Bluebeard - Safiya Sinclair (Jamaican poet)

It’s true I put my head

into the mouth

         of the lion,


touched my tongue to the rough

of his tongue, slicked the dark

         underside of him,


unspooling what nature

demands

of my wanting.


Yes, I watched the false man prowl,

and begged as he starved my wicked

flame from me,


learning to breathe only when

he breathed, until my world was


his, each day was his. His silence

         I longed to set a fuse inside.


         Desire, my hunter.

         My hunger—


Red witch roaming the scorched house

of fires I have been, fires I have built,

and nurtured, all my good days burnt


to guilt and bluster, his good skin stripping,

         that sinful itch.


         What is permanence?


These gashes will heal, eventually. Scratch

of madness teething love, be infinite. But who

         could endure this?


He roars, unblinking, but never releases

         me—

woman turning underpaw,

crushed as a straw doll under


         her longing.


I kiss the bruise. Dress my famished

wound, its heaving. I kneel, he opens.

His cruel mouth a humid snare.


God or devil. Annihilation.

Brute inferno of any feeling—

         I beg you.


         Devour me.







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