On Monsters: Self Reflection / Regis Reed

On Monsters: Self Reflection

Regis Reed

i. when he left you i lifted your sorrow and bottled it like starlight, screwed the lid tight as it would go, and, on nights where the moon has become a black hole, your tears find their home in the space between darkness and the click of a light

ii. on these nights you come to me, your sewn together skin breathing venus into divinity. i gather the pieces of you broken and mended and broken again, i call you holy and transcendent, call to you confidence and sweet fire. i hold you, like all worthy things ought to be, tender.

iii. when morning brushes the tree tops and your heart is cold, decaying in this body you didn’t choose, breaking at the hands of those who made you, i will see you cast in her orange glow and know you beyond that. i will shoulder the weight only words can carry, will speak your truth, all celestial rapture, into existence, and bear witness to all that your kind of magic is.

iv. After, in midnight baths i will look into the water and see your image peering back at me: your strong nose and thick brow, your edges. shards where softness should be, murky and abnormal, uncanniness warped into being and twisted into person.

i will see all the unlit alleys and half-truths you hide in. my fingers will move to touch the surface and the ripples made will break the spell.

v. At the end it will be this: your hands wrapped in mine, the shared understanding that we are one story rising between us like the moon’s sweet shadow. that you are not simply a name in a book, that you are here. are me, are us. and at this end it will be our hands together.

i will vow to see you, and that promise made will be the rapture.