Lost in the unending night
of his gaze,
I believed him when
he whispered in my ear.
I let his chaos close around me
like a fist.
Ensconced in this void,
I breathed little—lived on dreams as
white flowers bloomed in my belly, thinking
of lips, painted by vanilla vodka, a violin’s curve,
a world of strange and beautiful magnets,
governed by balance.
He was the king on a toppled chair,
his tumbledown tower at his feet.
He gave me an orchard of rotting fruit, and
seven years of bad luck
because I didn’t love him.
Blindfolded, I unsheathed my swords.
The hand opened, a flat palm, pale in the twilight.
Alone, I walked the shoreline, strewn with wreckage,
through the gate to the garden of bones.
Jessica Drake-Thomas is a poet, fiction writer, and PhD student. She’s the author of Burials, a gothic horror poetry collection. She’s a poetry editor at Coffin Bell Journal.