femmes damnées
adapted from Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire
I always felt so bare across form you,
pallid skin and fluorescent glare
I never bothered to conceal the dark circles
I just didn’t mention the cause. You.
Green skies once fueled my dreams,
but now I freeze in avalanches
and I faint under needles
and the water is always poisoned upstream
Did you hypnotize me? I was always
so tired under your gaze, or so high
you had to bring out the chemical restraints
you preferred the leash of my training days
submissive slouch in the winter sunset light,
which pole today, attract or react,
criticizing my new tattoo as impulse
because you’d rather I wore teeth marks
Hippolyta yielded to Theseus,
she traded his hand and all she knew
you would have chosen Phaedra, you
would order Poseidon to kill me, too
My offering to the water god was never enough,
half earth and half fire, mortal gratitude
doused too quickly for an ego
so accustomed to worship in turpitude
“I hope you understand your position,”
the differential disposal of one detail
after another, “context is irrelevant here.”
each path I had cut and crudely mapped
redacted in tones of introspection
and the weaponization of diagnosis as deception
my hands unbound but raised nonetheless,
“Your palms were yours to open,”
pretending that my consent had power
in that room, that I wasn’t
tagged at the ear and branded at the hip
in the stranger’s intimacy of our first hour
“Stop looking at your lap, you are grown,
and I will not indulge you.”
wishing the very fabric of me to come unsewn,
each knuckle pop you’d say, “Look at me. Stop.”
I thought you wanted compliance
but you demanded more, erased my defiance
like you erased my poem on the ward
just to show me who keeps the score
I still don’t know how to move
without all the parts you stole,
I travel with all the baggage you added
and I can only sleep wearing your ghost like a glove
acceptance is the antithesis of shame,
a collection curated and grown one by one,
so you planted seeds in every word
that I would never escape your forest of weeds
I tried to mop up rainbows for you,
I hid in skirts and shrouds,
clocked in for each shift and waited
for you to find me in the crowd
you ordered fate in tablets and capsules,
those prescriptive permission slips
for altered states, pain relieved in portions
because we’re all just foxes, feral, selfish, untrusted
I though crowns came with jewels encrusted
but I rusted from exposure, corroded with barnacles
you shrugged and loosened all my points of articulation
with possessive violence that left me flustered
mastery mixed with memory,
gaslight cocktail laced with new bitters
each session a speakeasy and the bar so tender,
your hands spinning bottles and pouring nothing but doubles
and you called me a bitch but I stayed,
and then you forced me into heat,
held me up all hot and hovering,
only to drop me, “You should be spayed.”
you weren’t worried about my future child,
you just couldn’t risk the distance
and the perspective she eventually gave
when I finally had space to decode your gaze
you sold love as mythology but
you made me your Thursday goddess,
isolated my body from my soul
and decried my allegations as baseless
I was a countdown, edges exploding
and you escorted me beyond the atmosphere
made me feel safe there,
caged in your cape, you suffocated my fire
I dreamed of meeting you,
in any place that wasn’t this stage
I would have done anything you asked
if each performance earned these bruises of praise
you played the victim almost
as well as you played me,
sent me into exile on the high road
and watched me walk away on closed circuit tv.
You drained my rivers and
you drove my fields to drought
then raised my taxes to build me dams
and charged me hourly to seed the clouds
I heard there are caves on the moon
deep enough to harbor humanity’s fugitives
but no solar flare could match
the gamma of your half-life,
no amount of space or depth of rock
could prevent these burns
that always emerge Long after the fact,
and you always deny any association
I could leave your cathedral
but I still carry your Word on my heart
I hear your voice whisper around corners,
haunted by your hymns, only half-remembered.
Monica Deck is an archer, author, and MFA candidate living in the US midwest with her family and cats. She is currently writing her first book, a historical novel that gives her favorite villain the backstory he deserves.
