Last Night I Was Killed By A Man After Natalie Scenters-Zapico That the monarchs come through our city at all is an astonishment. They are fleeing this country, called The New Death, and our city is a bruise of constellations now made borderlands. Cloud upon cloud of dust have left us decimated, wheezing. We are a country that is dying. The man notices none of this. The yard has not been watered. The rosemary are dying. Sage brushes pulled out weeks ago, exposing worms from the panting soil. I am already dead. The man has hidden me in a history where I have little I can say, save the whispers I reveal to the bartender down the street between glasses of rum & coke. This is death then, even if my mouth is half opened in wait. The man does not question his status. The man says it is late at night and so it is. The man says the house needs sweeping and so he works to rectify that. Grieving isn’t a necessity when there are women to be hunted. Women who will tend to the garden and cook a meal and sweep the goddamn floor. Any woman will do. I wear bells coyolxauhqui torn limb from limb, no one bothered as I put myself back together after countless moons, I managed a walk my face scarred, unrecognizable my skin a topography of injury only when I dared walk through, bells singing my return, was I ridiculed, questioned: ingrata whore caprichosa spit in my face, how I was reminded I deserved this pain how dare I pin myself together sew piece by piece each thread considered, pieces pulled apart again and re-sewn until the heat swells my flesh until I can’t hear flesh welding into stone falling into itself a seed to start again until only my voice clips at the sky 
0 Comments
|
RSS Feed
