I fell into the darkness
Where my true self lived
A creature of voluptuous hungers,
Silken black hair,
Silted dark eyes
And curves that swayed
With every step.
What was this? How had she gotten free?
I clutched at my white starched collar and coffee stained apron
In matriarchal revulsion
-That whore-
I thought I killed her
A hundred times
Buried her deep in unmarked graves
Yet here she was again.
Smile winking at me
In cream and secrets
Glossy damp crimson lipped
Over her freckled shoulder.
She kept walking,
Giggling as she bent to blow at a dandelion star,
Her pink hairless core
Winking at me
From a Venus fold
As soft and wet as a rose
In gratuitous bloom.
I turned hot with all the shame
She didn’t feel.
Before she danced through the dark,
Past a parade of masculine
Teasing skin
between motes of light and dark
Shameless in her appetite.
I had no knife to silence her
Here in the dark
Only truth
Whose wounds bled deep
In me
But left her
More free than all the starch
I’d used as armor
For my fears.