Ogygia

Nobody can save me.
Not from myself, nor the elements.
Thunder electrocutes my heart.

Utterly barbecued
—The grill marks resemble gills.
No breath takes place here.

None at all, no.
I survive by moonlight;
A mirror tacked onto a licorice sky.

They’ll lift me from the rings of Saturn.
Hot and blue.
A froth filled lake baking in a sunset.

They have cut me out.
They have snipped my wires,
And snuffed out my flame.

The spinning candle
Collapsing in its own oil.
Impure and virginal.

My mind is an island.
A forbidden wasteland
Where men go missing.

Their souls are to be eaten.
By the shadows with evil cores.
I am consumed by a daemon.

He flushes my eyes with milk.
I am the caddy for his longing,
Pulled along by the planet of sin.

What if the world were a pomegranate,
And the seeds were pearls of innocence?
Those little exit signs of life blaze at the edges.

My last exhale spools like cotton candy.
In my obituary, they will say:
“She is survived by the very fabric of language.”

But like any material, I will tear,
I will fray,
And I will bleed.

Something broke on the factory line.
I am sure there was never enough time.
The divine chose me to set an example.

To dry the ink on kismet paper.
My voice is lost to the poles,
Encased in ice with nothing

But a razor blade to be sure of survival.
Life hits me like a bull to a red rag.
As I expend all my juices,

I hear nothing but the fruitless cries
Of the strange jam across my breastbone;
My last affectation in this silent cry.