letters in an empty room (part 5)

(part 1)
(part 2)
(part 3)
(part 4)

I've gotten used to waking up
With overeager houseguests preening at my hair.

I dare not scream,
Knowing what tonic knots of thread
Each time are poured unto my throat
Like an ungentle mother who
Takes her child by the jaw and
Pinches
Her mouth open to
Instill the bitter pill to the unwilling
Patient who knows no better.

I dare not shake them,
For as I have made you my art, am I not theirs?
Though I can never hope to be so gracious a subject as
Thee, my sickle-sweet Cyanne,
I can swaddle myself in
The silken pretension
That I am worth a tenth as much.

I dare not deny
The kindness of their comforter,
A homely nest nightly budding bigger,
From silver strands
To mattresses
To the kind of princess-like canopy cover which
I wonder if even you, through my glass-spun sanctum.
Would not harbor envy of.

She is a frequent suitor in my dreams,
The weaver gourmand,
Whose ruby eyes are seared like sunlight even in my waking gaze,
And whose uproarious voice echoes in my ears like a case of tinnitus
Turned terminal.

She tells me how she can be my savior,
Of how she can evict the beast,
If only I
Through one more mourning's
Indecision
Allow myself to meet her.

Take that, o ravenous creature,
Ye parasitic cannibal that
Gnashes at the chambers of my heart.
At last I kept her from defiling your shell
With her lascivious salivation
And in revenge she scrapes my body
Madly against the very thorns I cast to keep her out.

What have I done, she screeches,
Through fits of tears and my
Surmounting weakness.
She screams of purgatory
To which you are twice now condemned,
That I am equal to the Gorgon,
If not the devil,
And it is through the grace of those indulgences
That I must see you to the glowing gates.

And for a moment, I believe her,
And in her hypnosis forget
Which of us it is
That I was meant to keep away.

My apologies mean nothing, I know
For I cannot tell which
Of my two natures begs the most confession.
So for both at once I shall atone
By going now
To meet that
Ungentle maker
Who pledges me that I
The creature and its keeper
May have some place inside her grand design.
By now my bed has been made up for me,
And each morning sticky-clings like
I have only ever always wished you did.

So good-bye, my
Sweetest of Cyannes.
I will pester you no longer,
Except for in the adulterous bordellos of my mind.

Where I am to end up,
Only the weaver knows.

(end)