I am a holy woman so I danced myself into a stupa.

Twirling my fears into reassuring precision; scalpel in hand, there were monsters under the bed. Even a sheep can bear teeth when underneath your savage.

I know how pain moves me.

Into rhythm.
Into worship.

I am here again.
At my altar within.

The movement of my body calms my mind.
The stillness settles. And memory serves.
Your eyes gleamed with hunger.
Hands reached in possession.
I willingly walked into your prison.
Freedom came at a cost for love.

Bombs went off in Jerusalem.
And babies went without milk.

You had everybody fooled. Including me.

Except for now. I’m burning blue.

You can’t control alchemy.

Behind a curtain.
With your biggest fans a flock of fooled fowl.

The shame in bones bleeds, I placed the secrets of the universe into the palms of your talented hands. The way they strummed my spinal column, I said goddamn in the middle of a church service. The cathedral was quiet between breaths; a crescendo of pleasure interrupts the silence.

Find my skin. Your morphine drip. You needed me.
To contrast shadow. You required me to shrink. Edit. Extinguish. Shovel into guts and plant your seed of doubt and shame. Drowning in your sorrow, only numbed by who you control.

Even people. And me.
With flecked spirit spinning.
A different page than most.

I liberate in grueling moments after the dawn has risen. Soul reaches from the depths of soil and shit. Hands clawing at clay. Fingernails breaking, I found the seed planted. Rotting. Like a parasite. It needed a host to thrive. The blisters popped my eyes.

This golden cage.
This wasted garden.

A Pandora’s box fashioned into a lock, I was found guilty for seeing you. For releasing your woes upon me. For tying vines of lies tangled into pores. You had me.

That night, the song of the moon pulsed into the valleys of my blood. I believed in us. Heart breaking shattered my landscape with warped visions. One by one. I untangle. I unweave my skin from a tapestry that hung on lonely walls.

It was because of you
that I believed in love again.

A stark contrast to what was given. Paradoxical. Opposing ideas confronted by truth.

And now, the chickens flock around the golden cage. Sharing secrets not theirs to share. Calling gossip the new black. Trust breaks. Bridging more pain. Their interference hinders the healing. The bruises from your guitar strings wrapped around vena cava. You blocked the oxygen. You choked spirit and won.
And the chickens knew that.

Enamored charm clouds vision.
Forgive them.
For they know what they do.

And a golden cage is still a cage.
And a garden can be a trash dump.

With steady hand and calloused fingers. The spirit moves through the caverns of my lungs. I started singing. And when the melody began, I saw you fade.

Calm is the way I retrieve me.

I found myself under the bed in the smallest golden cage. Covered in soot. Surrounded by ash. Behind a locked door, covered in vines, I rose. And I rise.

Unlike the chickens.

This phoenix flies.