Every night I’ve lain awake
with baited breath.
Shadows flash across
the ceiling as cars
pass by the window.
There is a woman out there,
I know it, hissing at the moon
and clawing her withered breasts.
The blinds are never lifted,
for her eyes are high beams
that would catch me out
if I escaped my own restraints.
She is sunlit lamp shaded
by a stolen skin suit.
I met her once on Ok Cupid
and now she won’t leave me alone.
I had thought she had a most ordinary
trustable face, but it’s the tongue
that gives her away:
a warped, nongeometric tentacle
that flays skin off muscles
and worms through caverns
how sweet it was.
She wants me to kill her,
to carve up her limbs into new flesh,
so that these offspring can grow
into other versions of herself.
Cravings for betrayal
keep her watching,
whispering of her affairs,
lying viciously, and
rending my heart to pieces
with her angelic voice.
Ellen Webre is a Southern California poet greatly inspired by her friends in the Orange County poetry scene and their prompts. She is a regular at the Ugly Mug poetry readings and has been featured there, the Coffee Cartel and Mosaic in UC Riverside.
Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/
