As it coos my insides with each twist and convulsion of its sinister tongue, my thoughts are left stranded in the barren sea waltzing with something far more elusive and vile that cannot simply vanish in one’s lachrymose tears;
Be wished away over a few dusty candles.
It plucks at the major arteries that weave endless patterns throughout my skeleton branches secreting such a pure tune.
Such a tune to be heard in elevators or
In the room of a poorly shaven, middle-aged man who lies half-naked atop his Toy Story bed sheets j***ing off to the still frame displayed on the flat screen with sadistic daydreams corrupting his thoughts.
A tune muffled by a child’s headphones who sits slouched beside you at your cousin’s boyfriend’s uncle’s funeral or
In a retirement home.
The kind of tune composed to lure small children into the darkness of a seemingly innocent forest or perhaps a van adorned with the words, “We Have Candy.”
It beats on my ribs preparing for a tribal sacrifice, pounding its chest as if it’s earned the remaining bones to take home to its family;
My lovely bones.
And while I try to force my thoughts atop a seat of a train, or the swings of a playground, I’m simply here, still, at this lunch table with the now brown apple slices Eve so gently placed before me;
Oh God!
Mama.
So badly do I want to breathe into the strange man beside me in hopes that he too, will feel just as debilitated and weak as I do at this very moment,
That, silently, his hair will fall from his beneath his crown and blanket my heart that’s fallen beside his feet;
That this serpent that’s so very comfortably found refuge in the impurities of my bones will now taint his just as it has done to me.
I’ll be the poison in him.
I'll be his self destruction.
But in reality, it’s identified itself in me and I in it and I will never be able to click the “Report Abuse” button or shout the words “Help me, I’m drowning!” because in every whisper, deep inside the epicenter of my beautiful tragedy,
It shows its toothy grin.