#thethingswesay

My other friend and I, both Warlocks rn: Well duh, they are literally dead things reanimated.

Another friend, doing homework in the call: My guardians are all Exos, so they wouldn't have them anyways.

The same other warlock, bless him: Well there are male ports and female ports.

This is where it really begins—the woman before Eve: winged wraith carrying flame unholy

in her belly, dark and maiden-hungry beast of demon teeth—oh, the tales they tell of you:

the first “no,” primordial exile from the birthing Garden—the first to walk by Tree and Temptation

and Adam—foolish Adam—without so much as a backwards glance: how could she

do such a thing? they wondered to themselves. Dreamed up fairy frights of your breasts—laden

with poison, like your words and your hot tongue and your biting lash of independence: such a nasty

woman, they thought to themselves. Who could leave this Eden, this Adam? What else better is out there?

She must know my mother waits for her each morning—swaddled in plum robe,

perched on the edge of the couch, gazing out the window into the front yard: a patchwork mess

of stubbled grass and withering stalks of lavender belted by crumbling brick and concrete—she must know

because she, little hummingbird, blue-green mass and miracle whirl of flight, dives deep into stone fountain

every morning, knowing that this is no rock of God—no water has babbled from this floorless brook; no flower blooms

in this cracked earth; no sweet nectar dews in the sun or drops here. And still—still!—when dawn colors

for everything, everything. Come make your home in me. I am full of birds— you will never want for twigs, so come build your nests here, come glue a home together with algae and wild moss and phytoplankton—and why not? Any world aching for beauty should crackle and smoke, phosphoresce from end to end of spectral green.

All the bodies I could be, if only I had the time! Perhaps a cavern of gems stalagmiting up to lick the hard palate of rupturing ceiling; or the wet mouth of a stone lion bathing eternal in a park fountain; or even dying stalk of dandelion—time pinwheeling off me at the first brush of child’s carefree gust of air—all this,

i say milk-skin and marrow-heart, two parts sailing ship and one part Gaia conquest.

i say arm of compass split open, crossed-ocean, tectonic-thrumming plates in endless mating dance.

i say bluebrown, hazelgold, every shade of mixed and maybe and in-between.

Why don't you have a boyfriend? What else is your body made for? Why is your heart so cold and wet, a baby bird with feathers too soaked to fly? Why don't you have

a boyfriend? Why do you wear your skin like armor, iron vest, calcite shell of hermit crab? Who hurt you? How do you go about your days unlusted, your nights untouched? What do you wake up for?

Why don't you have a boyfriend? What good is summer heat without sweat and eyes to watch it run pretty rivers down your back? How do you burn without the scorch of another's hands? What fire builds its home in your belly, keeps you warm at night? Why don't you have

a boyfriend? What is your mouth without a kiss, your neck without a bite, or a long-suffering sigh? What good is your womb if it is never going to be a home?

Crow, flighted howl hanging in air, gravity unfettered and fluttering-- omen.