Reveries of Heresy

There is something eerie about the soft toys and baby dolls I once found solace in— almost as if they are watching me, whispering curses in my ear as I slumber— as if something—someone— burrowed in. Their button eyes glisten like damp stones in moonlight, almost blinking, inching closer (no, closer still), their silence clotted with motive. I ache for a lullaby, but it gurgles in reverse— a golem in a god’s grip, imprinted with a witch’s palm. When did innocence go awry? When did the doll’s seams begin to fray? When did hope start to falter— mould nesting behind princess wallpaper, the lace of mildew woven into dream-time? —— Time, collapsed like lungs. I find my body curled in a fridge, knees tucked, frostbitten fingertips— beside a carton of milk, curdled, rancid— expiry date: June 2016. Door slammed shut— sealed from within. —— How to break the hex? Hazmat men splash blood on the witch’s dining room walls— a cleansing ritual, blood unwriting blood. But her secret bedroom is impervio...

My thoughts of you flutter, soar, hover— vultures circling bone, a tiger prowling amidst the grain, stalking scent. Bewitched, I trace your name endlessly in blood: each letter a hex etched into the core of an ancient sycamore. I linger my palms over your flames, blistering with longing. Your aura seeps into my veins, a writhing presence coiling in secret chambers. I abhor you for summoning this sea of wings and teeth— locusts brooding within my ribs. I yearn to wrench this blight from my marrow. I’m the leaf, whirling, at the mercy of your tempest. I’m the umbra eclipsing your enfeebling rays. I worship at the feet of your shrine— shatter it, then weep, as I glue it back together with blades of caresses. You’re the cherry pit I sink my fangs into— syrupy crimson cyanide. You’re the bramble threading through my flesh, blooming with thorns I can’t bear to trim. You’re the tide pulling me under— I surface, only to remember I was born to be engulfed. —— Sometimes I think I’ve untethered, ...

Tangle clots the sewer drain. Fluids spatter your sheets— last rites for ghosts who never waved goodnight. A moth-eaten lampshade flickers, casting shadows that twitch— memory’s nerve endings. The soap bar: cleft, sullied— once-pure, now blooming canker. The carpet: strewn with nail clippings— dead crescent moons— aching to swell into fingers that might grasp the corporeal. The remote, oil-slicked, passes between Cheeto-dusted palms. Static-fed prophets chant glitch-tongue verses to spectral flocks. In the attic, a TV drones to ghosts engrossed, slumped cross-legged, regressed into infants. Its murmurs bleed through the beams— a hemorrhage of screams (or is it laughter?) You hover by the doorknob. (Pause.) The tea’s gone tepid— milk blossomed into slivered scum. The front door stays sealed. Petrified in this liminal purgatory, you suffocate beneath the weight of lives un-lived— a frozen channel locked in standoff with inertia. But the barrier di...

How can a  vine thrive— groping blind along the trellis, starved for a flicker of sun in this endless dusk? It writhes tendrils into dust-cracked earth, thirsty for dew in a desert you once called  Eden. It crawls, belly to soil, as you spit on it and name its struggle sloth. “What happened to you?”  you ask— forgetting the seed you  pulped, the shelter you scattered, the light you withheld. Now it melts— shriveled, withered, its belly bloated with emptiness, a husk of what might have blossomed from a cradle of green. And still you sneer: “This is what you’ve become.” Would you say the same to a baby you never held, never fed, never loved— wondering why she failed to thrive? But even a child, abandoned and alone— who’s never supped the milk of life or felt rain trace her downy cheeks— still lifts her arms, instinct tugging her toward the faintest facsimile of love. She mistakes the sandstorm’s sting for golden shimmer in the haze— and confuses salvation with treacle-...

a tender spot in the skull— where the bones never fused after the fall. scattered light flickers, skitters on the rampart (is it mocking me?) one-eyed bunny, crouched still in my childhood closet— a mute witness. the receiver crackles— an imaginary dandy purring, please—(please)—me. a word you forgot (or haven’t learned?) rests on your tongue— no, a  snowflake , melting as you graze it. ⸻ hand-me-downs from a hundred lives, a thousand soiled linens, a million sins— sweat-drenched, rancid. daddy’s evil eye. mommy, who won’t even turn her head as they defile me. the scapegoat— buckling, knees scraped raw beneath the altar. silence: sharp as salt on gaping flesh. blood. so much blood. gushing—gushing—gushing. the endless hole absorbs—absolves—dissolves— names and sins. the little girl swallows it all, so mother and father can stay pure. ⸻ a voodoo doll pierces her doll piercing her doll— needles tranquillising her to sleep.  the beakless, wingless canary tries to run— tries to sc...