A Season in Hell
The floor is exploding and I’m on it, hiding beneath my writing desk. Scraps of brain scattered everywhere, chunks of meat for vultures. The sunlight is scared, also hiding, everyone is hiding, terrified by my terror. I’m screaming really loud, the dog is barking also really loud. Screaming like an animal whose throat has been slit and that’s what I am, an animal, mammal animal and my husband, the one I am divorcing, is upon me the way father was upon me, husband who doesn’t even know where I live. Did he screech down the chimney, fly through a window, shattering glass everywhere? Is my violated mind also shattered glass and will it be stitched back together with a glass needle whose threads are spun by spiders, many spiders? Poisonous. I’m sure the spiders are poisonous, I taste their venom on my tongue—it’s burning, I’m burning like a house on fire. Is my house burning? Will I be buried in its ashes? No, it’s my husband coming at me like someone who’s come back from the grave.
_____