freja-beha-erichsen-arizona-muse-by-terry-richardson-designscenenet-02I used to say
O talk to me
open your maraschino mouth
pull the glazed words out
until they come undone
now I say
keep quiet
stay absent
I have found what I didn’t yet know
standing on the other side of rebuke
we forsake our blazing joy
under the suffocation of those
who demand all of us
and none of us
I spent a life time waiting
to stop hating myself
when the girl with the sparrow in her limbs
took me by the hand and bid me dance with her
entreat I may rinse my history in her cupped smile
held under chin like buttercup tells fortune to
gilded child, with her smoothness and her beguile
latching emptiness and filling it with stars
bursting over us like white flames caution the acrobat
to walk steadier in the marsh of emotion
I didn’t think I could start over, my chapter was
dulled by the passage of hands holding me back
she knew I could
when I lost my footsteps on the other side of rebuke
she picked me up, held me still until my heartbeat
slowed and the music filled me anew