The Eyes
Blinking
in the
Woods
Claire Francis
22
She resides in riddles,
tongue hungrily slinking along cracked, carnivorous lips
and saliva sinking into a pelt like the gold she supposedly
guards.
Her paws pad through throats like a parade,
patronizing and paralyzing and proud of the trappings she
once commanded.
She crawls, coughing, from her crypt –
ticking and ticking through the boredom of time.
She is wily and wild and winged,
and she impresses herself onto triangular tombs in shrewd
self-preservation;
statuesque and royal and ridiculously self-assured.
She is the myth’s siren darling,
hair tripping over birdlike bones
and bloodied teeth sliced by a child’s smile.
She clings to a sea-stained map with no slashed “x,” slit
edges rusty-colored and useless.
Solitude cloaks a mermaid’s wake,
feathered with a selfish hunger
and veiled by wanderlust’s shroud.
Her garbled tongue will lure you close enough to taste her
breath
and she will crumple in her palm your will and words
for once
like a fistful of melting sand,
unapologetic and ruthless and constantly searching.