A Mouth Full of Roses
I spoke of you with a mouth full of roses, even when everyone spoke with a mouth full of stones. Stones chewed up and covered in magma that still boiled over weeds you planted in their gardens. I spoke with blooming flowers whose roots threatened to burst from my chest, roots deep enough to grow on their stones.
I spoke of you with the smell of roses on my breath. With velvet petals for lips, lips that only wanted to crown you with roses. Every word I said of you was bathed in perfume. Each one fell softly in their stony hearts which got colder, it seemed, with the more petals I threw. I tried to speak of you with a mouth full of roses, but ended up spitting out thorns.
Thrones that cut deeply into my lips, into my throat – into my chest. And you bathed the wounds in salt water and lime, like a sodomized cocktail. I accepted the pain, like a masochistic bird flying into the same glass window time after time. A bird of sorrow who saw the glass, yet loved it so that it crashed into it over and over in the hopes of one day breaking through.
I spoke of you with an anchor on my tongue. Every word I said sunk me deeper, with you and with them. I carried the weight in my mouth hoping I could anchor in your shores, but ‘twas the tale of a shipwrecked sailor that came to be of me. And with every word, I didn’t know if you were drowning me or if I was anchoring myself.
I spoke of myself with a mouth full of arrows. Each and every one dipped in my own poison concocted from the demons that followed in the shadows, and the ammo you gave me. Each arrow was tied to my body so that when it burst forth from quivering lips it returned and pierced my skin.
I spoke of you with a mouth full of crowns. They pricked the roof of my mouth as the venom within me spurted the pain you’d planted in my garden. But it also shimmered in the sun as I tried to crown you, no longer with roses, but with gold. Yet, it seems a dyslexic twist of the tongue turned my crowns into crows which pecked at my eyes, freeing the blindness that drove me into the glass.
I spoke of you with a flame in my throat. A passion and an anger twisting into dance as my feelings ebbed like the ocean. A schizophrenic dance to epileptic music that left me convulsing on the floor. The panic, the anger, and the love melting away into nothingness as you put me away in a corner of oblivion and I finally let myself vanish.
I spoke of you with a mouth full of keys. Dull, scratched, and damaged. I frenetically tried to open and lock doors in me to find something that pleased you, yet with every door I opened, you bashed another against my fingers still shaking from panic attacks and now shaking with shocking pain. I spit out key after key yet every door I had displeased you.
I spoke of you with a scythe and a sword, one battled for you and the other was your foe. Metal against metal clanking like a broken-down machine. My sword oxidized, no longer sharpened, the scythe delivered a deathly blow that left little of us. Yet, with the sword I ripped open the laceration and let you bleed out of my body.
I spoke of you with blood on my lips. Blood, dark, and thick, and mine. Wounds and cuts covering my aching body. Blood that came from chewing glass to get through the window. Blood from drowning myself to please you. Blood from the insanity of doing the same thing a million times over yet expecting some type of change.
I spoke of you with a mouth full of stars. Each one growing dimmer as time passed by. I tried to cup them in my hands so they could all see your wonders, but they flickered, dimed, and died. So now I spoke of you with a mouth full of astral gases that pretended to be shining stars where there was only darkness.
I spoke of me with a tomb in my gut. I sentenced myself to death while speaking of you with a mouth full of roses. My roses turned to thorns now covered by their stones and your weeds which ye all planted in my garden. I choked on my own blood, and poisoned myself with my own arrows. I swallowed the glass, the scythe, and the sword. I spoke of you with a mouth full of roses, and now all that’s left it a mouth full of thorns.
