Galatea
I willingly
set my flesh
to clay. Like
ivory
draped in silk.
Or veined marble
carved to life.
Onyx
in ruin.
A paragon.
He moulds the
untouched earth. Like
his chisel isn’t
meant
to mutilate.
He takes clumps of
skin and muscle. Gnaws
at my bone. Eviscerates—
me.
At every score, the
stone rebuffs him.
Impervious
to his assault.
I am
ossified. Like
the wintry surface
of the ocean.
A failed
armature. Ice
not rubble—
aborted.
Intractable.
Almost
He tells me I’m beautiful but I cannot hear it. No, I correct him, just cute. Cute and beautiful, he says in a voice that sounds true but ominous, like standing on the edge of a halcyon cliff. Look at my hair, I laugh after a night of bodies grinding, skin still damp. It’s almost perfect; it usually gets so mussed up. It’s beautiful, he says, as if in earnest, his voice so sweet and gentle I almost believe it. almost. No, I say. He sighs now, and I feel the heaviness of it. You never let me tell you you’re beautiful. I say nothing but I feel a shift, seismic, the low groan that signals the avalanche. He stops saying it now, bowed by my resistance, the loss more resonant than I imagined and I miss the sentiment: the lies, the sweetness, the earnestness. Too late, I see the shadow of the fault line, its seamless, silent rupture. And I am left with an echo of a sweet, gentle voice I could not hear.
Hazel
She is becoming
the attunement I seek.
The white noise from the TV
recedes into the background
as the luminescence of the filament dims—
the encroaching black night
held back by the armour
of a soft coat,
a warm breath,
and a gentle purr.
