creator-turned-would-be-destroyer
“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear”
I hand you the scissors and you skin me alive,
peel me to ribbons,
and affix me to your shiny, plastic box
you lose in the mail.
Someday, the courier will come
and collect me
with a scalpel in his teeth
and a prayer in his jaw
for the emergency extraction.
Someday, the water will no longer run red.
I tuck my nerves back into my split-open stomach
and clutch their electrified ends to my chest,
numbing my fingers on the heady electrocution
that revives my shattered bones.
The steel is back in the drawer, the floor has been swept,
the pyrite shimmers on the counter.
I hand myself off to the seam ripper, and you pry
back open my staples and survey the purulent damage.
Someday, your two severed ducts will be put into motion,
and they will weep for The Insolent Monster.
“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear” -Frankenstein’s Monster to Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
kristina lynn 2024
