Let me out of your kingdom, I will be no queen. This castle of ours (yours), what is his and hers and theirs and mine...mine....I do not want what is mine. There are mine fields that lace these treacherous halls and I am forced to do a dance of stealth and sickly seduction. I want out. Of this castle. This is not my home, how could this be a home? With bricks and stones that are grey, grey, grey like your aging face bathed in harsh candle light. Do you remember Paris? I do. We wept together, touched stars and lips and you put buttercups in my hair. I thought they were daisies. I thought a marriage was love. And you were so much the Prince Charming turning the iron of the Eiffel Tower into a cage. Watching in amusement and drinking your fill of wine. It pours out of you onto my skin as if you are bleeding and I--I just want out of this castle. Its gates are too strong and too cold and too impersonal. To my smile it does nothing but shine its shiny tips--a warning. It reminds me of Germany. Work will set us free, free to what? A dark forest filled with barbaric and beautiful men, drunk on their own ego alone. They survive on just a woman a year and a child and some dreams, eaten through the bones and skinned for warmth during the winter. Please set me free? It is not that I do not see all the things that you do but rather that you do too much and I am not happy. No, you cannot make me happy. Your declarations of love stifle me. Your testosterone sickens me and makes hairs grow on my chin and I am so tired of shaving myself away. You are too tall and your chest too broad and your eyes to deep and your smile too broad and your skin to dark and your face too handsome. Too much, Too much, Too much! Even with that exclamation point it is not enough to explain how I feel when I look at your garden. Or ours or mine or us. Your hands have been dirty for years and are still never quite washed off and I cannot change the way my body churns in revolt. The grass is always bright and slick with water and dew and the flowers always blooming, blooming, blooming. Petaling into the wind. Prison. You lay down more of your seed and allow the wind to carry it and spread as the grass shakes and trembles in fear of yet another year of over harvesting. Of giving everything until it is ripped barren and another layer planted over it so that no one can see how you consume everything. Everything until it is we and no longer me and you anymore. Two becoming one and then nothing at all. I want out of this castle. I give away my seat in the court and my diamonds and puffy yellow dresses. I want away from these porcelain teacups that crack at the lightest touch and golden clocks that only remind of how much time I have been losing. I want the ocean that you have taken me so far away from. I want the songs of sirens and the caribbean band under the sea. I want sand and salt and sun burnt skin. I want to be floating. Let me drift on my own with nothing, no roots or even a lifeboat to tie me down. I want Fitzgerald's kiss smoldering my lips as we watch the fireworks light up the night like the green light. The green light that I first saw you in, changed into a man, right here at the dock. Across from the bay. |