Aphrodite's Armor

And other contrasting riddles.

venus is officially retrograde in aries and the petals from our flowers are beginning to shed. i plucked some myself. i’ve crushed them between my fingers until their juices bled down my wrists. i find myself stripped to nothing most nights, counting the freckles on my skin and wondering where they lead to. trying to connect dots and sever strings simultaneously. black vines under my skin buried in frost.

a crumbled castle under the veil of a monochrome nightmare always visits my dreams. a black horse plods through the snow, yet never leaves a single print. and i don’t know where i am. i don’t know where i’m seeing this from. and yet i feel this all lives inside of me, taking my life upon rest and giving me breath once the sun comes back. but that crumbling pile of stones and that raven-colored animal has more life than my waking one.

the print of the ghost on the pillow feels more alive than me. no hands claw from the dirt and the devil drinks like a king.

don’t tell me you love me. you don’t know how deeply i’d gut myself for a thread of reciprocation. for a shred of kindness. for a merciful hand. for an upturned palm covered in blood that isn’t my own. for the smell of my grandmother’s lentil soup. for the sound of her laugh ricocheting off the curves of my heart. what i wouldn’t give to meet the version of people i had in my head.

there is no one in this world that suffers more than the heart of a child inside the body of a woman. and how this mind carves through the film that my enemies hide behind, as easy as carving a cake. as easy as a hot knife melting through a stick of butter. or how the sea carves a cliff. how a violinist drawing the bow for an audience already slipping to their death. art is appreciated more in the eyes of the dead.

and art is only art in the eyes of the naked, or in the eyes of the blind. you don’t know what it’s like to devote your soul so deeply to someone who doesn’t even share your blood. you don’t know what it’s like to lay yourself on the altar and gaze lovingly at your killer. to be strong enough to tell the tale and the tale weak enough to die as a scar on your face.

they will call it devotion. they will call it love. but i will call it what it was-a masterpiece carved from marrow, a requiem in flesh. because art is only art in the eyes of the dead. and tonight, i am finally beautiful.