A Warmongering Dilettante

The violent sunrays cracked through my eyelids

At a farfetched rhythm, I was completely still.

You electrified my mind.

In fact, infiltrated it.

Nowhere did I go without being afraid of whose face might emerge

Out of everything known.

The memory pit of unwanted guests.

Of wrong reactions, remorse at first, then completion that makes sense.

You profited from a body without boundaries.

Of a girl whose boundaries had been stolen, commanded and

Re-established by someone she thought she could trust.

You never saw in her a woman, an autonomous being,

No, you detected her weakness and handled her as a good little girl.

Your image of her: a straightjacket.

She sits in coffee shops and cannot stop crying as she stares into the void,

The hand holding her mug, the brew slamming against liquid walls.

The eyes on her, her body can’t stop the evaporation,

The truth-speaking breakthrough, this belittling fear,

The loss of her capabilities, her physical force and presence,

She had become a resigning feather, thinning out, and they would blow,

Blow so hard, blow her into their harsh winds and thunderstorms,

Never letting her go and reach her own shores, no, it was too much fun

Watching her dissolve and lose her will to fight and resist.

You tormentors, you should be illegal, you distribute an annihilating sentiment.

You were eating me alive, and I was fully aware, but my fear had been devoted.

I had to look at your face, no not that one, the real one.

I dove in, muting your facade, and saw how everything collapsed deeply within

As my attention slipped away from you, I saw how you needed to be fed,

How time was running out, how your bonework crumbled to ashes,

And my mammalian hand distanced itself rigorously,

I had witnessed the flagellated regiments at work.

I would not be a part of it anymore, this brutal coral ugliness.

This self-loathing in your own skin, how it becomes all grey if no alien

Colour is injected. It would not be mine,

It would never ever again be my colours you inject

Yourself with, a happiness that is not your own, at my cost and decomposition.

“Portrait of Maudes Abrantes” by Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)