Biological Contrition

The biological references are falling away, peeling from the new skin that has grown beneath the fraying symptom of regrowth. The crooked branches of the trees seen from my window serve as a reminder, a reprimand to grown toward the sun. Never looking now at where we have stemmed from. This is a lesson hard learned. My limbs have been sheered only to grow back incorrectly countless times. The wood cutter knows me by name and the smell of my sap.

The leaves of winter have not been swept and now have begun to rot and fume their pungent stench of decay. It’s appalling to know how much life lives within the caucus of death, feasting on the remains of former glory. The rain washes down the smoke stained wall but does not remove the soot blackness.  Moss crawls slowly into crevasses in the hope no one notices it silent march towards conflict. There is something pernicious about its softness.

It seems I cannot be drawn from biology. Eternally I shall measure myself by the pulse of my own internal function. By the birth of humanity in the creation of a cell. And it’s death, through the destruction we inflict upon the innocent and impeded. We are only at the top of the food chain because we have harnessed the power of cruelty. We hunt for the pleasure of the kill, the rush and flood of blood to the surface. Some of us at least. My own body longs to lay across man traps to absorb the rust into my own blood stream, not as a martyr, more in an act of contrition.

Who are the dreamers and where have they gone, too far for all we have witnessed and the howling echoes inside the empty cavity of a heartbroken chest. The two bickering women become a droning sound in my ear as I focus on the horizon, watching the day slip further from view. Why do we face west, why never east. The moon turns upon itself to show us her shadowed face, there are, it seems reasons she keeps this side of her concealed. Deeply pitted and scarred I long to touch it, but my fingers do not reach that distance. Her haunting inhumanity dictates seclusion. How lonely to wake alone each night, how vulnerable to have the world watching your nakedness. We have all become voyeurs. Even me. Even you.

Copyright: Samantha Ledger 2013