Leigh Fredericke

To be loved is to be known, to be known is to be treasured, to be treasured is to be remembered, and to be remembered is what makes you real even beyond death. So on and so forth it goes, a never ending circle intertwining lives with messily tied bows of twine and catsgut.

Do i need to be softer to be real? Need i sand down my edges and soften my sharp points until i fit comfortably into your hands? Must i fundamentally change everything i have been and will be to be seen and to be loved.

I could carve my skin apart, rip out my liver, and feed it to the eagle everyday. I could shred my atoms until i have become what you want. Until i have atoned for my sins, until i have shed my rock skin and become soft and malleable under you.

The idea of it sickens me but perhaps that is just another part of me that needs to be changed. Perhaps, I rejoiced in my thorns for too long. Spent too much of my pride on my ability to bloom beneath mouldering wooden floor boards, to be an unkillable weed that burrows and expands and lives despite it all.

I hope my new body will forget my rage. Wouldn’t it be lovely to still wish to be a wildflower with velvet petals and curved leafs, clenched in the fist of a babe. To be a flower half wilted, yet so treasured, carried home to be presented to blushing mothers in joy. That even in death, I will have some purpose. And I will have what i want.

I want to be adored

I want to be treasure

Would my nieces scramble to get pieces of my clothing or jewellery or something to remember me by?

Would my friends find themselves subconsciously looking for my face in crowds before they remembered it would never be there again?

Would my parents speak for the first time in years even if it was just to arrange my funeral?

Would my brother come back home to see me off?

Maybe i was the sacrificial lamb you raised

To slaughter and cook on the fourteenth day

Eat all of me and smear my blood on your doorframe

So your god may pass over our home easily

Why would gods fury pass you over, after what you did to me?

What power do you have to making the all knowing unable to see?

Did my blood hide you from the sins you commit?

Were my broken bones not proof enough of every blow you’d inflict?

I hope i haunt you as a heart beneath your floor boards and boots

i, who only in death, was pure enough to have any valuable use

My bones ground to fertilise the dry soil and my blood a final sacrament

For you to once again swallow me whole and attain your enlightenment

I am but a whisper on the wind that searches through the land of Egypt,

Collecting innocent souls on my journey to seek justice from my own weakness

I will be the breeze on your window sill and the leaves on your door step

And with every breath you shall fear that I will make if your bitter last

I shall be the shadows and sounds you hid from as a child,

I will be the snarling beast you run and cry from in the wild.

I am the figure you cannot seem to catch at the edge of your eye,