I am a makeshift martini
and a hot mess,
a split seam
in a velvet dress.
I curve like an odalisque
Ingres never knew—
watched,
but never witnessed,
beautiful,
and bruised.
I have swallowed
whole Septembers,
breathed them into fog,
tasted the bittersweet whisky,
Islay rain and peat bog.
I light a room
like candlelight
and burn
the same way too—
completely,
without apology,
leaving nothing to undo.
I am the scent
of an orangerie,
bitten fruit
and black lingerie,
a marble goddess
after dark,
all flesh
and stone
and heresy.
I am a holy book
bleeding,
with pages left out
in the rain;
every prayer returns altered,
blurred by water,
ink, and stain.
I am the last glass
at midnight,
half-poison,
half-perfume;
the kind of thing
they swear against,
then follow through the gloom.
I am a Bacchanalia
of the mind,
all fevered
gold and blue,
a riot dressed
as poetry,
a reckoning dressed
as rue.
I am Sappho’s
missing pages,
those verses
no one saved—
lipstick on a cigarette,
brilliant, and untamed.
I am a tesseract
of shifting light—
every facet
a different sun,
every sun
a different night.
