I'll always be the villain in someone else's story. Many someones, in fact, because I exist: a single entity unreliable, irresponsible for being responsible to myself and my mature herd like a quokka, dropping certain vulnerabilities for the hunters so I can run away and breathe another day. I value only the eyes I see.…
I am fully woman always a daughter. Always looking up at wings, blue sky, the solitary moon, never craning down to stare at fertile soil. My neck doesn't bend that way. As far as I'm concerned, this is it. The end of the (pathological blood) line. Ragnarök. Armageddon. My ancestors do look down. There's nothing…
I am the bird that swallows your seed. I am the thorn that pierces the husk. I am the path leading away from every one of your fenced-in gardens. I am the dusty road desiccating your calloused farmer feet. I am the rider on a flight of wind far from hands that would throw me…
Self-inflicted sterile, so my beauty is just a fairy glamour. I feel safer. Stranger, I will never bear your tainted legacy no matter how firm you insistently thrust. Assail me with your crooked mast. Breach my jetty. I may crumble and bleed but I will not die by your parasitic hand in all the days…
Volcanic ash brings forth life: fertile for green grass, but I am the obsidian shard wedged in the slope, sharp glass cooled too fast. Heat rushes from me like undulating fog storming into the ground beneath my high heel. I poke holes in the growth and laugh. See the reflection of what you used to…
A cave that seems a stone’s throw wide feels safe, a haven from searching storms, until curious children hear the clatter of the chasm paddle-pressing the pebbles down a flat scale, descending to a baritone staccato echo only a wraith hidden in mist could purr. Hours pass until a hollow plop unveils the dark rippling…
It was nice in the dark with fabric softener filling my breath and the quiet with snuggles, self-soothing like my momma taught me when I'd scream for company. I learned to love the silken dark both warm and cold because it was safe and never confronted my comfort with expectations. But I was left without…
Daddy's been dead for 20 years. Sometimes I feel I'm still stuck at the age he left me. Eleven years old right after my first period. It's interesting he chose to take his own life right when I entered puberty. Maybe it's coincidence. But from my perspective, he didn't want to meet teen me. Not…
TW: sexual assault His gaze appraises her meat seems quite sweet: apple butter stirred out of the sun in steady shade at 70 degrees all year 'round. Undamaged, well-preserved for his eyes, His eyes, because other men are not visible in the vicinity. Her eyes dance wildly away from his, but her view doesn't matter:…
Dragging arms under shadows of cedars, the string-torn marionette finds comfort in the darkness of webbed branches blocking lunar spotlights from shouting her position: here, knee inverted like a bird, there, arm twisted behind back, now, neck at ninety degrees, then, spine stretched under split legs. But all the pain of twisted threads is worth…
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Saralyn Caine Poetry 