Showing posts with label Stronghold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stronghold. Show all posts

Thursday, January 16, 2025

The Knife Flower

 

There it was

sticking up from the soil

like a skeletal hand from the crypt.

 

I didn’t expect it,

and to be honest,

I had stopped looking down

for quite a while.

 

It split my heel open

and curled around my ankle—

how could I

let it do me like this?

 

Strong

hold.

 

And now,

this ghost snake

has coiled around my insides—

my demons

 

barking out

ancient names

as if they’re in charge.

 

I can’t stop the tremoring

of a thin flame running through me,

a living Siberian ice maiden

with mercury blade.

 

It seems

this grief has no rules

and neither do

the nightmares I feel condemned to relive

 

while the mirror of my self-respect

asks me

if I really want to keep

doing this to myself.

 

Do you?

        Do you?

                Do you?

 

Just

stop.

 

Stop.

 

But, torment, too,

has no rules

when you’re split in two,

 

offering no answers

to questions

I can’t quite

bring myself to ask—

 

the mirrored me

begging to fracture completely

the us

I am

 

or bury the pretty,

dead-white, petal fist

in mudblood

 

until I am whole, and strong

enough,

to crush it

 

again.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

OLN #376

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Trap Door





I have a demon for sale

but it will cost you
more than
you are probably
willing to pay.

It has already
bled me drier than a
dead president’s kiss,

and still I owe.

I go
to great lengths
to starve it,

try to keep it at bay—

this drunk dial
sober reality
I try wishing away—

close the trap door,
cut it off
at its legs,

squeeze-close
the cracks
in my armor, again,
from the fray.

Because
when you love
something broken

you break

and you break
and you break.


© 2014 Jennifer Wagner



For dVerse Poetics Grace offers us the work of conceptual photographer Brooke Shaden.


Note:  I took some artistic license with the word "trapdoor."  I separated it for dramatic emphasis, in case anyone was hung up on the spelling, ha.  But dictionary.com says it can be "trap door" too, so maybe it's okay anyway.  Thanks for reading!