The space between my breasts is dark. It’s quiet, full of Never Spoken and Unspoken. The space between my breasts is an uncharted jungle, an unnavigable river. An endless expanse of Me. My center. The space between my breasts is tiny, so tiny, and it’s shrinking growing shrinking all the time—it’s not set in stone. When I put my hand in the space between my breasts I can feel it move. Pulse pulse, I can feel it pulse. In the space between my breasts in the space between my breasts there is an echo. There’s a loud noise that rings out and fades to Never Spoken. There is an echo echo between my breasts, in the space where I am whole.  I am complete in the space between my breasts, in that small corner of myself.

But, in the space between my breasts, there was never room for you. There was no room, even though I told God and Satan there was.

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they fell from sheol but caught themselves 
on the tip of a crescent moon;
dangling,
they held on
until those who had rejected them
called them back with wet eyes. 

Ending:
our heartbeats skate across
cracking ice
together—
i can see into the frozen
underworld
where our goodbyes
are infinite.

—-

Beginning:
our fingertips are blue
and frostbitten,
shriveling and falling—
i can see into the hole
of your mouth
where our future
is rotting. 

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Litany of Beautiful Woman
by R.E. Musekamp (thiswildabyss) 

I am the empty eyesockets of a haunted house. I am the gray spaces of Kansas and Nebraska, a hollow corn silo ringed by wheat fields and sorghum stalks. I am a tumbleweed racing across the street of your goodbyes. Look at me and tell me I’m beautiful. I am the cockroach of the apocalypse, and nuclear waste is a bathrobe over my boiling skin; I’m wearing a radioactive hairnet. I am the spider beneath the bed, lost in lint and lost loves. I am the centipede moving through the dirt, but my legs don’t take me anywhere. I am parched and I am split open. Look at me and tell me I’m beautiful. I am uprooted kelp swallowed by wine-dark waves and siren songs. My heartbeat is a shark’s lullaby. I’m sleeping on a bed of jellyfish carcasses. Look at me and tell me I’m beautiful. I’m the ghost in the attic, the madwoman in the cellar, and the demon at the door. My skeleton is brittle and full of holes. I am fading into the wall. Look at me and tell me I’m beautiful. I am broken fingernails and chipped teeth. My face is an indescribable mess of bruises and blood. I am rapid heartbeats, I am a failing pulse. I’m going, I’m already gone. Look at me and tell me I’m beautiful. I am a cold body in the alley. I am frozen bones in the morgue. I am a dusty brain in the ground. Look at me and tell me I’m beautiful.

I am the voice that scares away nightmares and I am the breast you nurse from. My face is great and terrible and everything you ever wanted. I am soft hands and warm lips. I am the body next to yours in bed. I am, I am, I am. I am woman. Look at me and tell me I’m beautiful.

There is nothing that I can’t do.

But can you look me in the eye and unbreak what’s already broken?

Vespertine: 6 →

His musky scent was the first thing I noticed. I looked up to see him looking at me. His forehead was wrinkled and his mouth was a straight line. Shivers moved over my arms; I didn’t like it when he watched me.

“Reading, Noemi?”

I said nothing. What I was doing was obvious.

My husband held out his hand for the scroll. It was an unspoken command and I wanted to resist. I handed it to him in spite of myself.

When they say to show
and not tell,
maybe they don’t realize
that I’m telling what I’m telling
because showing
would be disaster.