Jane

By Caitlin Munn

A plain piece of paper.

Inkblots altering my words into nonsensical

Gossip

and the hearsay of whores.

Where love once bloomed, I find hate –

Where hope once grew, I find festering fruit

flies that buzz through my mind -

sucking blood from the stone.

The stone being You

You and only ever You.

A Pemberleian architect against a Wickamesque servant.

We are not equals; we are not alike.

And that’s okay. If I can stay here,

With dust and duvets and decorative flowers

And fill my head with stories

About You

You and only ever You.

‘If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.’

If I love you.

The flies drown out the words I want to use,

they swarm and reproduce and decompose

Together.

I am both relieved by their humanity and opposed to their rot.

Much like the scent of a street after rain

Or a house after arson

Or a wound after being opened

again and again, a wanted infection

a wanted excitement – I am not the stories I write.

I am not the loved nor the feared nor the despised

Salt water on my page that erases my last thought.

I make haste to be heard

But tip the deep black ink across my page

The pen lost in the sea of

nothing.

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