"Take your punishment."
I am punished for wearing
my punishment too well,
the flogging scars blended
under buttercream layers
of Jezebel foundation.
I bear up under the years,
and the casual and too quick
see damage yet to be wrought,
merely because I thought
good might happen for good done --
inconsequentiality
laughable to the silent ones
whose eyes gleam,
red berries in the sharp holly.
To incur anger
for contending that those
whom we call simple
may be the wisest of all!
I am well, and that does not sit well.
I am superfluous, a vegetable
in a garden among many --
a mirage to those
in an unceasing search
for fresh blood,
for the meat that steams
in Spring morning air.
They mentioned seeing something there,
then shook themselves from me.
Imagine, if it consoles,
my branches laden with frost
lacquer and diamond shards
killing my blossoms and buds --
the beauty in extremis
may gall, but is it not enough
that this year, too, may prove barren?
Leave me still then,
among the others.
I will shatter with them
when the storm comes,
and leave to our tormentors
a world of splinters and scoured air.
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