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For the Leaping Tongues of Fire Women - Text

Something beautiful to stare at from a distance
You think beauty such as this is fragile, delicate, in need of your big hands
Hands to cover, cradle and protect the compromised state you seem to have assumed of me

Beauty like mine is none of these
I am leaping tongue of fire blinding beauty
Astoundingly awe-inspiring with ferocity

You think me weak little womanly thing
To bend me back to break me
So beautiful you must destroy it

What? With your ghastly brute strength?
Strapping muscled force?
There is nothing delicate about your scent
Musk of violence, simply out to destroy everything you touch

Could you be childlike again and touch me curiously?
Touch my skin with your lips to taste me,
Saving teeth for something more suitable to crush in your jaws

The ugliness of your ignorance is unbearable
To feel the lash of your carelessness
Assuming my grace and abundance is a streak of fragility

Could you remember, eyes shut
Veneration of your mother
She was once dancing dandelion
Woman of joy and rapture
Made beautiful, forged by fire and flame
Force and resistance
I can smell the perfume of her sex on
Your skin, amniotic fluid scented

You were delicate
Once so pure
Can you remember the way momma rubbed her belly?
You beautiful
Resilient, fragile, strong
Could you remember when your hands were less brutal?

I could never break you

You assume to be the only piece left missing of me
I am forever incomplete to you
I must make you feel useful
Holding me together with the way you find yourself around me

I
Hope you remember when I give myself to you
That you take no prisoner or ruins of war
This is no leaky faucet for you to plug up

I did not come here for you to save me.

Reduce yourself; shrink back to human having a connection with another human
I have survived death in ways you will never have to think of contriving
Having ingested hemlock-laced violations that wanted to kill me

Is this why you cannot fathom discussing the uncomfortable?
That you assume to know the suture to wounds you’ve never studied?
Try surviving making love to a woman full of life
Making your physical knowledge useless

Asking you to understand this place I am taking us to
Asking you to stop doing sex like it’s a favor
Asking you to trace the scars on me
So you can understand how well I heal

Man of conquest
Boy accustomed to melting toy solider
There is nothing here to murder
There is too much fertile here
These legs rooted deep in the ground I stand on

I suppose you are used to being sand
Getting into everything and everywhere
Filling empty spaces

I am impermeable
I will only let you visit
Come hither and recognize I am woman
Whole
Complete
Capable of falling apart
Just to come together improved and better

Without you.

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