Letter to Lucy

The words that drip from your two lips
Taste like divine promise, like milk and honey.
Like sweet caramel tulips
That bloom lavishly in the winter,
Too delectable to follow Father’s rules
Or mama nature’s truth.
You taste like my future,
Like everything I never knew I wanted.
But you feel premature.
Like a cheap knock off,
You taste like you bought my soul
Without actually winning it,
Like even though I feel your kisses on my senses,
I itch at the thought that
This is actually to your benefit.

I flinch at the possibility
That you don’t know regret.
You are too comfortable with your impulses.
I thought your chaos was beautiful
But you also seem fond of law and order,
You seem fond of shackles and torture
With no space for repentance or mercy or sorrow
Or fighting today to save tomorrow.
You seem quite relentless
In your thirst for my affections,
One might even call it desperate.
You feed my cravings without my asking
But ignore my hunger,
And I have begun to wonder
If I  am just another item on your menu,
Another box on your checklist.

I thought your melodies blessed my ears,
But the tones in your voice are like acid.
I was convinced your intentions were to break my chains
But now I know:
They turn you on.

You do not provide nutrition.
My ache never fades,
It just fixes on the pleasantries of your whispers.
You smudge the stain of sinner on my soul,
But you never meant to heal or satisfy
This self-sustaining appetite,
Or remove the bandages you nailed you to my flesh
To hide the bruises you leave me.
You adorn my spirit and mental
With wounds that never heal
And compulsive solutions to
Crucibles and curses
That only came to me
Because I went chasing them.

Your lips, soft as clouds,
May help me forget.
Your body may sing with life
Ignorant of death, 
But I feel the silicone in your chest,
The foundation on your scars.
The Light has exposed your makeup and wigs.
I’m beginning to see who you are:

A distorted reflection,
A shadow, a siren,
A dealer of makeshift perceptions.

I know what lies beneath the skin of the serpent--
The unwilling servant.
You are the harborer of my destruction

If I give you the permission.

-Letter to Lucy

Benjamin Raji
2.4.16