Member-only story
(Un)Balanced on a High Wire
Free verse
Red flutters and streaks through black,
Full-on mental breakdown wearing a top hat,
Eyes wild, brain on fire, won’t shut down at any hour —
Yet I can’t wake from this nightmare,
Pain-induced flares and threads of panic
Shoot through the darkness.
Shoot like a gun.
A gun.
The gun they held to my head,
As they beat me, and fucked me, until I bled.
I bled scarlet red, and crimson rivulets of rage
Ran through the fracturing delta of my psyche,
And all that blood cascading …
While my body screamed.
And I later cried when I bled
Some more, and the germinating seed they’d left there,
Flushed loose, came free, with clots of brown-black
Dead blood.
Dead baby.
But did I cry from grief,
Or from relief?
Not like later again,
Cut sharp, left scarred, ripped apart,
Open on the table, bleeding, bleeding
Could have been my last drops.
A live baby this time,
Alive and needing living for,
And my mind cavorting along the edge
Tight-roping, top hat on head, parasol in hand.
