catching flies / Elle Provolo

catching flies

Elle Provolo

I stay awake until I hear the last fruit fly hit the tape

and I wonder if its last thoughts were

a memory of sweet flesh, the apple in a serpent’s eye.

I watch my window draining light

until it no longer speaks in the cool

whispers of the moon’s secrets and it burns rose colored

streaks on my walls, a

reminder that its maker is made from fire.

I call out your name

I scream it until the room is engulfed in the flames of

my own hunger but I realize I

am a forest, a fallen tree is not heard if you aren’t there.

I strip away my clothes

my body’s vulnerability a shadow of the woman whose barren

figure waits to be filled by a deity w

ho knows only emptiness,

I am no god, a fiend fueled by destruction.