, and reach out for me. I kept my distance, but in my gut I felt embryonic ties quickening, and so I gave, and in slow time we danced a war song, and a reconciliation.
I leant my back into the wall, my shadow’s arms wrapped about me -fusing above my sternum- its hands pulling layer, upon dermal layer from my body…the chemistry of blood and paint indecipherable. No pain was wept, not a single breath exhaled, until my veins gave howl -eyes materializing upon sheetrock imperfections, slowly opening, setting their voyeuristic gaze upon me- set to the frequency of wet fingers rounding crystal chalice lips.
:my shadow’s face a skyward angle of silent maniacal laughter and self-inflicted punishment:
I awoke in a sweat, throwing the sheet from my body -it canopied the moon’s light: ballooning around me: casting me in womb- an absentminded hand brushing at the itch of moisture from my hips, sought solace in the curvature of my scream {blood drying, caking my skin}…I, a clay desert, gape mouthed and pleading…
…somewhere…
…an altar of candles slipped a waxen temple…
…cello strings ignited a lovers pyre…
…a dress of bone and nicotine tinged wings bled inward…
E.A. O'Connell
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