whalebeings

It’s not that I want to be like this. 

It’s just that I exist in bits — cells I can’t quite contain. 

And if I can’t, then who can?

Once I was offered a ring and I thought,

What would happen if I committed to him

In a legal and public way? 

Would I suddenly take shape?

Form a new skin to keep my clutter in?

Would I become stronger, more capable in union?

A weight to stop me floating into the abyss.

I wanted to step inside a white dress

And feel the silk meld to my white flesh

To contain me, to root me to reality.

A soul to love, to love me back and 

A hand to hold, always, in our frequent states of

Disarray. 

Ten years should have been enough to know one another;

I didn’t even know myself. 

We came apart in a thousand lethal shards

Inside the tight sheath of matrimony. 

Love, that formless force

Slowly bled out without much fuss 

Sapped by his sadness, stubbornness and lies

And my preoccupation with other lives.

Of course I ripped through the

Fabric,

Woven by another hand

In another time. 

I always knew about the whore who lives inside

Every madonna to varying degrees. 

It intrigued me, the idea that

We should give ourselves to softness

And quell those primal energies, those

Delicious vulgarities

With creamy colours and preoccupations 

With domestic activities. 

Marriage isn’t frivolity; it takes sincerity, strength, 

Faith, foundation, integrity,

Self-sacrifice,

A trade-off I thought I could make.

It was my biggest mistake, 

Preceded by a strange and antiquated ceremony

That in its preciseness and pomp

Took on a kind of silliness,

A sense that we were playing an imaginary game:

Two children in costumes

Making grand promises

We could never keep.