I did

Take a Bite Out of the Apple

poetry

The snake whispered to me she hissed like soft wind weaves through trees she coiled like a secret around my weak and bony wrist. her delicate tail spiraled to hug my intricate fingertip her slow-burn dancing made me feel naked my back was scratched by the apple tree’s veins but my eyes remained fixated on the sliver of the snake she was a fluid like a waving flame; giving off heat too dangerous to touch she glides across the earth as if its cold and dead and hardened ice. a spotlight stabbed a chord into the celebrity of the moon. i was both mystified and confused She turned her mysterious diamond head she told me a secret she said forbidden fruit is delicious this apple is pleading and screaming for your brave and brilliant bite she placed the apple in my hand like a kiss I surrendered and bit hard into that shit. it’s sour internal organs exploded on my lips took about a second for me to do the whole thing in. i even tore and swallowed the stem The snake, she laughed, she said she liked my style she whispered you’re well overdue to run wild tied up in a web of the single red thread. sand evaporates down the hourglass until we all are dead a spider’s art continues even when it’s pulled to break or bend strong women intentionally draw in dread so the worst can happen on their own fucking terms. knowing it will come anyway they grin while watching the world burn they know there’s a calm deep on the ocean floor of their breath coming and going in waves some people say down there it is as dark as emptiness but the snake’s nonexistent fists punched a spotlight through the unforgiving opaque and expanding water sky. swallowing me alive. she morphed into a lighthouse to call me back to life. The Woman Clothed With The Sun bursting with symphonies freed us of painful memories we raised children and softened hardened men in our complex silky webs. we stomped and screamed in a circle until we were purified through sweat we cried for all the times we couldn’t before the times we locked salty tears behind closed doors water can crash or it can flow; choke our throats or snap our bones. I sobbed in sheets of glass. my legs buckled like cliffs eroding reflecting glimmers of starlight on the water diamonds dangling on blades of grass I laughed right in the devil’s face stuffed his body and placed it above my fireplace two opposite poles stretching on the same spectrum at the same pace my arms flew open like flowers blooming in a brainsick and twisted ballet we fell to the dirt and began to pray to no one in particular. I can paint my own final hours rescue myself from a prison tower I refuse to be a fairy tale about braids and princes climbing long hair. the world spins women’s intuition premonition is truth in symbols and visions but I never made the fucking decision to be in such a powerful and painful position The western woman’s vast freedom looks like the impossibility of monster boulders balancing on tiny pointed tips how does so much weight depend on such a delicate toe. she has to learn to slit throats with a flick of her wrist then hang her raincoat sink into the couch, legs crossed watching television smirking. a mischievous vixen inhaling weed into oblivion because fuck you and it helps me meditate we need to return to forests, mountains, vast deserts the true nature of this planet is to move slowly and with intention like the flowing of the snake my head is red with screaming but my hands will never shake burst light through cracks of floorboards sparkling with blood pooling after murder, a tarot card held in the limpness of a lifeless palm. our feet had brilliant minds of their own soul-starved to their brittle bare bones not permitted to use their dancing shoes not allowed to speak up but allowed to be used this abuse can be amusing those dancing shoes, they were dancing fools tossing untamed hair to the angry heart of the drumbeat I am not afraid of pain. the serpent twirls female darkness is magnificent and awful sensing the unseen defined by an expanse of terrifying unboundedness. Am I glad I bit the apple? it freed me of my bleeding shackles I will continue to fight this battle in a war that can’t be won sparks of light in holes of dark draw your shoulders back and down fingernails bleeding in desperate determination growling at the ghosts we’ve been Wisdom told me unveil your cleverness like the Fox. The snake whispered to me she hissed like soft wind weaves through trees she coiled like a secret around my weak and bony wrist. her delicate tail spiraled to hug my intricate fingertip. she talked about the angels they are not what we expect they can be a mangled mess but miracles still ripple outwards to the beating of the drums

“Though her soul requires seeing, the culture around her requires sightlessness. Though her soul wishes to speak its truth, she is pressured to be silent.” — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Estés Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Ballantine Books, 2003.