(1.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To the man
who should have spent
a falling star on someone else<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never meant for you to feel
like you were not enough,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
when I asked you
not to fall in love with me<\/p>\n\n\n\n
it was a declaration of war
against self abandonment<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(on both sides of the gun.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
because sometimes red and blue
just don’t make purple<\/p>\n\n\n\n
only dusk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(2.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
to the man
who broke my champagne body
on his vestal skin
so he could be christened
something buoyant,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
you said my body wouldn’t open to the sun
that mine could only howl at the moon
until my hollow
would become another void for her to fall into<\/p>\n\n\n\n
because yours was a love of distraction
an apology necklace
a melancholy
a scorched earth policy
a vengeance<\/p>\n\n\n\n
an uncompromising search
for an equality of lonely
stemming from trauma’s infatuation
with its unblemished reflection<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and I was just the weapon
you kept pointed at yourself<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a silence you could orbit
a depth you could drown in
a sad man’s back up plan<\/p>\n\n\n\n
how I howled at the moon for years
hoping to expel you from this body
or be expelled myself<\/p>\n\n\n\n
but all that ever flew from me
were glass birds
that sang your barren pasts to sleep
with memories of the tomorrow’s I’d lost<\/p>\n\n\n\n
trying to prove you wrong<\/p>\n\n\n\n
trying to convince myself
you didn’t win
every time another lover’s husk
blew the dandelion dust
from my scorched skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(3.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
to the man
who painted me
into his every self portrait<\/p>\n\n\n\n
as a monument of shadow
depicting not the obstruction
but the memory of light,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
my eyes
were never the color
of a cinnamon winter
nor an oak womb
nor the North Sea at night<\/p>\n\n\n\n
my head
was not a sliver of Eden
behind an alabaster mask
nor a beacon
nor a poppy’s mirage of a barren past<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was not a phoenix
that bloomed from amnion ruin
nor the queen of a heathen’s
wilder epitome of beauty
nor a mountain’s golden bruises<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was just a muse<\/p>\n\n\n\n
lucky to go unseen so by you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Artwork: Of Bloom, By Ben Heart and L.V.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,6],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-benheart","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benheart.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}