The Tugging

I feel a butterfly tugging, a monarch
of sinew, the mucous arm of the husk,
the cocoons’ warmed & hollow beckoning:
just one more dream.
I follow the first rays of sunlight
out into blue, grey, & green
like a Suzanne Vega song,
a Kerouac humming
on a wide & open road.
Lured by a first glimpse,
until I am strong enough to let
go, & no longer need the thread
To lead me out. I grow outwards
like a fiery crown, afraid to look down,
to see the world offered
like a plum.
The rare softness of damage,
I remember, like a bruised strawberry, the
sweetness is fermented & bloody.
Numbs the tongue so that resistance
becomes like language: easily
drowned out, gagged or confused
by the excesses of darkness.
Frightened of true
speaking, or speaking Truth,
our own in particular. In glances
off armor, off convex & mirrored souls,
the sole reason for flying is not
for fear of dying, but freedom to
love not so lovelessly, to live outside
the smallness of a body,
to not bruise so easily.
Wet between fingertips, the membrane
of birth, new ideas, of my Self,
dry their wings in sunlight.
A space without earth is
harder than it looks.

Lindsay Rose (c) 2008