trouble getting out of bed
ELODIE GRAF
Your brilliance lies
Draped around you in white ruins,
Its arms warm.
If only they knew the price,
For waking up with the columns still
standing,
For unfolding glowing hearts,
For standing temples earnest, bodies
uncloaked,
Lingering, lonely lines
Traced by the mute sunrise. Now
Every dawn brings deep damnation
The sky red as hell and
Red lips, brimming with sin;
It’s mouth opens, and sings
But now you won’t let it in
The pale dark cloaks you, and
Your heart sleeps safely.
The devil laughs at you, in grey, at
This bed, this bed you made.
You blink, and the morning sinks
Into night’s languid embrace.
The mad love song gone by without a trace.
There are sonnets written underneath your
eyelids
In slight green lines, over purple
Speechless as infants.
That spell was so delicate
Now it is broken, and you can’t reach.
They are only in theory now, anyhow:
The words strewn across the floor
Underneath the sheets, in the face of
Every lone figure you’ve passed on the
street,
They were of this world, and you can’t reach
Anymore. The angels sink like sheets to
silence’s floor,
Blazing eyes obscured by white lullabies.
If you could only leave yourself, be yourself
again.
See yourself, and the outside, as it is.
You’ve tried, but
Touching the world, to you,
Is as impossible as touching the sky,
All around you in its blue, gaseous glory
But as remote as God.
And you cast yourself out.
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