Ink On The Skin

Everyone fears Death. They delay him with lotions and potions, with  surgeries and mirrors, chasing younger and  younger faces, as if the scent of their perfume  would keep Death at bay. Do I envy their zeal for life? Death is kept at arm's length, a putrid, masked  figure. His sweet decay breathes warm upon  their necks as they run and run, arms open,  embracing light and sun and love. And I, too, love this life. I love the summer sun and gentle rain, the soft  white snow and mountain range. I love the  people, their kaleidoscope of colour and culture. But I do not fear death. Is that strange? Death feels like an old friend come to let me  sleep. The familiar figure at my bedside whom I  first saw as a child, waiting quietly in the corner,  and somehow he feels like home. I do not want to die. Not yet. There is still so much beauty here: so much laughter,  so much love, so much life. Yet in the quietness of my mind, he waits. ...

All my life called a child, a little girl, a young lady, unladylike. Rebellious, spiteful, wild, unsubmissive. I hate that last word, by the way. Unsubmissive. What they really meant was wild wind beating against ribs, a hurricane trapped in my skin. What they really meant was: I’m small, so let’s make her smaller still. What they tried to do was put a raging storm in a tiny box and take credit for creating peace. What they tried to do was press a wild thing into the ground and bury it under shame until my neck forgot how to lift my head. What am I really? A black hole behind my eyes swallowing  their small minds. A raging ocean breaking in my chest-- black waves swallowing their pride. A fire under my skin that never learned how to go out. A forest fire no rain can quench-- and they are afraid. Afraid of my voice turning against them. Afraid of vengeful tears that don’t ask  permission anymore. Opened wings not for beauty, but for protection, for sheltering innocent souls the...

I want to be angry. I want my mother to feel my anger. I want to open my body like a book of horrors and aim every dagger at her heart. I want her to feel the same red hot blood dripping out of a thousand wounds. The same wounds I had. I want her to cower under the same unrelenting power of my voice that I had once cowered under. I want to be angry at my father. I want his chest to feel the crushing weight of fear, dry mouth and beating heart, anticipating bruises on his back. The same bruises I once felt. I want him to feel the same empty worthlessness, the same endless despair that he made me feel. I want their eyes to fill with burning unshed tears as they swallow the boulders in their throats and choke back their screams. I want to rip apart all my pain into pieces and shower them with all the darkness that they showered me in. But it's a Saturday morning, and the sun is shining. I smell Dad's pancakes, and Mother is singing. 

  They say your eyes are the mirror to your soul. Well, mine are leaking gold. You say I'm made in sin, and have nothing good within, but my Creator borrowed from the stars when He formed my heart. My fists are clenched in darkness. My broken body knows not rest, but the weight of grief tucked neatly in my bones instead. Tears well up and spill down my cheeks leaving streaks of the divine. I am made of something beautiful, something holy, something kind. There is gold leaking from my eyes that brokenness cannot define.