The unedited exposé on a posturing before it rained.

Death. You smile when I say it. It is something you have heard me whisper too often and now, it is just a word. I should put it aside like a wrapper when morning rises and everyone kneels before the twisted sheets. I should be silent.

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Look at me. Better still look at my eyes. Do you see yourself in the gleam of my iris? Are you pretty? I really want to see which part of your body you hide the most; the part that tells the truth or the part you lie the most with. If my words bother you, I'm sorry but your headphone is on the floor and that seems like an invitation to exchange words.

Death; is it a person dressed in black with a scythe gripped in a skeletal clasp? A word held on the tongue like communion after the sacristy has been mopped silent and the amens have found a space near the altar? I don't know but you say nothing and this is supposed to be a conversation between two people.

I am not mad, at least not yet, at least not enough to warrant a chain on my ankle and a razor on my scalp. I can still sit before the therapist and try to understand why she has no pictures of herself in her office. Do not look at me like that. Someone was bound to notice. She was beautiful but she never frowned. Her smile crawled all over my skin like lice. They made my scalp itch and my hands twitched to touch her skin around her throat and squeeze gently, just to see how long she could keep up the charade.

Do I have your attention now? Murder brings the best in man, don't you think? You want to do good when you see your neighbour come out of his house, walking with the limbs of pall bearers and speaking with the lips of his wife's tears. You cannot cry all that tears on the wet earth, not now. I said wait until your own time come. Will you weep when you leave?

Push the lighter across the table. I want to see if the table will scratch the skin of the lighter or if someone has been dragging a knife across my face. I feel torn between here and beneath the tree where fireflies hold their song and dance and my feet dig little toeholds to this earth. I want to stay but across there's a river that sings to me of yesterday and today is not yet at its end.

Do I speak funny? Are you even listening? Draw out the stool and stretch your legs. Did you listen to the first paragraph of my thoughts, when it was still clear what I wanted to say? If you did, can you remind me? I have forgotten some of my memories but that is not important. I had a dream, a weird one. I remember it now, in a way and it feels dank and sour on my tongue. I should have drank the wine. Finished it with the yoghurt. The taste of life sometimes gives me a pause. The sweetness is sour beneath the tongue and tasteless after it has been swallowed. We call it satiation.

Some philosophy, I spew now. Death cannot be pushed aside like a curtain into a bedroom filled with the bones of broken stories hammered together into a semblance of nude sweat and hungry repose. Where is my panties and bra? If I shrink into the covers and shrink the covers into the shadows embracing the wall, will you leave me alone? Or will you still try to dig into my flesh and pull my spine through my navel?

Silence is golden especially at night when dust is stained by moonbeams and a scream lasts longer than laughter. The silence is soft as mayonnaise and fresh eggs sitting on a kitchen counter in the afternoon light. This is how it sometimes begins and then everybody is a friend and they remember my name. Death is a kiss beneath my gown and it burns my lips like holy wine and the cross during lent.

Are you going to leave me here? I'm yet to begin my story but you claim the end as your own story. Are we Siamese twins or did someone lie in my name? There is too much hurt on the neck of broken bottles. Hands that grip and lips that suckle do not tell us of jagged edges that shutter lanterns and soften lullabies made by fluttering moths when the moon is high in the sky.

I speak in weird ways. Some of the words are lost in your brain and I cannot retrieve them but your own story is locked in my chest like bread eaten without water. Someone asked me why I'm sad and I say, is sadness not as empty as death or are they filled with empty words only? I do not have the answers. You are asleep? Is death an old friend?

The therapist looked at her watch for the umpteenth time. In my head, the wristwatch is cracked against something cold and she does not forget to smile. When I asked her if I'm doing fine, she asks me what I think of my father. Her lips are tight and the laughter trembles but the congress of voices in my head does not tell me to help her. We have our own battles. I sipped water and thought about my hands.

Will you listen or you want to go home? Take my hand and rise from the floor like beaten dust. I will rise with you or resist the sun and become a weightless object in the sky. When death comes, it points to the soil with long shovels and upturned weeds. Death is the end except when the boat is upturned and the empty river is silent with sad songs. What am I saying?

Who wrote the story and left out my chains and shaved scalp. The witnesses of my persecution are in jail or coalescing six feet sunk. Look at the sun rising on some but where are the selves that told me this is a prophecy? My body is slack and the smoke curling from my lips is curing me like ham. Who said death is a god? Bring him to my table and tell him to eat and be silent.

We smiled at each other and the tears glistening on your glasses rim touch my lips in our embrace and we became still. If my heart beated for that second, I would have learnt a new song but we are men and women of repetitions and someone is coming home with bread and butter. You poked my chest and stepped into the light. I have not finished my story but

I have to go. Freedom calls my name from a shortlist of winners and I know that if I speak, my words will shelter the ashes of old suns, find a new world to build them again and let them shine but I cannot speak. I hide my words under my ribs and let my silence slide into your DM. Hi, can we talk? You called my name but I'm a ghost trying to remember the name of the street where he got lost and the bedpost where her name was carved. What are you looking at? Did death speak to you too?

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I wrote this half asleep and I am not editing. I have been reading some sad stuff. I need to be careful before I lose myself again. Touch me here.

©warpedpoetic, 2019.