Apology

If your name has ever spread itself across my blank page,

seeded blackberry jam coloring and staining,

basting it with body and soul,

I ache for you,

stripped and strapped to the operating table,

subject to the consumption of your exhalations as fuel for my pen,

as spirit to flood a lifetime

of commas,

consistencies,

I ache for you,

light a votive for you,

but my sobs kill the flame.

This curse is nothing but a mediator,

a lurid, lingering ghost, lying between our feet,

this curse of the internal twisting and writhing itself external,

bruises, burns, broken bones resulting only from endless mulling,

from having too many words and prophecies bobbing up and down in my soul sea,

nauseating

and ultimately,

sinking.

My reductio ad poeticism rises from its place at our heels to drive a crucifix between us,

and my devotee tears stir all my suffering,

all my love, into a martyrdom,

a sacrifice to a necessity.

When you read my words,

falling from my penitent eyes as waxy, Magdalene melodramas,

do you feel more alive, or less?

Chloe is a 21 year-old writer from Baltimore, Maryland. Her piece, 'Parts, Never a Whole', was published UMBC's creative arts journal, Bartleby.